gather: Ember Days

Fasting & gifting as we close the year

Fasting days and Emberings be Lent, Whitsun, Holyrood, and Lucie.

English proverb

For the past few years, I’ve hosted a Liturgical Life group. We’re a diverse gathering - of all ages, from a variety of denominations, learning alongside each other and working to graft the traditions of the liturgical calendar into our own varied circumstances.

This December has been an especially complicated one - three floods in two weeks, right in the middle of Advent, meant that our typical Christmas preparations went by the wayside.

After all that uncertainty, high water, and chaos, gathering with friends for our last Liturgical Living celebration of 2025 (!) was such a comfort. I’m an introvert by nature: but somehow, I’ve found that these gatherings actually refill me.

Paradoxically, preparing for these parties helps to realign my habits that otherwise start to spin up toward perfectionism and legalism…these gatherings are always a reality-check, since hosting them monthly means that we have to show up just as we are. The door opens, whether or not we got all the muck from the flood cleaned off our porch.

This is our yard before the flood had even crested, so the water was still low.

So, after the high water went down, we had our December gathering: this time, something a bit different…the winter Ember Days!

Based on an Old English translation of the Latin Quatuor Tempora, or ‘four times’, the Ember Days are an ancient agricultural tradition in the church - quarterly fasting days, each set being tied to a solstice or equinox and focused on giving thanks for the blessings of the land. (Our group’s goal is to look to these quarterly Ember Days as community service prompts that would be in addition to our usual monthy gathering, but this December was SO wild that we decided to enter this new rhythm gently).

Here’s a peek into our Ember Day…which marked two full years of monthly liturgical living gatherings!!