Liturgical living with your community
Practical ideas for your people & place + POLL!
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.
For more photos from our events and details about how we celebrate, visit my archive:
Invitations
There are a million ways to invite friends and neighbors into your liturgical living gathering, so find whatever works best for you and your people…if it’s helpful, though, here’s what works for me (it’s nothing fancy, and I am by no means some sort of expert hostess!):
Invitation email: A few weeks (ideally, a month…) before the event, I send out the first invitation. Sometimes, life gets crazy and I don’t manage to give much notice at all, but late is better than never! I keep an email list of interested folks in a Google Sheet, then cc all of them when I send the invitation.
Looking back: I always like to thank friends, and include some shout-outs to folks who contributed in extra ways, from our previous month’s gathering. I also attach a handful of photos…bits of memories for that month’s guests to hold onto, and also a peek into the event for those who couldn’t attend in-person.
Intro to this month’s feast: I just type up a quick paragraph introducing the saint/event we’re commemorating in the upcoming event, usually with a tie-in to what our activity / connection to the land will be.
Nitty Gritty: I always have a few bullet points to help guide the shape of the event…
When/Where: We always host on the farm, but the location on the farm often changes. I always provide the address as a reminder, as well as details on where to meet before (if) we are heading out somewhere further. I also provide a roundabout time when folks can start arriving, but generally, that means there’s about a half-hour cushion of arrival time…so I plan for some time-margin, especially if we’ll be heading somewhere and need to go together.
Meal Theme: I like to provide some sort of potluck theme to help prompt us all…i.e., food traditionally associated with a particular feast, food from regions associated with that saint, etc. But here’s the crucial part: I tell folks to bring what they want, in or out of the theme, and only bring it if they can. The theme is provided to help spark ideas and excitement, to help us all learn…but it’s not meant to be legalistic or be a burden. (For St. Catherine’s Day, our theme was “circular” food - and I was delighted that a friend brought Cheerios. Brilliant!) Sometimes, we just don’t have the bandwidth to do anything but bring ourselves to a gathering, and that’s okay.1 I also usually have a Pinterest board to point friends to…just a place to peek around and get ideas.
Bring: I always include a note about what to bring…sometimes, donation items. Often, this includes weather/terrain related items (i.e., bring your rain boots, bring a swimsuit and a beach towel, etc.)
RSVP: I ask friends to let me know if they’ll be joining us, and if so, how many guests will be coming. This is super malleable and often changes on the day-of, but it helps to give me an idea of who to look out for - especially if we’ll be taking the hay wagon somewhere, or won’t be celebrating in an obvious location. If I’m preparing any sort of hands-on work, it helps me make sure I have enough for everyone.
Reminder: My email box tends to overflow quickly, so I really don’t want to fill up anyone else’s inbox. I just send a quick reminder out a day before the event.
Hosting Essentials
When we host our monthly liturgical gathering, the location often changes - sometimes, it’s in our house…other times, at the river’s edge, in the meadow, up on the hill…there’s a lot of variation.
To make my life easier, I keep all the pot-luck hosting essentials handy in a couple of plastic tubs. That way, wherever we are, I have some grab-&-go tubs that are stocked with everything I need.
Even if we’re just hosting inside our house, I love being able to pull everything I need from one hosting bin.
Here are the basics that stay in my bins:
Compostable plates, bowls, cups, and cutlery
A bin for all the cutlery
Napkins
Bottle opener/wine key
Tray for placing alcoholic beverages (to differentiate them)
Sharpies (for writing names on cups)
Wipes
Extra trash bags
First aid kit
Bluetooth speaker
A couple of neutral tablecloths
Placecard holders & index cards (in case folks want to write any allergen notes by their dishes)
…and here are some other additions that require a bit more tinkering on the day of the potluck. I have a crate that I tend to stuff all of these “day-of” things into so that I can easily transport them:
Seasonal tablecloths (I have a pile of vintage tablecloths that I rotate & use as festive layers over the more neutral base)
Vases for flowers (I like to use a whimsical assortment of vintage milk glass vases, canning jars, old silver-plated pitchers, etc).
Scissors/clippers (for flowers)
Supplies for an activity (if what we’re doing requires supplies)
Water pitcher
Cases of sparkling water
Cooler (if we’re outside and it’s hot, I have a rolling cooler to help keep bevs cold)
Pop-up tent (totally not necessary, but this comes in handy since we do so much outdoors. Whether it’s sunny or sprinkling, it’s handy to have a space to shelter the spread of food and drinks)
Where can you host?
We’re in an incredibly fortunate situation here on the farm: we have lots of space outside, and it allows us to practice liturgical living through an agrarian lens in a very hands-on way. (A good chunk of the year is rainy here, though, which means we find ourselves indoors).
But there are ways to weave liturgical traditions into your own life and landscape. If we lived somewhere else, our expression of liturgical living would look different…which is part of the loveliness all of this.
If we lived in a city, seasonal living would have its own unique challenges - and uniquely beautiful expressions. I grew up in the suburbs, moved to the downtown of a bigger city, then came to the farm around 2011 (my husband grew up here).
I’ve experienced a few different flavors of place, and looking back, I can see how seasonality appeared distinctively in each location…from looking forward to certain weeds that would grow in city parking lots (I made bouquets with them), to flowers that appeared in a nursery, to annual book sales at the library that became tethered to springtime for me.
We have to start with curiosity and practice the art of attentiveness, though: how does my unique place intersect with theology? What do I notice right here, right now?
It can also be challenging to host if our space is small or parking is so-so. Rest assured, though: we have lots of outdoor space here, but our house easily overflows. People find places to perch to eat dinner, and more than one person in the kitchen makes it crowded. We’re incredibly lucky to be in our home, but it’s not the space that would get featured in any sort of hosting magazine - it’s just not built for that, and that’s okay!
Because of that idyllic vision in my head, I used to be reluctant and self-conscious about hosting: our dog is too big, our couch is too dirty, our entryway is like a game of Tetris.
Leaning into the reality of hosting in this unique place, though, has deepened my gratitude for it.
That being said, sometimes hosting at our own home just isn’t possible. Maybe we struggle with anxiety (hi! It’s me!), roommates, nervous pets, or are caretakers. There are a plethora of reasons.
If that’s the case, we can still find a ‘third place’ to host a liturgical living gathering, though: and truly, it’s worth the work to make it happen.
Places for hosting:
Church
Library
Park
Senior Center
Cafe
What venue suggestions do you have?
Tell me: what are your unique obstacles in hosting a liturgical living group?
Hit me with with your challenges, and let’s see if we can wonder about it together.
Poll:
I sometimes wonder if it would be helpful to have regional lists of folks who are also interested connecting about liturgical living or who are willing to host…just general connections (with hosts later doing the contacting of interested attendees) to make it easier to find that common ground.
I’ll keep an eye on this, and if there’s a need, I’ll see where the breadcrumb trail goes. :)
Pax et bonum,
Kristin
P.S. Don’t forget, I have a free ebook for all subscribers to help you get started with liturgical living groups!
I try to make an effort to always make some sort of entrée, so that we can be sure of having some “growing food” before filling up on cookies. :) That makes the margin so that guests who run out of time or energy can bring a bag of chips, and it’s a-okay.