Under the Southern Lights: liturgical living in the Southern Hemisphere
An invitation to Friday's discussion with Bella Easterbrook
After our chat, a link to its recording will be posted below!
Welcome! Whether you’re a longtime friend or a new kindred spirit here (I recommend visiting the Village Green to get your bearings), I’m delighted to be a companion to you through the liturgical year.
Pax+bonum, Kristin.
In sharing my journey through the liturgical calendar here, I’m inherently sharing something both deeply personal and deeply communal: like all of you, I experience these seasons and holy days at the intersection of the universal and the particular…it’s that unique crossroads where my own life circumstances and landscape graft into Church heritage & tradition.
And, here in the Pacific Northwest, I find myself in a hemisphere of natural seasons that rhyme with those experienced by the historical Church - as her traditions grew and developed over the centuries, they naturally found their language in the local landscape and weather of the Northern Hemisphere.
So, when we talk of the theology woven into the liturgical and natural seasons, we’re almost always biased toward this Northern perspective: the way midwinter & its darkness exhibits the theology of the light born at Christmas, the way the promise of new life at the Annunciation is underscored by springtime growth.
And though these are meaningful and mysterious breakthroughs of the Word in time & landscape, God won’t be placed in a box: as the Church spread globally, and now as we have the ability to talk instantly on a global scale, we need to think more about how our theology is expressed in other places and climates.
If you’ve been here for awhile, you’ve likely gathered that I’m passionate about local liturgical living: I’m not advocating for a wistful focus on other places, distracting us from our own landscape or life…rather, I’d love to hone a greater sensitivity to the simultaneously universal and local expression of our shared faith.
The liturgical living experience of half of the globe is underserved in our online discussions, but it’s an incredible fount of wisdom. I’d like to see our brothers & sisters in the Southern Hemisphere find more resources available to them, and, in turn, their other seasonal experiences can help us all to shake loose our habitual ways of seeing time wherever we live, too.
All that to say: Friday’s live conversation is a long time coming, and I’m delighted to share in this with you!
We’ll be joined by Bella Easterbrook - an Australian writer who beautifully reflects on “how the Southern Hemisphere gives theological insight to each liturgical season.”
Bella’s wise reflections have helped to stretch my own experience of the liturgical year here in the Northern Hemisphere, and they’ve also given me a deeper connection to my friends across the globe.
Bella Easterbrook lives in Australia with her husband Daniel and three little boys. Last year, she moved from Sydney to a smaller town in regional New South Wales.
In her online ministry Over the Teacups, she writes about seasonal living in the Southern Hemisphere - the seasons of nature, of the liturgical year and of life - and the divine lessons we can learn from it
In her spare time, Bella loves reading historical fiction, drinking strong cups of tea and discovering new church calendar traditions.
Please join us for a chat about liturgical living in the Southern Hemisphere! Here are all the details…
