I've been documenting a bit of how I do Advent and Christmas over the past few weeks. But it's occurred to me that there are particular styles to living liturgically. Figuring out what style resonates with you is phenomenally helpful for liturgical living success! Here's a few of the basic styles:
The Food liturgical living person
This person likely either cooks at home most of the time, or generally likes to cook. Meal planning may or may not be their strong point, but they can totally handle throwing a dessert together with a week to a couple days notice! Likely enjoys browsing Pinterest for new recipes to try out. It helps to be an adventurous eater!
The Crafty liturgical living person
This person finds happiness in creating with their hands. May have a stash of various craft supplies, or just rescued recycling scraps waiting to be made into something marvelous. Experience with crafting techniques will vary, but enthusiasm for the attempt is a given. Likely enjoys adult coloring books.
The Bookish liturgical living person
This person has a book for every possible situation. This style will range from the Children's Literature enthusiast, to the Tolkein nerd, to Poetry lovers. Saints days, for the bookish style, are best celebrated by being curled up with a cozy blanket and enjoying the words or stories that belong to that feast.
The Party Throwing liturgical living person
This person sees changes in the liturgical year, or any given feast day, as an excellent excuse to throw a party! Large or small, cocktail party or play date. Doesn't matter, they will be there! And will likely host. This person is probably an extrovert, but there will be the odd introvert among these party throwing liturgical livers.
Bonus Categories!
There are some life situations that will impact how your liturgical living style manifests in practice.
The Parenting liturgical living person
This is the person with the most available resources for their liturgical living (let's be real.) While this person has the needs and preferences of a tiny army to factor in, kids make the joy and wonder aspect of liturgical living easy and accessible.
The Single liturgical living person
This person has to wade through the flood of liturgical living resources that assume you are trying to celebrate with, and for, small children. However, the feasts and fasts are meant for everyone in the Church! It helps to join forces with a group of friends to do at least some celebrations in community. Own your tradition and allow for others to join in! You might find that celebrating with another family, a local religious order, or your roommates make for some wonderful experiences.
The Convert liturgical living person
This person may be brand new to Catholicism, Christianity, or religion in general. They may be suffering from convert fever ("Do. All. The. Things!") or from convert overwhelm ("Please don't let there be one more thing to add on my plate, sweet Jesus!") The beautiful thing about the liturgical year? It always comes back around! This isn't set in stone. You will live if you miss a feast day.
Little secret from a cradle Catholic? *whispers* No celebrates all of the feasts! Really.
Pick a thing, see styles above to get an idea of what is a good thing to start with for you, and just try it out!
Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes!
Which of these styles is you? Are there any I forgot? What are some other categories that impact how someone celebrates the liturgical year?
Bookish liturgical living! Book for all the saints! Whipping together a non themed dessert is a thing too for me. I can't say I am the most passionate liturgical living person. Like, I often just don't try. There are other things I would rather put my energy into. However, I am upping my Advent game because it's such a clearly important liturgical season I think it will be worth it. ---MARIAE
ReplyDeleteAnd it's such an accessible season for books! I find people who enjoy the book aspect like to get into the Jesse Tree.
DeleteI think prayer is important and especially during Advent. I try to attend a Retreat, just for a day, to bring me to where I need to be but haven't been due to general busyness of life and family. If I don't keep my relationship with God fresh and make time for silence when I can listen for his inspiration, I will just get frazzled with all that needs to be done at this time of the year. It is so easy to be caught up in the gift buying, wrapping, running to shops, frantically cooking for a crowd, over-spending, late nights, too much to drink etc that I can forget the most wonderful reason for celebrating Christmas - the birth of our Saviour.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! I think most people don't start there though (it seems more common to get there via the other styles) but it sounds like you do. Perhaps that would be called Contemplative?
DeleteWe would probably fit somewhere under prayerbook/hymnal/crafty (as far as decorating goes, but only me, crafts with the kids is not my thing yet)/cooking liturgical living. A big struggle in the past has been planning ahead, which means we often do the bare minimum - morning or evening prayer with a special hymn for the feast day. Starting afresh this Advent and doing better so far! It helps that the kids are finally old enough that the physical traditions are super exciting.
ReplyDelete