Welcoming the new year

Refreshing Signs + Seasons

Years ago, my friend Sally (

S.E. Reid

) & I would spend hours wandering around our favorite local haunt…sipping coffee, dreaming, & talking theology while watching the sun set. I could feel my soul expand with that alchemy of shared community. We both felt hungry for connection - not just for an echo-chamber of our interests or opinions, but for real, diverse community in which we could learn, be challenged, share, & grow in our relationship to Christ and to each other.

Sally later helped me hop into the world of Substack, and those meaningful walks from years past came to the fore in my mind. We need our fellow-pilgrims in this liturgical living journey, as we learn what it truly is to live in response to God’s presence.

In-person community, as well as the integration of our ideals & visions into our actual lives, is invaluable. We can mimic these things online, but we can’t replace them.

And so, taking a note from Sally’s community-building efforts on Substack, my goal became the fostering of a spark in this online space: a little ember that would hopefully inspire we readers & writers alike to bear these ideas out into our own lives. To carry liturgical traditions, concepts, & questions from (if I may borrow from classical mechanics) potential energy to kinetic energy. To take this online discourse, and discern from it what may be fruitful additions (or subtractions) in our own lives and communities. An online, ecumenical liturgical living guild with real-life repercussions.

When I launched this idea back in 2023, I was stunned by the positive reception - but I’ve been even more amazed by the plethora of writing you’ve shared here, and equally by the stories I’ve heard of how you’ve been encouraged to re-examine ideas of liturgical living thanks to the myriad reflections in this space.

I’m excited for another year of growth & learning alongside you all. Thank you for entrusting us with your time as readers, and with your ideas & creativity as authors.

Now, let’s chat as a guild about some of our upcoming goals for 2025…

2025 REFRESH

• PLEASE WELCOME A NEW EDITORIAL TEAM MEMBER!
  Thanks to the S+S community, I’ve gotten to know

  Carolyn
  - author of Medievalist Mama - over the past year, and it always tickles me to no end when I find a kindred spirit across the miles. Carolyn is a student-scholar of the Visigothic Church and Old Hispanic Rite, paraliturgy practitioner, mother, Latin teacher, and quondam mosaic artist. She has a Stanford classics B.A. & UofT medieval studies M.A. We’re absolutely thrilled to have her joining the editorial team!
  

• GUILDMEMBER DIRECTORY
  To further support authors exploring liturgical living here on Substack, and to better connect us all between S+S issues, we’ve launched a Guildmember Directory!

  When you submit an article for in an upcoming issue, we’ll also chat with you at that time about the idea of joining as a Guildmember! (It’s all free, of course: our ask is that you would link to S+S to help cross-pollinate the writing efforts of our Guildmembers).
  

• CAMARADERIE
  One of my big goals this year will be to get S+S issues compiled a little bit in advance (not too far - since, of course, this is all inherently seasonal!) and then network that issue with all of the contributing authors… that way, you can get to know the folks whose work is seated right alongside yours, offering & receiving support, and getting to truly savor these inspiring articles.
  

• SUBSTACK CHAT
  Chat is now enabled for S+S, so we have a space here to open up more dialogue between issues!

• CALL FOR ENTRIES
  We’ll be keeping our publishing schedule flexible, but I’ll put out a Call for Entries email post when we’re gearing up for a new issue - that way, you’ll receive the invitation right in your Inbox on Substack, as well as in your email (not just on Notes, where it can easily get lost in the mix).

---

The goal of all of this is to help us craft a sustainable pace for reader & editor alike, and to continue inspiring us all to take the ideas we read online and examine how we can apply them to our lives.

Please feel free to reach out via the comments or email with any questions or thoughts!

Pax et bonum,

Kristin Haakenson