“In celebrating this feast we declare that evil and death, suffering and loss, sorrow and tears, will not have the final word.” -Douglas McKelvey, “Liturgy for Feasting with Friends,” from Every Moment Holy, Vol. 1.
In the autumn, the trees turn golden in preparation for emptiness. The air gets crisp–ready to be cold. The light begins to fade into gray. Crops that have been growing all year are harvested before they die. And many of us already begin to feel wistfulness for the life that is disappearing before our eyes.
But of course, before the chill gray truly moves in, there are fall glories: apple picking, favorite films, harvest festivals and celebrations, annual culinary favorites, and yes, pumpkin spice lattes. A harvest feast takes things that are dying and, in a way, marks them for eternity–in the form of unforgettable flavors and memories. In fact, in the waning days of the long green season before Advent, the Church has long celebrated Allhallowtide, three days of feasting that connect our gratitude for the past with our hope for the future.
The world around us is quick to dismiss the past. And we Christians have sometimes been too quick to join our neighbors in writing things off that “don’t last.” But autumn is an opportunity to do something different: to recognize that our timeless God works in things that appear to be fleeting, and to consecrate the moment for eternity. We do this when we cook for a feast. When we sing and laugh in the face of darkness. When we give thanks for the saints of the past. When we find new ways to repurpose old things. And when we learn, bit by bit, to live each moment like it is part of a larger story.
In this season, we will focus on the idea of the harvest feast (drawing inspiration from Allhallowtide), and the creative and hopeful art of marking the dying for resurrection.
Team Breakfast
Saturday, September 13, 2025
9:00am – 10:30am
A Long Expected Feast
September 19-20, 2025
Weekend Event
Artist Feature
Musician Feature
We were meant for life together. But the fallen world seeks to drive apart things that were meant to be together. People from God. Sexes and generations and tribes and individuals from each other. And the image of God from the rest of the creation.
But what if every meal—every actual meal you'll eat today—is meant to be a small echo of the greatest feast that is to come? And what if there is a way for God to not only heal our relationship with food, but through it, heal the world? What if feasting was a way we participate in the reconciliation of all things?
Annie Nardone's latest Pages,
Pints, and Pours column pairs
us up with Julia Child's stories.
Gianna Soderstrom
muses on the ministry of second
breakfasts -- and the power of
inviting others into our homes.
Terri & Steve Moon live in "one of the smallest houses on the block." But sometimes cozy hospitality is the best kind.
Cohost of Believe to See Christina Brown sits down with fellow Anselm Arts Guild member Elyce Westby to talk about the importance of cultivating a narrative of beauty in your home.
In every episode, we retell one of the great stories, then follow its illumination to delve deeper into conversation about how to enter into the life of the Christian imagination.
Food features prominently in so many of our favorite stories—like Lord of the Rings, Wingfeather, Redwall, and Harry Potter. Why?
In this episode, we'll delve into these fantastical realms to find a healed relationship with food—and reveal how eating can literally change how we do Christianity.
Subscribe to Anselm’s Substack to receive the full show notes, which includes: a detailed list of topics covered, resources mentioned in the episode, further recommended reading and listening, and discussion questions to utilize for further thinking and conversation with friends!
Podcast episodes on feasting and food
Christina, Mandy, and Matt discuss fasting in feasting, their relationship to one another, and their relationship to the Christian tradition and liturgical calendar.
After a trip to France ruins Heidi for normal life, the group discusses food, art, and why hospitality has always played a central role in Anselm Society gatherings.
In a world of haste and homesickness, we’re all longing for Rivendell: a place of love and belonging, healing and beauty. This Imagination Redeemed 2018 Conference session explores the creative potential of domestic spaces to image our ‘at-homeness’ in God, and cast a vision for hospitality as both art form and act of worship.
What do those ideas have in common? They are hard, and we try to do them alone. But to really thrive, we need people in our lives who encourage us and challenge us, who keep the faith when we lose heart, and who provide the skills, resources, and perspectives we lack. But there’s an art to cultivating that kind of relationship—and it’s one we can learn.
September Cover Photo by Damir K
Team Breakfast
Saturday, September 13, 2025
9:00am – 10:30am
A Long Expected Feast
September 19-20, 2025
Weekend Event
Afraid of the past having a hold on us? And what's that got to do with singing? This month, we’ll explore how tradition can shape us, and how songs can connect us to God and His people, and foster the voice of His people.
Read more about this fall season’s theme →
The golden glory of October points both to our mortality and to nature's restoration, writes Nicole Koehn.
Rediscovering the full range of emotions in Christian music — acknowledging pain in this world and sharing hope that resonates.
Anselm Society member Danielle Mellema remembers an old country church and its heroes of the faith.
In every episode, we retell one of the great stories, then follow its illumination to delve deeper into conversation about how to enter into the life of the Christian imagination.
We all care about having good music in and out of church, and we get so excited when we encounter a new song or artist who seems to be contributing to that need.
In this episode, we’re going to discuss why we need a certain kind of song, one that’s underrepresented even among modern hymns, and one that we actually need to develop some new and different muscles to write.
Prime yourself to learn about singing with Believe to See’s episode on “Why We Create: Gratitude as the Foundation of Human Creativity.” You’ll uncover what gratitude has to do our human call to create as an act of worship!
We've all experienced the power of music to move our emotions, and we know that it can play a big part in returning our wayward hearts over and over to the Lord. In this session at the Imagination Redeemed Conference 2020, Amber unpacks the mysteries of how music makes us feel things, how we are re-enchanted by it, and then follows that up with a wealth of practical suggestions for how we can use music in thoughtful ways to move the church forward towards glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.
Few art forms have the power music has to move us and enrich our lives. But what gives it that power? In this glorious conversation, Shane Morris of the Upstream Podcast welcomes theologian and musician Dr. Jeremy Begbie to reveal how music can voice deep theological truths in a way words can’t.
Team Breakfast
Saturday, October 11, 2025
9:00am – 10:30am
Shedding Light on Blacklisted Books
October 25, 2025
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Why are we so afraid of the past having a hold on us? Whether it's our own trauma, Halloween fears, family history, or that big scary word tradition, many of us feel caught between two extremes: either cutting ourselves off from history entirely, or feeling trapped by ideas and practices we didn't choose.
In this episode, we journey back to medieval England to discover what All Hallowtide—the three-day feast that became Halloween—actually looked like, and why it might hold keys to a healthier relationship with death, tradition, and the past.
Prime yourself to learn about tradition with the Imagination Redeemed’s episode on “The Art of Christian Memory.” Heidi White explores the posture that can enable Christians to be conservers of the goodness and beauty they’ve inherited, and restorers of things that have been broken.
Subscribe to Anselm’s Substack to receive the full show notes, which includes: a detailed list of topics covered, resources mentioned in the episode, further recommended reading and listening, and discussion questions to utilize for further thinking and conversation with friends!
coming soon
coming soon
The season of winter can be full of darkness, cold, and waiting. Winter creates limits: the days are shorter, we’re stuck inside, and the sun itself (or at least its warmth) is elusive. Often we even can be closed off in our own minds, as the dark and cold work their way inward. We are made keenly aware of our longing for restoration.
But the story doesn’t end there. The limits aren’t just a challenge—they are an opportunity.
It is into the midst of our world's limitations that the God of the universe slips after months of darkness in a womb. God is not afraid of constriction. Beginning on that one unique dark night, He instead works within time and space, and offers us an invitation to participate with him.
We embody godly generosity and joviality as a community full of hope precisely in the space and time allotted to us—not in one grand gesture but in the habitual creation of concentrated warmth and cheer. In making rich food and hot drinks. In telling stories. In lingering, as we see each other more fully, in long conversations by the fire.
This is a poignant picture of the life of the Church. While we see darkness and cold all around us, with our redeemed imaginations, we can live in intentional defiance of them, as God in the flesh did.
Our winter content will focus on this theme—the reality of God in the flesh (and what that means!), with a calendar full of warmth, cheer, and hope because our Lord is found with us in our limitations.