This fifth playlist in the series, “Midsummer,” is the longest playlist in the collection, partially because the days are longer this time of year, but also because this playlist technically covers a longer portion of the year than any of my other playlists, from roughly June 22 - August 30.

Midsummer marks the shift into the second half of the year, when the sunlight in the northern hemisphere gradually begins to wane, and the light begins to slowly fade away.

Due to the natural lag between maximum heat exposure and maximum temperature in the transfer of heat from the sun to the earth, hot summer temperatures on the earth’s surface continue well beyond the astronomical thresholds that mark the waning of the sunlight during the second half of the year. This effect has been exacerbated by climate change in recent decades, extending the summer season by about two weeks.

For this reason, the timing of the playlists in this second half of the series will no longer line up with the astronomical seasonal thresholds, but will instead be released in accordance with the agricultural and meteorological seasonal shifts as they actually occur for most people living in the northern hemisphere.

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Despite modern sensibilities that have come to identify the astronomical solstice as the “official” start of summer, as NASA astronomer Dr. Koji Mukai explains in his Midsummer Day’s Rant, this designation actually makes little sense culturally or meteorologically. The agricultural start of the summer has traditionally been celebrated on or around May Day, placing the solstice at the middle of the season, not at the beginning. Indeed, this is why Shakespeare literally refers to it as “mid-summer.”

Many people throughout history have observed this significant turning point in the solar year with festive gatherings similar to those held on May Day: music, dancing, bonfires, flower crowns, and feasting on the abundance of the summer harvest.

Perhaps the most famous solstice gathering is the one held each year at Stonehenge, the ancient megalithic structure constructed by Neolithic farmers in southern England to align with the sunrise on the summer solstice and the sunset on the winter solstice.

But the beauty and wonder of the solstice can be felt even more profoundly in the northernmost latitudes, where you can experience a full 24 hours of daylight this time of year. In certain parts of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Alaska, and Canada, the sun never sets below the horizon in the weeks surrounding the solstice, a phenomenon known as the Midnight Sun.

Even as far south as Denmark and Scotland, the sun doesn’t go down until 10pm, and the twilight lasts all night long. The Scottish refer to this as the “summer dim.” In St. Petersberg, Russia, a White Nights Festival features all-night concerts and ballets along with a midnight marathon.

In many parts of northern Europe, midsummer is experienced as a “thin” time, when the veil between this world and the spirit realm is believed to be especially porous. In Sweden, people walk barefoot on the solstice through the morning dew, which is believed to have magical qualities bestowing good fortune.

In the British Isles, fairies are thought to travel more freely this time of year, found near springs, meadows, crossroads, and in forest clearings. Since fairies can either be friendly or tricksters, travelers are often warned not to wander alone in the summer evening twilight.

Midsummer also ushers in the hottest part of the year, sometimes referred to as the “dog days” of summer. Whenever I hear this phrase, I always think of an old hound dog with floppy ears sprawled out on a wooden porch, with his humans sitting behind him on a couple of old rocking chairs, sipping iced tea and lemonade.

But the phrase actually derives from ancient Greek astrology: Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is also known as the “dog star” because of its position at the heart of the dog-shaped constellation Canis Major. Often referred to as “Orion’s dog,” you can find the dog star following behind Orion in the night sky from December to mid-May. Societies as diverse as the Greeks, Persians, Chinese, and Inuit have all had associations between Sirius and dogs or wolves.

From July 3rd to August 11th in the northern hemisphere, Sirius does not appear at night but rises at dawn, a phenomenon known as “heliacal rising.” This period is referred to as “the dog days” because Orion’s dog literally travels across the sky during the daylight hours this time of year.

The astronomical phenomenon of the brightest star traveling across the sky with the sun during the hottest part of the year made a powerful impression on many ancient stargazers, amplifying themes of light, heat, and passion. For the Egyptians, the heliacal rising of Sirius was a harbinger of the annual flooding of the Nile — a life-giving event essential to Egyptian livelihood. In Greek astrology, it was not only associated with humidity, drought, and thunderstorms, but with lethargy, fever, disease, hysteria, mad dogs, and bad luck (for this reason, it was long held in Western medicine that practices like bloodletting and induced vomiting should be avoided this time of year).

Despite the heat, this is still a time of year when light and life are at their peak, making it the perfect season for reveling in the out-of-doors: bike rides, trips to the beach, lawn games, pool parties, baseball, ice cream, camping, star gazing, sun bathing, bird watching, bug catching, fly fishing, tree climbing, and spending long hours on a picnic blanket staring at the clouds.

It is also a time for rocking chairs, porch swings, hammocks, and benches — in other words, a time for slowing down, taking in the scenery, and embracing the simple pleasures of creaturely existence.

In the Christian church calendar, the summer months overlap with a liturgical season known as “Ordinary Time,” symbolized by the color green to emphasize the earthly nature of embodied Christian faith, and the activity of God in the material world. During ordinary time, we are invited to slow down and embrace postures of simplicity, consistency, gratitude, and rest. The Rev. Claude Atcho writes, “In this season, we find where the life of Jesus intersects with the lives we inhabit. We seek Jesus in the mundane and discover that this, too, is holy ground.”

The word “ordinary,” from the proto-Italic root ordn- meaning “a row, line, series, pattern, arrangement, or routine,” is associated with the practice of weaving threads on a loom to create a uniform pattern. Ordinary time reminds us that it is through our everyday routines — those steady rhythms of labor and rest — that we weave our deepest purpose by finding the magic in the mundane.

More than any other time of year, this season invites us to stop and “touch grass.” The lazy days of summer encourage us to cultivate within ourselves mental habits of gratitude, trust, and self-restraint that push back against pervasive patterns of anxiety and overconsumption. Choosing a slower and more steady pace is deeply countercultural, drawing us out of the voracious never-enoughness of capitalism and back into material reality, where we can experience for ourselves the simple wonder of being, which is always available to us if we make the time to let it in.

The songs on this playlist try to capture all of these themes:

• Seemingly endless days of sunlight that bring a sense of lightness, abundance, and pep in your step

• Poolside cocktail parties, easy breezy beaches, and spending long lazy afternoons on the porch

• Embracing the slowness of the dog days of summer

• Taking the time to marvel in the ordinary and find beauty in the simplicity of life in this material world

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*BONUS PLAYLISTS!

If you’re looking for a playlist of popular songs to accompany your summer roadtrip, backyard bbq, pool party, day at the beach, or afternoon picnic — worry not, I’ve got you covered! Select “shuffle” on these playlists and jam on.

Old-school summer tunes for sitting beachside, lakeside, or poolside:

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A relaxing and lighthearted mix to accompany your summer picnic:

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Backyard BBQ classics and tolerable patriotism for your July 4th cookout:

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Acoustic blues and folk for lazy Saturday mornings or summer evenings on the porch:

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Classic driving tunes to keep you going on your summer roadtrip:

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For those summer days that aren’t so sunny:

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This fourth playlist in the series, “Nova,” is meant to capture the transitional season between spring and summer. It is a playlist for May 1 - June 21. This is a time of energy, growth, vitality, fecundity, and high adventure. New life has finally come into its full fruition!

While the astronomical summer doesn’t technically start until the solstice on June 21st, since ancient times, the beginning of May has been recognized across the northern hemisphere as the start of the agricultural summer. As the astronomical halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, May 1st was considered an important threshold in the final victory of light over darkness. The traditional Chinese solar calendar also places their “Start of Summer” this time of year, on May 5th.

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In most parts of the northern hemisphere, this May represents the onset of reliably warm and sunny weather, which is why most people still experience this time of year as the “unofficial” start of summer. Most schools let out for the summer between mid-May and early June, and peak travel season begins in the U.S. on Memorial Day weekend, which is also when most swimming pools open.

This is the perfect time of year for getting outdoors and setting out on new adventures. Many people take time off work to go on extended vacations during this time. It is also the traditional season for weddings, when many couples embark the new adventure of committed life together. But even if you don’t have any big travel plans, this is still the perfect time to pack a pic-a-nic basket and head out-of-doors for an impromptu excursion: explore some nearby wooded trails, kayak down a river, visit a local park, or at the very least, step out into your yard to lay in the grass and bask in the long-awaited sunshine.

Agriculturally, this time of year brings the “first fruits” of the summer harvest. Cherries, strawberries, rhubarb, and many leafy greens come into season starting in May. The Jewish “Festival of Weeks,” known as Shavuot, marks the end of the 7-week Counting of the Omer, a 50-day period between the discarding of last year’s grain at Passover and the arrival of the first harvest of new wheat from this year’s crop.

Historically, bread made from sheaves of the new wheat crop were offered at the Temple in Jerusalem to the Creator of all things — in gratitude for protection and sustenance during the “wilderness” season of winter, and in grateful anticipation of the upcoming abundance of summer.

This is also a time of year when we celebrate the fecundity of human and animal life, including special days for honoring our parents — those through whom our own lives were created — on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Some cultures elect a symbolic “May Queen” and king during their May Day celebrations, crowning them with special wreaths of flowers. In many parts of Europe, it is still customary to celebrate May Day by wrapping colorful ribbons around a local “may pole” while singing and dancing, though no one seems to know how this tradition got started.

In Ireland, this cross-quarter season is known as “Beltaine,” a word meaning “bright fire.” Historically, people from the British Isles to the Germanic and Nordic regions lit great bonfires on the last night of April (“May Eve”), and communities gathered around them to dance, sing, and perform blessing rituals to protect their livestock before sending them out to graze in the open pastures. Household fires were also doused and re-lit from the communal bonfire, creating a clear demarcation between the winter hearth and the summer hearth.

In the Christian liturgical calendar, this fiery and energetic season aligns with the Feast of Pentecost, which takes place 50 days after Easter, and is deeply connected to the symbolism of the ancient Hebrew Festival of Weeks. Falling between May 10th and June 13th every year, Pentecost celebrates the “baptism of fire” that gave birth to the early church, as described in Acts 2. The presence of the Holy Spirit has been depicted in imagery throughout Christian history as flames of fire.

Like the cattle being driven out into the fields after receiving the protective blessings of the communal bonfire, the disciples of Jesus were driven out from their hiding places on the day of Pentecost, blessed by the fire of the Holy Spirit to courageously connect across linguistic and cultural barriers, to celebrate the diversity of God’s good creation and spread the sustaining hope of eternal life in Christ.

I have entitled this playlist “Nova” to capture this spirit of a bright, blazing new fire in a season of abundant sunshine. A nova is a star that suddenly increases in brightness. The Latin word simply means “new.” It is a time for celebrating the flourishing of new growth, life, and energy throughout all of creation.

Hildegard of Bingen used the word veriditas to describe this “greening” life force that is unleashed with a particular fervor this time of year.

O Fire of the Holy Spirit,
Life within the very life of all life —
Holy are You,
in giving life to all things.
Holy are You,
in anointing the broken.
Holy are You,
in cleansing festering wounds.
O Sacred Breath,
O Fire of Love,
O Sweetest taste in my breast
which fills my heart
with the fine scent of virtue.
O Clear Fountain
through whom we know
that God unites strangers
and gathers the lost.
O Breastplate guarding life
and the hope of uniting
all members into one body;
O Belt of Truth —
enfold those who offer blessing,
care for those ensnared by the enemy,
dissolve the bonds of those God deems to save.
O Mighty Path that runs through all,
from the heights
across the earth,
and into the depths,
You encompass all, and unify all.
From You, the clouds stream,
and the dew rises,
and the stones become moist,
and the springs burst forth into waterways,
and the earth sweats green with Life.
Eternally You draw out knowledge,
and bring joy through the inspiration of Your wisdom.
Therefore, praise to You —
You who are the very sound of praise,
You who are the very joy of life,
You who are hope and the greatest honor,
bestowing the gift of Light.

—Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)

The songs on this playlist try to capture all of these themes:

• The new life and vitality that has come into fruition

• Finally getting outdoors to embark on new adventures

• Delighting in the “first fruits” of the new agricultural season

• Lively dancing around communal bonfires that shine with the energy of the sun

• The lush “greening” of life all around, especially in open pastures under blue skies and radiant sunshine

• The fire of the Holy Spirit that gives us the protective and sustaining energy of life in Christ, connecting us to one another and inspiring us to embrace the fullness of our creative potential.

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This third playlist in the series, “Bloom,” is meant to capture the bright bursting of light and love and aliveness that marks the arrival of spring. The birds are singing. The bees are buzzing. The buds are blooming. The pollen is…pollening.

Where I live in central NC, this playlist aligns perfectly with the octant of the year that begins on the Spring Equinox, lasting from around March 21 - April 30. Having spent six years living in different parts of New York, however, I am very aware that for many people living in the northern latitudes and at higher altitudes, this blossoming season may not arrive for still quite some time.

Those who remain in the throes of the seasonal battle between the cold and the sunshine may want to revel in the “Imbolc” playlist for a little bit longer. But if you’re like me, you might need a little boost of musical optimism even if the blossoms aren’t quite out in your area yet.

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Growing up in NC, spring was something I always took for granted. I was born in early April, and my birthday week always reliably marked the blooming of the dogwood trees in my hometown of Greensboro. The beauty of spring in central NC is unparalleled, but there have been years when I have found this season to be rather tiresome — the brazen extroversion of magenta azaleas, the incessant bumbling of fat carpenter bees, the faint scent of dead fish wafting from a nearby Bradford Pear, the unrelenting cold breezes cutting through bright sunlight… not to mention the thick clouds of yellow pollen that cover everything in a blanket of sneeze.

At times, all of this has been rather off-putting for my overstimulated nervous system and my more introverted and melancholic personality. I was always more of an autumn gal: drawn to the complex solemnity of colors glowing in the fading sunlight, as one last laugh in the face of death. I may have been born in the early spring, but I was also born on Good Friday, during a full moon, on a day when the fresh blossoms of spring had been covered in a rare April snow. Given that I was two weeks late, I like to think that I somehow chose this.

It wasn’t until I lived in New York that I finally learned to appreciate, and even cherish, the impudent advances of spring. Every year when my birthday rolled around, I thought about the redbuds and the cherry trees and the dogwoods already blossoming down in NC, and then looked outside to find another cloudy day with a slight drizzle and a high of 45. The season of “Bloom” is always much delayed in New York. March is still basically winter, and April is an endless slog of cold rain, overcast skies, and a general state of dreariness.

In his timeless classic Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer perfectly describes the woes of early spring in the northeast: “I will wax romantic about spring and its splendors in a moment, but first there is a hard truth to be told: before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly: nothing but mud and muck. I have walked in the early spring through fields that will suck your boots off, a world so wet and woeful it makes you yearn for the return of ice.”

Even as Daylight Savings Time brings later sunsets, and the equinox tips the scales of solar time towards the light, in the northern latitudes, the darkness can seem to go on forever.

Then suddenly, one day… BLOOM!

In New York, everything seems to blossom all at once. You wake up one day and find yourself in the warm embrace of the sun, with tulips and redbuds and pink magnolia trees shouting color at you from the street corners. Butterflies flutter on the breeze. Birds of every kind break their silence to sing God’s praises. Suddenly you want to remove your shoes and walk barefoot across a green lawn that is carpeted with tiny flowers. Somehow, in the midst of it, you feel as though everything is going to be okay.

Of this moment, Parker Palmer admits, “Spring in its fullness is not easy to write about. Late spring is so flamboyant that it caricatures itself, which is why it has long been the province of poets with more passion than skill… Spring is a potlatch time in the natural world, a great giveaway of blooming beyond all necessity and reason — done, it would appear, for no other reason than the sheer joy of it. The gift of life, which seemed to be withdrawn in winter, has been given once again, and nature, rather than hoarding it, gives it all away.”

Spring is also when Christians celebrate the Great Mystery of faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Its overlap with the return of light and life in the natural world tempts us with the obvious comparison, but as John Updike cautioned in his 1960 Seven Stanzas at Easter, Christ’s resurrection is “not as the flowers, each soft spring, recurrent,” but as “flesh: ours.” And so, he writes, “Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence… let us not seek to make it less monstrous for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle.”

Indeed, many Americans have reduced Christianity to a perpetual spectacle of Easter entertainment and “vibes.” But liturgical Christians still celebrate the Paschal Mystery with an entire week that is devoted to walking solemnly alongside Jesus through his betrayal, arrest, and execution. This “holy week” makes room for the full spectrum of the human emotional experience and the transforming insights that accompany this sacred narrative.

Holy Week is more than just a re-enactment of past events in the life of an important religious figure. It is a kind of liturgical time slip — a time out of time that brings us face to face with eternity. During the Paschal Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday) linear time collapses in on itself, and we are there: at Jesus’ last supper with his friends, at his betrayal and arrest in the garden, at his sentencing and execution on a cross, and at his inexplicably empty burial tomb on the morning after the Passover.

“If we will have an angel at the tomb,” insists Updike, “make it a real angel…vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen, spun on a definite loom.” For Christians, Easter is more than just a cheerful metaphor for the return of flora and fauna. It is an exultant response to Christ’s decisive victory over Death.

In recent years, Christians have been accused of appropriating “Easter” from the pagans, but the anniversary of Christ’s resurrection has been celebrated in the spring since the earliest days of the church. Originally observed in conjunction with the Jewish Passover, which has ancient ties to the natural world and the agricultural seasons, the “official” formula for determining the date of Easter was established by an ecclesial council in Turkey in the year 325. Easter (or Pascha, as it is still called by orthodox Christians) is supposed to be held every year on the first Sunday after the first Full Moon that occurs on or after the Spring Equinox.

That sounds simple enough, but things have changed quite a bit over the last 1700 years, especially in terms of our ability to more precisely calculate astronomical events, not to mention the various calendar systems that different countries and cultures have adopted to determine what day it is. A variety of discrepancies now exist between the calendars of different churches and the astronomical events they reference, resulting in a situation where Christians globally do not all celebrate Easter at the same time. Efforts to resolve the matter are ongoing, and mostly face palm-inducing.

Nevertheless, the themes of resurrected life that Christians celebrate at Easter do resonate with the nearly-universal themes of rebirth, joy, and victory over darkness that are celebrated across the northern hemisphere this time of year. In Thailand, the transition to spring marks the beginning of the new year, with celebrations that include widespread jubilant water fights. Iranians also observe their new year on the spring equinox, with a holiday known as Nowruz dating back to the Zoroastrians, observed through jovial celebrations of community connection. In India, the festival of Holi marks the arrival of spring with an all-out lovefest of color, dancing, and joy that proclaims the triumph of good over evil.

Eggs are also a common theme this time of year, as a general sign of fertility and rebirth. The Christian tradition of decorating eggs for Easter goes all the way back to the earliest days of the church, particularly in Mesopotamia. Mary Magdalene is often depicted in iconography pointing to an egg for this reason: according to ancient tradition, she used an egg as a common visual aid for the empty tomb she discovered as she traveled across Europe to preach Christ’s resurrection. In one legend, she even manages to convince Emperor Tiberius to remove Pontius Pilate from power, after an egg she was using as a teaching tool turned blood red in front of him. In the orthodox tradition, decorated eggs are painted red and blessed by priests at the end of the Easter Vigil, before being shared and cracked open as symbols of the resurrection.

As for the Easter bunny, that myth seems to have largely been an invention of Jacob Grimm (of the Brothers Grimm), who in 1835 tried to reconstruct the notion of a pre-Christian goddess of spring named “Ostara,” based on scant evidence that has since been largely debunked. Nevertheless, this late 19th century idea influenced many German immigrants to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, who brought with them the tale of a hare who inexplicably laid eggs and left treats for good little boys and girls (similar to the Odin-inspired German vision of Santa Claus).

Interestingly, in the ancient world, hares were widely believed to be a “hermaphrodite” (gonosimulistic) species, capable of reproducing without any loss of their virginity. This belief was held by numerous ancient Roman scholars, including Pliny and Plutarch. While not being biologically accurate by any means, the idea led to a long standing association between hares and the Virgin Mary in medieval art and iconography.

However you choose to celebrate the return of rainbows and sunshine in your life (and however slowly they may arrive in your area!), may this playlist capture for you themes of:

• the overwhelming outpouring of joy and color beyond all necessity and reason

• hope rising up in you like sap, giving you new energy for creativity and play

• the relentless desire to go outside, remove your shoes, bathe in the sunlight, and dance in soft grasses

• the reassurance that the Creator of all things has overcome death once and for all, and that life and love will always have the final say!

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Previous Playlists

The second playlist in the series, “Imbolc,” is meant to capture the liminal transition season between winter and spring. This is the season of “quickening” — a time when the first kicks of new life can be felt.

Of course, those living in the northern latitudes or at higher elevations may find that this “prevernal” season arrives much later… in which case, you may want to continue resting in the deep winter playlist, “Epiphany” for a bit longer. But where I live in central North Carolina, this is a playlist for February 1 - March 21.

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The good thing is, you don’t really have to wait until you can see or feel the first signs of spring to celebrate this season of imbolc. The word literally means “in the belly,” a reference to the pregnancy of sheep during this time of year in Ireland, which signaled the return of fresh milk after having gone all winter without. Imbolc is a season of trust — that somewhere deep within the belly of the cold dark ground, seeds are already beginning to germinate.

Regardless of what your local weather forecast may look like, February 1st marks a significant turning point in the solar year: it is the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. February 1st is also the Feast Day of St. Brigid, one of the patron saints of Ireland. According to legend, St. Brigid was born in a doorway at dawn, on the threshold of darkness and light, with her mother having one foot inside and one foot outside.

This is what the season of imbolc represents: a threshold that anticipates our eventual return to the outdoors. Many cultures in the northern hemisphere have traditions of hibernating animals peering out of their holes during this time of year, just to test out the conditions. We still honor this custom in the U.S. with Groundhog Day on February 2nd. In Hungary, it is bears who traditionally come out of their dens to check for shadows, and in Germany it is hedgehogs.

In the Christian liturgical tradition, February 2nd is celebrated as Candlemas, also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Technically, this is actually the last feast day that relates to Jesus’ birth, and therefore it marks the end of what was originally understood to be a 40 day season of Christmastide (which mirrored the 40 day season of Lent). To honor this, many people (myself included) still leave some greenery from Christmas up in their homes through February 2nd.

Candlemas is also when the church candles for the year are traditionally blessed, which continues the Epiphany theme of light coming into the world. In ye olden days, people would bring their household candles to the church to receive a blessing as well, so that the light filling their homes each night would be blessed.

But even as we stand at this threshold of new light and life, most of us still find ourselves in the midst of bitter winds. For many people, this is a difficult season — a time when the cold and dreary weather seems relentless, and the will to maintain our new year’s resolutions begins to fade. We are confronted once again with the limitations of our humanity, and the difficulty of sustaining real change in our lives and in the world through our efforts in “ordinary time.”

For Christians, the liturgical season of Lent offers us a grace during this time: even as we anticipate the bursting forth of new life in the spring, we are reminded of our limits as humble creatures of the earth. Ash Wednesday always falls between February 4th and March 10th, marking us with an earthly reminder that “to dust we shall return.”

Lent draws us into a 40-day period that invites deep self-reflection, accountability, and restraint. It is a time when we consider and reflect on the barriers to our fully embracing the life we have been given. With Jesus as our guide, we can learn to more accurately identify and skillfully navigate the ways in which sin shows up in our lives, both individually and collectively. Slowly, we can begin to truly confront those things that are keeping us frozen in our own emotional winters of fear, anger, and despair.

The songs on this playlist try to capture all these themes:

• the quickening or the “first kicks” of life hiding in the belly of the cold earth and in the bare branches of the trees

• the sense of stirring, with animals beginning waking up out of hibernation

• the relentless back & forth battle between cold and warmth, darkness and light

• the anticipatory sense of standing at the threshold of spring

• a time of deeper self-awareness about our limitations as humble earth creatures

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*BONUS PLAYLIST!

Click below for a playlist of songs to carry you through the season of Lent.

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Click here to read more about the history and meaning of Lent:

Previous Playlist

This first playlist in the series, “Epiphany,” is meant to capture not only the season of deep winter, but the beginning of the new year, and the liturgical season of Epiphany. It is a playlist for January.

January is a time when we reflect on the forward march of chronos time. It is a cold and dark season, when most plants and the animals remain dormant. Even those of us who stay active throughout this season tend to instinctively lean into the comforts of hygge this time of year: blankets, fireplaces, cozy sweaters, hot tea.

And yet, we also get a few glimpses of new energy and hope during this time. Many people set intentions at the start of the new year, dreaming of brighter futures. The winter solstice has already passed, and the light is already coming back into the world a little more each day. This return of the sunlight is reflected in the Christian liturgical season of Epiphany, which challenges us to look for the light of Christ showing up in the world more and more, even in the midst of these dark, cold days.

If you saw my post on The Twelve Days of Christmas, you know that the season of Christmas actually lasts from December 25th to January 5th, ending with the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. But there are always a handful of days between January 6th and the following Sunday, which marks the start of the new church season with the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus. This creates something of a “Christmas denouement” in the days between, which invites us into a brief time of liminal transition between the celebratory season of Christ’s birth, and a season of “ordinary time” that focuses on Jesus’ earthly ministry — his work in the ordinary world, and his relationships with ordinary people.

In ye olden times, the Monday after the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus (this year falling on January 12th) was called “Plough Monday.” This was considered the first day of the agricultural season, and therefore the day when everyone was supposed to go “back to work.” In other words, we begin our work in the world just as Jesus begins his work in the world.

This period of “ordinary time” invites us to reflect on the ways in which God shows up in the ordinariness of our everyday lives, which is reflected in the readings we hear in church on Sundays during this season: stories of regular people encountering the light of Christ in new and surprising ways.

Meanwhile, the Daily Office readings during this week focus on the creation stories in Genesis 1 & 2, which reflect the themes of beginning anew and starting fresh, as new light breaks forth once again to illuminate our lives more and more.

The songs on this playlist try to capture all of these themes:

• the steady march of chronos time

• the quiet rest of hibernation

• the hope of beginning anew

• the return to our ordinary work

• the promise of a growing light that will slowly but faithfully overcome the darkness

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While I did not grow up in a particularly religious home, I have always had a bit of an obsession with time, ritual, and the ordering of seasons. My cognitive inheritance of AuDHD manifested at a young age in the paradoxical tension between my inability to grasp the normative structures of a daily routine, and my deep inner longing for the experience of time anchored in form. By the age of 6 or 7, I had already earned the moniker “keeper of the traditions” in my family, for my self-appointed role of tending to the liturgies of our household, remembering (and in many cases inventing) the order of events for our seasonal family get-togethers.

This attentiveness to the intersections of time, form, and meaning also translated early on into a deep affinity for music. My Boomer parents were both avid music lovers who raised me properly on the pop, rock, folk, and soul soundtracks of the 60s and 70s. But by the 1980s, my dad’s musical interests had veered off into ambient music via the prog rock-minimalism-Brian Eno pipeline. Over the course of my childhood, he amassed a fairly large collection of Windham Hill, medieval revival, Celtic, “world music,” and film score cassettes, along with some obscure local bluegrass, old time, and hammer dulcimer recordings he picked up during his frequent drives through the NC mountains.

I’ve developed a taste for many different styles of music throughout my life as a musician and songwriter, but I’ve always returned to instrumental soundscape music as a kind of somatic therapy. The older I get, the more I’m comforted by music’s ability to capture the nuances, textures, timbres, and rhythms of embodied existence in space and time. As Don Saliers writes,

“Because we live through time, music is perhaps our most natural medium for coming to terms with time, and attending to the transcendent elements in making sense of our temporality. Our lives, like music, have pitch, tempo, tone, release, dissonance, harmonic convergence, as we move through times of grief, delight, hope, anger, and joy… The order of sound is comprehended as we remember and re-configure the previously heard in light of the yet-to-be-heard… Music is intimately related to the narrative quality of human experience, presenting our temporality in symbolic form, but always bodily perceived through the senses.”1

For many years, I have kept a playlist for the Fall, which I put on whenever I notice the leaves starting to change. Perhaps my oldest playlist is the one I still put on at the end of every November, which gently heralds my favorite liturgical season of Advent. But it wasn’t until last year that I began expanding my playlist collection to include other seasons in solar and liturgical time as well.

This year, I plan to debut my collection of 8 “Annum” playlists, releasing each one as the year unfolds, along with reflections on the time of year and the layers of meaning I’ve been able to glean from my own musical and liturgical journey.

Each playlist is about 2 hours long, and is curated to be listened to in order. The songs attempt to capture something of the movement and mood of each seasonal arc, both in terms of what is happening in the natural environment (the changes in the light, the temperature and quality of the air, the activity of plants and animals) but also the intersections with liturgical time, and some layers from the secular calendar as well.

Calendar of Seasonal Playlists:

I. Epiphany (January 7-31)
II. Imbolc (Feb 1 - Mar 21)
III. Bloom (Mar 22 - Apr 30)
IV. Nova (May 1 - Jun 21)
V. Midsummer (Jun 22 - Aug 30)
VI. Serotinal (Sept 1 - Oct 15)
VII. Autumnal (Oct 15 - Nov 26)
VIII. Hibernal (Nov 26 - January 6)

Because the purpose of these playlists is to capture a sense of what is going on in the natural world, the dates are obviously approximations. Depending on your latitude and local climate, “Bloom” might start much later than March 22 for you. The leaves may change in your region much earlier or later than Oct 15th. Those living in the southern hemisphere or in the tropics will obviously have a different calendar orientation altogether. But the idea is to listen to whatever playlist seems to match best with whatever season you find yourself in… or whatever you season you find yourself longing for!

I’ll be working on a similar set of playlists for the liturgical seasons of the church year as well, which I will include along the way.

Happy listening!

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