Anselm 2025
Anselm 2025
Come join the Anselm Society as we embark to better live in the seasons of the year through the physical and literal seasons of nature, as well as through the church liturgical calendar.
Winter 2024-2025
Spring
(Coming Soon — Summer, Fall, and Winter 2025-2026)
Winter
LIGHT AND DARKNESS
Winter
LIGHT AND DARKNESS
Light and Darkness
December 2024 - February 2025
Like Advent, the season of winter is a season 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 can even be closed off in our own minds, as the dark and cold work their way inward.
But the story doesn’t end there. The limits aren’t just a challenge–they are an opportunity.
The constriction–of time, space, and everything we do with both–gives us a chance to work within it. To create concentrated warmth and cheer. To make rich food and hot drinks. To tell stories. To linger. To see each other more fully, in long conversations by the fire.
This is a poignant picture of the life of the church. We see darkness and cold all around us. But with our redeemed imaginations, we can not only acknowledge these things; we can live in intentional defiance of them, for the life of the world.
In this abbreviated quarter before we launch our first fully planned quarter in March, our content will focus on this theme–the reality of the darkness, but a calendar full of warmth, cheer, and hope that go out in defiance of it.
FOR THIS SEASON
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Imagination Redeemed
Believe to See (Featured)
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The Common Room
Saturday, March 1, 2025
12:00pm – 5:00pmMacbeth: A Haunting Fireside Reading and Discussion
Saturday, February 22, 2025
4:00pm – 9:00pmAn Evening of Literary Matchmaking
Saturday, February 8, 2025
7:00pm – 9:00pmMidwinter event: Light & Dark Stories & Songs
Saturday January 25, 2025
6:30pm – 9:30pmThe Common Room
Saturday, January 11, 2025
12:00pm – 5:00pmNarnian Christmas Party
Saturday, December 28, 2024
6:00pm – 9:30pmAll Ages Advent Dinner & Short Story Read Aloud
Friday, December 13, 2024
5:30pm – 8:30pmCandlelit Sung Compline
Saturday, December 7, 2024
7:00pm – 8:00pm -
Visual Artist Feature
December 2024
ADVENT
December 2024
ADVENT
Readings for Advent
Podcasts for Advent
Artist Feature
Creating from the Darkness: ISAAC hANS, Photographer
This is the little corner where we’ll be highlighting a visual artist that is making work that interacts with what Anselm is discussing at large.
All Ages Advent Dinner & Short Story Read Aloud
Saturday, December 28, 2024
5:00pm – 8:00pm
Narnia Christmas Party
Saturday, December 28, 2024
5:00pm – 8:00pm
January 2025
epiphany
January 2025
epiphany
For Epiphany
Meeting God Anew in Radiant Rome
The wise men first saw Christ on Epiphany, so it was fitting that this was the day she began to see something new. Everywhere she turned that night, the ancient city revealed a feast of light and beauty.
Featured Content
Imagination Redeemed Podcast (January Episode)
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.
The Great Stories (For Real Life)
Join Brian, Sarah, and Christina as they explore the impact of great stories on our lives and faith.
Want to dive in?
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!
Anselm Voices
Scott Cairns’s “Alone in the Busy”
Award-winning poet Scott Cairns, Guggenheim Fellow and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. Using his own poetry and prose, Cairns explores how we can recover communion in the face of isolation.
Peter Leithart’s “Dostoevsky and the Desire for Freedom”
In prison, Dostoevsky discovered that the desire for freedom was the wellspring of human action. But this wellspring comes from a deeper source.
Engage and Embody
How to Organize your own common room
While this January holds our third Common Room gathering, many are unfamiliar with the concept and asked about its foundational principles. In this post, the woman behind the idea shares the why and the how of creating a Common Room to which all are invited — to write, read, sew, paint, sketch, or daydream.
Artist Feature
Creating from the Darkness: ISAAC hANS, Photographer
This is the little corner where we’ll be highlighting a visual artist that is making work that interacts with what Anselm is discussing at large.
Midwinter event: Light & Dark Stories & Songs
Saturday January 25, 2025
6:30pm – 9:30pm
February 2025
February 2025
What does it mean to be an artist, a writer, a Christian? How do we share the light of Christ through re-igniting the imagination of those around us in story telling? What is stopping us from this task? What support do we need from our community? Dive into these questions (and many more!) with our featured content this February.
For Valentine’s Day
How to love an Artist Part 1
Literary fiction writer Mandy Houk offers tips on the care and feeding of a creative spouse!
Read More →
How to love an Artist Part 2
Painter-sculptor Kristopher Orr offers friends and lovers of artists ways to be supportive co-laborers in the sacred dance of art making.
Coming soon (February 14th)
Featured Content
Imagination Redeemed Podcast (February Episode)
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.
always winter
Seasons of winter tend to paralyze us. We think we can’t move on until something changes. How can we learn to live well in those seasons, and participate in God’s work? Drawing from O. Henry’s short story “The Last Leaf,” Brian, Sarah, Amy, and Christina tackle this question in the newest episode of the Imagination Redeemed podcast.
Want to dive in?
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!
Anselm Voices
Rod Dreher’s “Christian Artists: Witnesses in the Destruction”
Anselm Fellow Rod Dreher reminds us of the daunting scope of cultural decay inside and outside the church, and of the vital response of beauty and the sacred to it.
sARAH cLARKSON’S “Beauty: God's Theodicy”
In the depths of our literal (or mental) winters, how does beauty help us see God’s goodness in the midst of pain and suffering?
mICHELLE drAKE’S, “Storytelling: Our Inheritance”
How, as readers and writers, do we delve the depths of stories and the heart of story telling?
Engage and Embody
Writing and the problem of christianity
Being a Christian and a writer is a tall order—whether we’re struggling with the link between faith and craft, or with crippling life habits we’ve unconsciously absorbed from the surrounding culture.
In this webinar, Anselm director Brian Brown draws from Thomas Aquinas, Josef Pieper, Dorothy Sayers, and a decade of working with writers and churches to cast a renewed vision for both your identity and your creative process.
Artist Feature
Creating from the Darkness: ISAAC hANS, Photographer
This is the little corner where we’ll be highlighting a visual artist that is making work that interacts with what Anselm is discussing at large.
Macbeth: A Haunting Fireside Reading and Discussion
Saturday, February 22, 2025
4:00pm – 9:00pm
Spring 2025
HOPE AND DESPAIR
Spring 2025
HOPE AND DESPAIR
Hope and Despair
mARCH - May 2025
Spring is undoubtedly a season of rebirth. Just when we despair that we might never see green again, the earth gently rallies from the silence of winter. Leaves begin to unfurl, blooms appear, and the sun shines brighter. Life springs out of cold and darkness into warmth and light, and all around us, creation shouts the praise of the one who touches our hearts and turns them from dead stone to living flesh. In some ways, it is easy to find celebration and hope in this season.
But in springtime, we also discover a tension between hope and the human tendency to despair. Before we arrive at the crashing joy of Easter, we must first pass through the Lenten season and a keen awareness of our mortality. Before Christ rose from the tomb, He had to be stricken, smitten, and afflicted. Before gardens rise from the dirt, seeds must first die in burial. As God makes all things new, we must still journey homeward, often through pain and suffering. This tension will teach and shape us if we let it.
Despair can hold many guises, and this season we will peel back the layers and note how it hides in our lives as Christians and in the world around us. We will also explore what it looks like to hold hope–the gritty, robust kind — amid our grief and the broken story that despair mutters. In this season, we will focus on what hope truly is (and what it isn’t) and lean into ways that we can “practice resurrection” as Wendell Berry put it.
FOR THIS SEASON
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Featured Articles
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Imagination Redeemed
Julian’s Hazelnut
(coming April 5th)Practicing Resurrection
(Coming May 9th)
Believe to See (Featured)
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Friday, March 28, 2025
6:00pm – 8:00pmPhilosophy by the Fireside (with Dr. Vander Lugt)
Saturday, March 15, 2025
6:30pm – 9:30pmGuest Lecture: Dr. Wesley Vander Lugt
Friday, March 14, 2025
7:00pm – 9:00pmSaturday, March 1, 2025
12:00pm – 5:00pm
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Visual Artist Feature
Suffering Made Sacred: Glitter, Hope, and the Art of Dylan Mortimer (Coming March 15th)
March 2025
March 2025
For Lent
When tempted to despair, the Psalms of lament help us learn to speak grief and hope in the same breath. Paul Buckley, at an Imagination Redeemed Conference breakout session, explores (and yes, sings) Psalms of lament. Watch Now →
Featured Content
Imagination Redeemed Podcast (March Episode)
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.
“The Battle with despair”
Being in the grip of despair is hard to describe. Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queen gives image to not only the Cave of Despair, but also what restoration looks like.
Want to dive in?
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!
Anselm Voices
Fr. Ken Robertson “tHE ART OF LAMENT”
Anselm member pastor Fr. Ken Robertson explores the art of lament as a response to grief…and as a way to walk with God through darkness.
Artist Feature
Suffering Made Sacred: Glitter, Hope, and the Art of Dylan Mortimer
This is the little corner where we’ll be highlighting a visual artist that is making work that interacts with what Anselm is discussing at large.
Gatherings
The Common Room
Saturday, March 1, 2025
12:00pm – 5:00pm
Guest Lecture: Dr. Wesley Vander Lugt
Friday, March 14, 2025
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Philosophy by the Fireside (with Dr. Vander Lugt)
Saturday, March 15, 2025
6:30pm – 9:30pm
Celtic Pub Night
Friday, March 28, 2025
6:00pm – 8:00pm