Distinctly Northwest: Liturgies of Nature and Holy Mystery

Holy mystery abounds in the Pacific Northwest’s mountains, forests, and coastlines. In a 2007 UC, Berkeley study entitled The Nature of Awe, nature, music, and art—in that order—ranked as primary elicitors of this profound experience. For most people in this region, church doesn’t spark that connection to the divine. Those who have experienced an evening seasonal liturgy at St. Luke Church in Renton, WA, however, tell a different story. St. Luke’s offers liturgies on every solstice and equinox to honor the changing seasons—not only the budding branches and dropping leaves of the natural world, but also the shifting seasons of the Spirit in our own internal lives.

The liturgies began as a collaboration between The Rev. Kevin Pearson and musician Charles Rus, as a way to speak to this particular Pacific Northwest context. Over the last two years these liturgies have grown a following, attracting participants of all ages who find special sustenance in these liturgies, including many who wouldn’t be caught dead in a church, except this church. Whatever their religious background, their arrival is met by a carefully choreographed adventure into the sacred. Through poetry, the beauty of art, meditations, movement, ritual, and silence, the divine life is evoked. You won’t hear a sermon or celebrate Eucharist (at least in their normative forms); still, St. Luke’s seasonal liturgies carefully provide structure for formlessness and time for eternity.