Understory
Where you are in the living year
Understory shows what is happening in the living world around one place: what is changing, what is returning, and what is in season now.
Pews optional
The Church of the Seasons
We live in more seasons than the four on a calendar. There are seasons of rain and migration, school and harvest, family and work, arrival and loss. The Church of the Seasons is a way of recognizing them, and sometimes celebrating them.
It asks for no belief in anything invisible. Its practice is to look closely at what is real and present: this place, this moment, the living world, and the lives unfolding within it.
The hope is that people find meaning and connection in being here at all: in this place, at this moment, in their own lives.
The congregation is still quite small, but everyone is welcome to join, and there are no qualifications.
What Understory is today
Understory is the practical side of that idea. For now it covers the nature of a place: birds, plants, weather, fire, air and water, read from public scientific data. In time it may connect those with what is happening in families and communities too.
The name comes from the layer of a forest beneath the canopy, and from the story beneath the visible one.
Understory is an independent project. There are no accounts or logins. Saved places stay in your browser, and Understory does not keep a location history about you.