In the late winter of 2016, Alana Levandoski and her family traveled to Beausejour, Manitoba to give a concert in a small country church, one of the oldest buildings in the rural town. Alana was promoting her album, Behold, I Make All Things New.The acoustics were gorgeous, and attendees were hungry for an authentic, living voice to sing songs of praise and longing in the century-old, near-defunct sanctuary. A little group called Saint Julian’s Table was trying to keep alive the embers of a worship life in the building of Saint James Anglican, a local parish that had ceased to gather. The experiment of Saint Julian’s Table would die within a year. But the next morning, Alana had a conversation with the group’s convenor that would birth The Ferment podcast. 

Alana had connected with Marcus Peter Rempel previously as a Kickstarter backer of his book, Life at the End of Us Versus Them: cross/culture/stories. After breakfast at Ploughshares Community Farm, where Marcus homesteads with his family and some fellow Christian agrarians, Alana and Marcus got to talking about collaborating on a podcast that would call itself “The Ferment” – referring both to a moment of social unrest, and to the magic that preserves the integrity of good, homegrown food by feeding a good culture instead of by sterilizing and killing bad culture.

Like good wine or good sauerkraut, it took a while. Now it’s time to taste and see if this thing is good! In this episode, Alana teaches and sings her way through the church calendar as a Christ narrative. Consider it the starter culture for The Ferment.

• Richard Rohr’s Living School
• Alana’s discography
• Hildegard Von Bingen
• Frederich Buechner’s sermon series “The Birth”:
  • The Shepherd
  • The Innkeeper
  • The Wise Man
• saint benedict’s table Anglican Church
• You Are Stardust – children’s book
• St. Benedict’s Monastery
• Truth & Reconciliation Commission
• James Finley