Dear Kaleid Ladies,
Hey, hey!! It’s August! We can hear the rhythm of “normal life” starting to sound in the background of our pandemic 2.0 lives…and we are all praying that the sound of normalcy increases, aren’t we?
Speaking of beats…
We know Kaleid is a little off beat. (We imagine you might be, too, and that’s why we’re friends!)
We know you can’t always figure out what Kaleid is or what we do. Are they a Bible Study? Are they a service group? Do they want to mess with my politics? Are they some sort of a prayer club?
The reason we come up with some outside-the-usual stuff is because we think women could use a community where it feels safe to be real. And real is always a bit off-beat.
We want you to stay a while, unpack some things, examine some other things, and repack what is faithful and true. We want you to bring your honest faith and your honest lives. We want you to join us in a community where we practice things like presence, dialogue, discernment, and integration in light of God’s love for ourselves, others, and our city.
Kaleid is a waystation for women like you—for followers of Jesus with curious minds, open hearts, and active lives—who want to love well, on purpose, because of God’s love. Stay as long as you like. Bring yourself and your story in all of its unfinished messiness.
This fall, we are offering four Kaleid circles. We’ll say more about them over the next few weeks, but you can check them all out here. It would be our joy to have you for any of them!
Each time we tell you about a circle, we will also say something about those four bolded words above: presence, dialogue, discernment, and integration. They all matter, and they are all part of our spiritual and personal growth. Our four fall circles point in these four directions, so we’ll say a bit about them as we pop into your inbox over the next couple of weeks with our ongoing invitation for you to join us this fall. It’s going to be sweet and good and hard and fun. And beautifully off-beat, or it just wouldn’t be Kaleid.
First, presence.
We all like to be intentional with our thoughts, or to really be with another person, or to hear the Holy Spirit, or to be able to gather courage for the next right thing. When we practice presence, we learn how to do all this good work. Presence connects us with the active love of God in our inner world and our outer world, right now.
At Kaleid, we practice presence through contemplative prayer. We take time to slow down and be open to God’s voice here and now. We learn a posture of openness to God’s presence and to our own reality, both. We practice silence, solitude, and stillness to know God and to be known by God.
It’s not complicated, weird, fancy, or high-stakes. Which is partly why we offer our contemplative circles at 6:30 in the morning when we are all a bit bleary eyed and can only manage to sit and hold our hands and hearts open to the work of the Spirit. That’s it, and that’s enough to practice presence.
Would you join us for our next free Kaleid Contemplative Circle? We’re going to spend three weeks practicing presence through contemplative prayer as we look to the gospel to remind us that there is no fear in love. “When love meets fear” - This will be our theme. We’ll meet on August 25, September 1, and September 8 via zoom from 6:30 – 7:15am. Sign up here (put google form link here)!
"Contemplative prayer is a process of interior transformation, a conversion initiated by God and leading, if we consent to divine union. One’s way of seeing reality changes in this process. A restructuring of consciousness takes place which empowers one to perceive, relate and respond to everyday life with increasing sensitivity to the divine presence in, through and beyond everything that happens." – Thomas Keating
Gratefully,
The Kaleid Team
P.S. Wondering about the other circles? How about participating in our signature course called Foundations? Or, you could join us for riveting discussions about Power, Patriarchy, Women and the Church! We’d also love to have you for our new Embodiment Circle called Embracing Shifts, where we will discern our individual next steps, in community. They all start before the end of September, so sign up today!