Dear Kaleid Ladies,
***Our spring retreat is April 21-22: “Statio: Dwelling in God’s Presence.”
Join us! Also check the P.S. for a new Kaleid Circle announcement!***
This Lent, we are embracing the tension of Christian faith, which includes the “already” and the “not yet.” Women are familiar with threshold moments. We know what it means to stand between two spaces in a life cycle and recognize that what is past was enriching and what is to come is promising, even while what is now may be disorienting.
Lent recalls Jesus’ wilderness season, which was an in-between space. God himself knew a season of unfulfilled expectation, marked with dryness, loneliness, and more open space than was comfortable for a human heart. Through Lent and its practices, we follow Jesus and practice living with honesty and hope in the threshold spaces of life.
To open ourselves to God’s life in the threshold moment of Lent, at Kaleid we are practicing a discipline called “Statio,” a spiritual practice where we pause, marking a moment within our threshold-crossing movement, recollecting ourselves and remembering God.
Today, we stop to pause at the threshold of a new season. This Sunday, March 20, we will mark the spring equinox. There will be twelve hours of light and twelve hours of dark across the globe, and we will celebrate the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
Interestingly, the Farmer’s Almanac tells us that the exact minutes of daylight and darkness are not actually the same at the spring equinox. We actually have about 6 or 7 minutes more light because of a trick that happens at sunrise and sunset: the light remains because the atmosphere refracts the light so that we see “sun” when the sun is actually below the horizon.
God’s grace in threshold moments is often like the grace of the extra minutes of beauty of a sunrise or a sunset. We stand, holding the tension between two seasons, poised between our darkness and light. Here, God’s love graces us with bright hints of what is to come and gentle memories of what has been. The light wins. It reminds us how the story will end, and we hope in Christ, the God who waits and wrestles with us in our in-between seasons.
Would you Statio with us today, two weeks into Lent and on the verge of a new season, to stop, to breathe, to recollect, and to pray?
Stop: Look at the clock. Mark the time and the day. Note where you are. Perhaps close your eyes for ten or fifteen seconds to come to a complete stop.
Breathe: Inhale deeply. Exhale fully. Twice. Become aware of the gift of grace that is the life in your lungs.
Recollect: Collect yourself. What is yours to do this day? What have you set your mind on or your hands to today? Thank God for these things. Remember God. Imagine God’s face turned toward you in love. Imagine the light of the countenance of God blessing what comes next for you and sanctifying what has been for you. What beauty does God’s light reveal?
Pray: Here, standing between two seasons of the year, offer a prayer to God who shines light into the darkness, and the darkness cannot extinguish that light. (John 1:5)
Here is a blessing for today’s Statio. And a song, Fairest Lord Jesus, if you’d like to pause and allow music to stir your heart.
Here: A Blessing
Some other day, perhaps,
I could draw you a map of this place:
could show you the stand of trees
that has always seemed to me
haunted by those
whose arrowheads still surface
now and again by the lake;
could show you the spot
where eagles keep their nest;
the silo
where my grandfather and his siblings
carved their names
into the new concrete;
the place where I stood
the night the old depot burned.
But I think today is a day
for remembering
how all our history
comes down to our hands,
how we carry the lines
that our ancestors
pressed into our palms:
a geography of the generations
inscribed upon us like a map.
And so let it be
that before we leave
this place
this day
we lay our hands—
the cartography
ever etched into our skin—
upon this ancient terrain
in gratitude and praise
and then, rising,
turn them skyward:
a blessing
a benediction
a prayer
that the wind will carry
far and far
from here.
Gratefully,
The Kaleid Team
P.S. We are SO excited to be offering an Art Circle at Kaleid this Spring! Visit one or both art experiences (one in March and one in April) and then join us via zoom to debrief the experience and consider how art helps us to see others. Bring a friend! It’s free!
P.S. emily p. freeman’s reflection on the spring equinox is thoughtful, quick listen.