4/13
Dear Kaleid Ladies,
This Lent, we are embracing a tension of Christian reality, which includes the “already” and the “not yet.” Women are familiar with threshold moments. We know what it means to stand between two seasons in life 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 and shifting identity that was 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 as we cross a threshold, recollecting ourselves and remembering God.
Today, we stop to pause to consider Holy Saturday, the day when everything felt lost and the day when Jesus was dead. It’s a true mystery to consider the fact that God, who is life, experienced death in its actual reality.
After the Triumphal Entry, Jesus is reckoning with what is to come. Some Greeks who are in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover ask Philip if they can hang out with Jesus. Jesus doesn’t directly answer their request. He is intent on his mission, struggling with it, even. With a “troubled soul,” he says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) And then he tells them that his death will be to draw all people (even the Greeks) to himself.
A seed’s death precedes its fruit bearing. There is a time between the promise of life, contained in a seed, and the fulfillment of life, contained in a piece of fruit, where it death gets to win.
This is the pattern of our life with God. Seeds of faith—seeds of life—are scattered into the soil of our lives and the lives of those we love. Sometimes we notice their promise. And sometimes we have a hard time hoping in that promise, especially as they get buried in the darkness and seem to be extinguished in the process.
For humans and for the earth, death is a mysterious but necessary precursor to life. The richest soil is composed of decaying things. Jesus’ journey includes the dark pause of Holy Saturday. He himself entered the very human trajectory of the pain and struggle of dying and the stillness and emptiness of death.
And so today, we take the time to pause between seed and fruit. To notice the lifeless in-between time and to affirm that death precedes life, and that this is God’s way.
Would you Statio with us today, this final week of Lent, to stop, to breathe, to recollect, and to pray?
Stop: Look at the clock. Mark the time and the day. Notice 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 that you are alive today, even if you feel the weight of dead or dying things, seeds and soil becoming ready for what is next.
Recollect: Collect yourself. What seeds do you have in your soil? Do any of them offer you an invitation to accept death as necessary or to hope in the life and fruit they contain? Remember God. Imagine the love of Jesus who entered, fully, into the most hopeless reality of being human. How does he want to draw you to himself this Holy Week?
Pray: Tell Jesus about your seeds. Talk to him about the waiting you are doing. Thank him for drawing you to himself through his death and life.
Here’s a song from All Sons & Daughters for your reflection today.
We love you.
Gratefully,
The Kaleid Team