Dear Kaleid Ladies,
Today we bring you the first of two invitations for the summer. It’s not camp for your kids or a seat by the pool or return to the “normal” that now feels a little far away for all of us.
Rather, it’s an invitation meant for the complexities of this season. Our world feels all mixed up, and it’s radically altering our spaces: soul-spaces, home-spaces, and city-spaces.
And so Kaleid invites you into a contemplative summertime journey. We are offering you a weekly, quiet space to pause, together, in the midst of so much to process in the world.
“What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action”
- Meister Eckhart
Perhaps you are acting.
Maybe you’re reading books, building relationships, posting on social media, contacting politicians, giving money in response to all the unrest in the world. Your action is inspired with the hope of the Kingdom of God coming “on earth as it is in heaven,” but it is also frayed around the edges by the exhaustion and burn out that happens when adrenaline is the fuel.
Perhaps you are frozen.
Maybe you’ve stopped moving. Stopped processing or reading. Stopped ingesting the world’s pain or even processing your own journey. There is simply too much, and you are not alone if you find it difficult to think or move right now.
Perhaps you are simply lost.
Maybe you’re lost in your head. Perhaps you’re lost in information gathering or in social media scrolling. Maybe you’re lost in the emotion of it all or lost in the activity of distractions that you’ve adopted to distance yourself from the pain. Being lost is normal, too. There are precious few reliable roadmaps for these times.
You see, whether you’re in fight, flight, or freeze mode, you are very normal. Wise (and also normal) spiritual pilgrims and activists over the course of history have planted themselves firmly in the soil of the contemplative in order to have strength for their journeys. Accordingly, here at Kaleid, we are going to tether ourselves to the practices of the saints as we process current pain and unrest, both internal and external.
You are invited to join us over the next nine weeks for contemplative prayer. We will make space together in the three Kaleid lenses (See Yourself, See the Other, and See the City) in light of three contemplative practices (Lament, Centering Prayer, and Imaginative Prayer).
You see, unless we are seeing ourselves, others, and the world through increasingly honest lenses--lenses that reveal both beauty and pain--our God-given passions, curiosity, and compassion will not find a sustainable place in the practical outworkings of daily life. Pausing with Jesus in a contemplative manner can breathe life into our learning, our doing, and even our awareness of our own smallness.
Won’t you join us?
For nine Wednesdays, beginning next Wednesday, June 10, we will meet weekly at 7 am via zoom for 45 minutes of guided contemplative practice. The cost is $30.
No experience required! It will be super-simple:
We will explain the prayer practice and connect it to one of the Kaleid lenses.
We will spend time in guided contemplative practice and sharing with one another.
We will make the morning’s materials available as a PDF for your continued use.
Pain (and we all have it right now) can be transformed into life. Jesus made way for that fundamental redemptive miracle at the cross. But in order for transformation to happen, we have to let pain do its work in our heart as we find our footings in our life with God. Only then will we discover courage, commitment and clarity. Only then can we engage the world with wisdom and boldness.
“To hate is such a lazy thing
But to love
Takes strength
Everyone has
But not all are
Willing to practice.”
-Rupi Kaur
This summer is going to be hard. Let’s do it, together, with God. Sign up here.
We love you,
The Kaleid Team
P.S. and SPOILER ALERT: Tomorrow we are announcing another opportunity to “do” something. It’s a six-week virtual discussion group on Be the Bridge’s Be the Bridge 101 material. We’d love to be together with you for both journeys this summer, so save your Wednesday mornings and evenings to join us!