Dear Kaleid Ladies,
Today we continue practice loving God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
This is our collective commitment during the crazy election/COVID season, even as we likely struggle with bouts of being unsettled at heart, wearied at a soul-level, frayed mentally, or limited in strength.
We do this by practicing. By exercising. By embodying. Practicing the contemplative. Exercising our mental capacity to “think about our thinking.” Living out actions responding to God’s loving presence. Would you join us this week in choosing one (or more) of these possibilities for following Jesus in complicated times?
Contemplative Practice: Being with God
The translation of the name “Israel” means “to struggle with God.” Belonging to God doesn’t mean that our wrestlings are all suddenly resolved. Rather, belonging to God means that there is an entire construct in which it is very safe and very welcome for our souls to struggle with God. In your contemplative practice this week, spend dedicated time with God offering the Holy Spirit two requests, with silence between each one. (See Genesis 32:34-29)
First, “Spirit, give me courage and words to articulate today’s wrestling to you, bringing all of me to the God who can be trusted to remain in the struggle.”
Then, “Spirit, speak to me of how the limp that comes from my wrestling can lead me deeper into my own name and into your eternal name today.”
Close with this prayer “Today, God, I seek you while you may be found and call upon you while you are near. Bless me with your love, your identity, your presence, your direction, your hope, even as I learn to trust you through our wrestling. Amen.” (Isaiah 55:6)
Learning Moment: Thinking about Our Thinking
This podcast is a conversation between Ashley Hales and Kaitlyn Schiess on Kaitlyn’s book The Liturgy of Politics. It offers helpful questions--for reflection and for complicated political conversations--as well as insight into how our politics can function liturgically in our Christian formation. We think you’ll like it!
Embodiment Encouragement: Physically Responding to God’s Loving Presence
Kaitlyn Schiess says that liturgical practices have three key elements: they are routine, they are meaningful, and they are embodied. While we often consider “liturgy” to be church-only habits like communion or baptism or corporate worship, we also have spiritually formative liturgies that we do in our everyday lives with our everyday bodies.
This week, identify a liturgical moment (something you do that is physical, meaningful, and routine) and do it with presence and intentionality, recognizing its meaning and honoring the spiritually formative power that even the smallest physical action can have. Consciously allow the blessing of your normal “liturgies” to bless those around you.
In closing, we hope you sense that there is a place for you here, at Kaleid. We hope you sense a community of women who are drawing near to the well of God's relentless invitation to loving communion with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We hope you can imagine and delight in being a part of the small tribe of women who are drinking deeply of that clarifying, loving reality, and carrying the refreshing power of God’s love into all of our own spaces, hidden and known. We appreciate you!
Gratefully,
The Kaleid Team
P.S. You may enjoy this blog on wrestling with God.
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