Kaleo order - a personal reflection
Well the pilot of our kaleo order is now underway. The order comprises a daily rhythm, a weekly rhythm and a fortnightly rhythm. You can read more about the order here (pdf). I thought I would trial posting some of my personal reflections about the order and in particular the weekly readings on this site.
First, I must admit to failure. The pilot has been going for about three weeks now, but I am struggling to switch gears. In the first fortnight, my accountability group had a bit of an abortive attempt to establish a time and location of our first meeting, and without the knowledge that I was going to be meeting together sometime soon, I found it even harder to get into the routine of this process.
One of the things that I have been doing lately is observing what steps are useful in making something a habit. This might be exercise or good diet or bible reading or prayer or whatever. At Northern we talk about these things as spiritual disciplines but I know that I find them much easier to stick to when they become spiritual “habits”. I perform my spiritual discipline of managing my money not because I discipline myself to do this every fortnight, but because I have authorised direct debits for my offering and my giving to others so I never have to make that decision.
Similarly as I look to see how I will incorporate these practices into my life as a part of the order, I am considering how to make them habits and to work them into my day. Our fortnightly meeting will take place on the same day and time and venue (and I even have to get up early for it). I have copied my daily prayer onto a post it note and stuck it next to my computer. It is just a sentence or two, so several times already today while I have paused to gaze out of the window, I have repeated the prayer to myself: “Jesus Christ, you gave yourself as living bread for the life of the world. May I be strengthened by your risen life to serve you continually”. Man, that packs a punch.
Likewise, I am experimenting with keeping my weekly readings beside me during the day and taking a few moments every morning to reflect on them and read them over. We will see how that goes in due course.
These reflections are just mine. The others who are a part of the kaleo order would likely have different ones. But for now, for me, I am filled with a sense of challenge and anticipation as well as a little fear. Truth be told, I like to think of myself as pretty disciplined, and I am a congregational leader. If I were to be unable to devote sufficient time and attention to meet this commitment, then it would be bad. I would feel guilty and like I had failed. And I would feel a bit of an indictment that my priorities were so out of whack that I couldn’t find time to prioritise these few small rituals into my day.
Tomorrow is the first meeting of my accountability group. At this stage, I don’t know how that meeting will work or what we will talk about. I don’t know whether I will feel like a big goof because I have missed two weeks of readings. We shall see.