You Are
Invited to Attend
A Microcredit Christmas Party in September
(For Hungry Souls Friends in the Chicago Area)
Karen Mains and Carla Boelkens
have turned the living and dining room
at 29W377 Hawthorne Lane
West Chicago, IL 60185 into the Beads, Bags, and Bangles
Boutique
Do Your Christmas
Shopping Early. Give Gifts That Save Lives.
We have beads made from paper by Sudanese Refugees.
We have jewelry made by HIV/AIDS Widows.
We have African-Made Sustainable Cloth Shopping Bags.
We have American-Supplied I’M A GLOBAL BAG LADY or
I’M A GLOBAL BAG GUY canvas shopping totes.
We will provide
information and answer your questions
about the Hungry
Souls March 25-April 6 African Project, A Meeting of
Women’s
Minds: A Microenterprise Journey to Kenya.
There is room for 14
adventurous world-changers.
(Follow
this link for
more details.)
And we’ll give you a
101 introduction to microloans, small loans given to the poorest of the
poor
(mostly women), which have lifted literally millions of families
out of the deepest of
hopeless, grinding poverty.
Saturday, September
27 at 7:00 P.M. or
Sunday, September 28
at 4:00 P.M.
Feel free to bring
friends and family. Just give me an e-mail heads-up at
A friend said to me recently,
“Your Soulish Foods are getting
longer and longer, aren’t they?” I
agreed. And then she said, as really good friends should do when they
notice
something that needs self-correcting, “You know, Karen, people have
really busy
lives.” I agreed again, duly chastened.
So this (brief) Soulish
Food is a list of (short) announcements with a (mini) essay
at the end!
A
New Listening
Group Cycle for 2008-2009
Begins Week of October 13-18, 2008
We meet once a month in groups of three to four
for two and a half hours.
The groups will
continue for eight months to June 2009.
If you are in the Chicago
area and would like to be part of a Listening Group for the purpose of
spiritual growth, register with
.
These groups are built upon the amazing discoveries science is making
about
what happens biologically in the brain when people feel heard, listened
to and
really understood. One actual result is that new “social circuitries”
begin to
be formed in the brain. Listeners and listenees (new word!) experience
what the
social scientists term “attunement”—a peaceful, wholesome, deeper
communion
with themselves, with one another, and with God. Listening prayer is
the spiritual
practice around which we have built the architecture of the Hungry
Souls
Listening Groups.
I’ve interviewed almost all of
the members of the last
Listening Group cycle. Unbelievably, many said in one way or another,
“The
Listening Groups changed my life.” These positive results seem to be
disproportionate to the small amount of time allotted to listening to
one
another and to silent prayer: We meet once a month for about
two-and-a-half
hours. Most of us do not know one, nor do we see one another between
monthly
meetings. If you are being nudged inwardly, I strongly challenge you to
join a Listening
Group. You may be ready for a remarkable journey
We are establishing the
parameters for a qualitative
research project under the supervision of Dr. Tom Altepeter, a Ph.D.
clinical
psychologist. To make this research project viable, we need 50 to 80
people to
join (12 to 20 groups). Any one who has been in a previous group is
welcome to
start again. We also will need 12.5 (!) to 20 group leaders. If you
want to
start a group in your neighborhood, among friends, or in your church, Hungry Souls will be conducting a
two-hour leaders training Saturday morning, October 11. Contact me at
if you are
interested. We have about six leaders who have gone through listening
groups
ready to lead their own groups; so we need six to 14 more leaders.
For those of you who are
outside the Chicago area, I will be
happy to set up teleconference training for group leaders. And for all
leaders,
in Chicago or across the country, I will be more than happy to be
available for
consultation and supervision.
Annual
Advent 24-hour Retreat of Silence
Wednesday and Thursday
December 3-4
Bishop Lane Retreat Center in Rockford, IL
(for details, click this link)
The Theme Is: Fear Not
Partly because Valerie Bell and
I will leave for France with
a total of 15 pilgrims October 24 to return on November 4, we are
encouraging
early registration for the Advent Retreat. If you register in the next
two
weeks, the fee for early registration is $100. After October 1, the
normal fee
will be $120. However, if you bring new people to the Advent Retreat,
the
welcome fee for any new attendees (and for you) will be $90. The cutoff date
for registrations is November 25. Contact our volunteer registrar
Melodee Cook (
) for more details.
There now. Just one short
thought. Early this morning, I was
working through my prayer journal, and then I turned off the lights,
went back
to bed and just stayed in silence before the Lord. I heard that still,
small
voice, which over the years has become so familiar: You’re
planning more than you’re praying. ‘Nuff said, right? So I
spent the next hour worshiping Him, taking time to remind myself of how
much He
has helped me, of how present and perfect He has been, of choosing not
to worry
about the finances, but to confidently do my share of the work of
raising funds
by trusting. Then I lifted up all these projects to give back into His
hands.
How about you? How’s your
planning/praying ratio? It’s a
job, isn’t it, keeping it all in balance.
“Let
all those who
seek You rejoice and be glad in You;
Let such as love Your salvation say continually,
‘The Lord be magnified!’
But I am poor and needy;
Yet the Lord thinks upon me.” —Psalm 40:16-17a.
Karen Mains
GOAL:
600 Global
Bag Ladies Project shopping bags
to be sold
600
bags @ an average of $20
margin each = an estimated
$12,000 -103 bags already sold = $1,450 toward our goal.
Goal to Go: 497
bags = $10,550 (!)
Have you considered giving GBLP
tote bags as gifts? One of
these shopping bags was recently purchased "in honor of" a person being
celebrated, who really appreciated the donation in their name and the
purpose of the GBLP
bag. Other suggestions have been to fill a GBLP
tote bag with shower gift items for an upcoming
wedding, give these bags as Christmas gifts, or purchase several as
favors for a
women's retreat.
To receive your own Global
Bag Ladies Project tote bags, click on this GBLP
Purchase Order, print it off, fill it out and send it with a
check made out to Hungry
Souls/GBLP for $20-$50 to Box 30, Wheaton, IL 60187.
Reminder!
The Soulish Food e-mails are
being
posted bi-weekly on the Hungry Souls Web
site. Newcomers can look that over and decide if they want to
register on the Web site to receive the bi-weekly newsletter. You might
want to recommend this to friends also. They can go to www.hungrysouls.org.
Karen Mains
"I heard that still,
small
voice, which over the years has become so familiar: You’re
planning more than you’re praying."
Sacred
Listening: Discovering the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola by James Wakefield
I’ve been going
through this book
as a discipline in listening to Scripture, using an adaptation of the
spiritual
exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. Wakefield is a Protestant minister and
seminary professor who has designed this participatory daily meditation
and
journaling exercise to introduce people like myself to the Ignatian
Exercises,
which usually are conducted in a month-long retreat under the
supervision of a
trained director. Some people think the Exercises are “rigorous” but
I’m
wondering if they don’t mean that the impact that occurs after a time
of being
intensely concentrated in prayer on the Scriptures and in the
accountability
relationship with a director isn’t “thorough”!
“The biggest
gift from being in a
Listening Group was in the area of relationships. I discovered the
value of
listening without having to have solutions and advice to give to other
people. It
was such a freedom!”
“I’ve never had
such a rapid
spiritual growth curve in my entire life. Somehow just making this
small
monthly place for God has allowed me to be more conscious of Him in all
my
life.”
“Before the
Listening Group
experience, I would have been a basket case over an adult child turning
from
faith. Now I believe that I can trust God to work. It is like a
partnership
between God and myself. Learning to trust God to work in the lives of
other
group members has made this possible. I always met with God in the
Listening
Groups.”
“One thing I
noticed was the
freedom I felt, learning how to ‘unpack or unstuff,’ to deal with the
emotional
needs of my soul and mind that have lingered for awhile; not just
recognizing
it and calling it out, but spending time with it, truly asking for
God’s help
very specifically and being vulnerable to His healing Presence. This
has helped
me to come to Him more in prayer in a deeper, more specific way.”
“The Listening
Group was
beneficial for me because it was like an ‘oral journal’ in which I
could hear
myself talk about my specific information. The same day and the next
few days
following the group, I would feel convicted about some things. I feel
it is
from the Holy Spirit and a result of prayers from my group.”
“Because of my
past, being
divorced and a single mom, I never felt as though I was welcome with
married
women. But since everyone else in my Listening Group was married, and
they were
dealing with real-life stuff, I felt included and a part of them. It
was very
healing.”
“Because, even
in my family of
origin, I was never heard, to be listened to so deeply and to be
allowed to
reach my deepest pain—I used a lot of Karen’s boxes of tissues—I began
to find
a resource in me that was filling and becoming strong. I am sure I
found my job
because of being in this group. I never believed I was worthy of a good
job. But
this is a perfect match for me. Thank you for listening.”
“I thought I
was a good listener,
but I discovered I really wasn’t. I think I’m really improving as a
listener,
and a questioner, because of the months in the Listening Group.”
“The biggest
change was becoming
much more aware of myself and more understanding of my own thinking and
my
emotional life so I could get to a place where I was ready to find and
marry my
husband. I can’t fully articulate how that happened, but it seems like
I was so
out of touch with myself (including some significant anxiety… ) that I
couldn’t
possibly feel comfortable enough to be in a significant relationship
with
someone or to marry him.”
