A robot vacuum cleaner is one of the greatest inventions ever, especially if you have a dog that sheds. It wanders around your house learning your furniture placement and vacuums in places that you can’t reach picking up dirt and dog hair when you are not even home!

I’m always amazed when I empty one of these things as to the amount of dirt and hair it has picked up. I had no clue the house was this dirty but seeing it one place is certainly eye opening.

I think this is how grief works. We go through our days noticing little things, like the smell of chocolate cookies baking, putting chips on a paper plate, making peanut and jelly sandwiches, and calling children in for lunch. Each piece evokes memories of my grandmother and they begin to accumulate. After days, months, of accumulating these memories we are filled up and it’s important to find a place to empty this accumulation of emotion.

I got a call once from an angry parishioner who spent their (I use the pronouns they, their, them to mask their identity) time talking to me about how lousy their contractor was. Why call your priest to complain about your contractor? I asked how they were doing with the death of their spouse. They were not doing well. The grief had accumulated and had manifested itself in anger at the contractor. They needed to open themselves up and clean out the strands of grief that had accumulated through time, been vacuumed up, and buried inside of them. If we don’t clean out the grief, it will accumulate such a build up that we will stop working just like the Robot vacuum cleaner stops when it is full.

It can be hard to share our grief. We need to find the right person who is willing to be present to our feelings of sadness. Naming our grief, telling stories, and sharing our sadness is the only way to empty ourselves so the grief is allowed out in a healthy way.

Whenever I over react about something, it is a red flag. This morning I got extremely upset because I missed an appointment. I felt like my whole life was out of control. Classic over reaction. I had to dig down to figure out what my emotions were really about and I figured it out. It was some grief that had been accumulating and needed to be cleaned out.

Holy Week contains liturgies that can bring up our grief which is why there are not a lot of people who go to Good Friday service. Letting ourselves feel the emotions of the moment, the enormous sadness of the loss of Jesus on the cross can be the way we open ourselves up and let out our own accumulation of collected moments. We live in that moment of grief and sadness through the void of Holy Saturday until the first fire of the Easter Vigil creates a light to lead us beyond our grief.

The best place to grieve is within a community centered around the love of God shown to us in the death of Jesus on the cross. We can open up and be emptied.

Are you kidding? Of course, I’ll knit you a dress. This is how it happened. I took my granddaughter, Olivia to a yarn store while we were visiting. I needed some needles to start a project.

Olivia is four years old. She walked into the store and went right over to a shelf of hand-dyed yarns, picked up a skein, and said, “this is really beautiful.” It was an expensive hand-painted yarn with some bright blue sprinkled among dark chocolate brown and cabernet red. I gasped. I wanted the skein. I gritted my teeth and told Olivia I was just there to buy needles so she wandered off to check out some more yarn.

She came back after a few minutes later and watched me reading the needle packages trying to find the right size. “Grandma?” She said. “Will you knit me a dress? I found some pink and purple yarn. They are my favorite colors.”

It’s hard to knit for children. They are not gentle with clothing and a hand-crafted garment can get stretched and poked and snagged. But how could I refuse? I knelt next to her, took out my phone, and explained that the first step was to pick a pattern and then look at yarn. She nodded. We looked up girl’s dress patterns on Ravelry (an online community for knitters) and we found a pattern she liked. I looked at the suggested yarn. It needed to be DK weight.

A four-year-old knows nothing about gauges or yarn weights. Olivia heard me say “DK”. She headed to her pink and purple yarn. “Let’s see if this is DK Grandma, she said. She ran to the yarn, picked it up, and screamed, it’s DK, it’s DK.

There it was in big letters on the ball band “Dreambaby DK”.

I’ve been knitting on that dress from Missouri to New York and I still have a few inches to go but I am granting her wish. She certainly granted one of mine! There I was in one of my favorite places thinking that a four-year-old was going along for the ride and instead, she is having the same thrill looking at yarn and imaging what it could be as I was. It was a powerful connection.

I had no expectation that she would enjoy the experience. I just needed some needles and she was spending the day with me.

Letting go of expectations makes these moments incredibly special. If I had thought she might enjoy going to the store, looking at yarn, and picking out a project with me then she would have met my expectation. Instead, I was surprised by joy when she immersed herself in the beauty and fun of the yarn.

Part of what I have been trying to do this lent is to let go of my unrealistic expectations and remain open to whatever the moment has to offer me. Otherwise, I miss out.

I am starting to anticipate Holy Week. Every church has its Holy Week traditions. We are doing our services differently this year. I have no expectations of these services and now I can be open to whatever happens. This is what it means to be present.

I’ve seen several news pieces on the Grammy winner John Batiste. I don’t know his music but I found the interviews with him compelling. His wife, Suleika Jaouad is suffering from cancer. She was diagnosed in 2011 and given a 35% chance of survival. She did survive and wrote a best-selling memoir entitled “Between Two Kingdoms” about her journey.

Just as her husband was being nominated for numerous Grammys (he won five), they find out her cancer is back. John said this news put the awards in perspective.

In spite of his wife’s personal struggles, they still find joy in living. Humans are resilient John says and somehow in the very worst circumstances, they are able to find joy. He sites the musicians in Ukraine who play their instruments in the bomb shelters, sing as they walk, and relish a bowl of hot soup.

Joy is found in simple everyday pleasures – a hot cup of coffee, an impromptu dance party in the kitchen while doing the dishes, a dog placing its head on your knee, the smell of bread baking, the sound of children playing, the dawn’s light creeping into the room, feet hitting the floor, giving thanks for a new day.

It’s easy to miss the joy.

John Batiste says music is a spiritual practice. Listening to music, playing music, or singing changes us in the moment. It helps us find the joy.

I used to chant the Venite at morning prayer when I was in seminary.

Venite     Psalm 95:1-7

Come, let us sing to the Lord; *
    let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving *
    and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.

For the Lord is a great God, *
    and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the caverns of the earth, *
    and the heights of the hills are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it, *
    and his hands have molded the dry land.

Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee, *
    and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. *
    Oh, that today you would hearken to his voice!

This is how to spark joy!

No matter how old I get, there is still something magical and thrilling about the appearance of a rainbow. As a student of the Bible, I know that it represents the covenant that God has with us and all future generations and God’s power and glory.

I cling to this belief in God’s power. The mass shootings, the atrocities in Ukraine, and yet most of our lives continue as if none of this is happening. It’s surreal. I feel helpless in the face of all the violence in the world.

As Christians, we choose love over hate, good over evil, and kindness over violence. We need to stay alert and aware of what is happening and be open to God’s call when it comes.

The Russian Orthodox have a saying from St. Seraphim of Sarov “acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved.”

I’ve heard expressed as “save yourself and thousands around you will be saved.” It reminds me that what we do matters. In the midst of all that is happening around us, we have to hunker down and be the peaceful spirit.

Anxiety is the most contagious emotion we have. It’s not helpful and can spread to others and cause more harm. Keeping a peaceful spirit in the midst of chaos is one way to make a difference. We need to be thoughtful, take actions that are prudent, be good citizens, work for social justice, get involved and give feedback, and do the right thing for the good of others.

But first, we have to save ourselves. I do it with the Jesus prayer. Prayer is very effective, particularly contemplative prayer to create a peaceful spirit.

We are not helpless, we are part of God’s beloved community and by saving ourselves we save each other.

For more information on anxiety, try this article: https://hbr.org/2020/03/anxiety-is-contagious-heres-how-to-contain-it

My great-grandmother made this quilt. She would have been my grandchildren’s great great great grandmother. I remember her, she died when I was eight years old. I’m sixty-four now.

The quilt is obviously old, there are holes in it and ragged edges but to me, it is a piece of history. The quilt pictured was made for my brother. I have one just like it in pink. I treasure them. As a quilter myself, I know how much effort went into cutting out and stitching together all these hexagons. It was a labor of love but no one else cares. To the rest of my family, it’s an old quilt that is falling apart.

I think about how much meaning we project onto physical objects. They can represent far more than just the physical object. The quilt represents my great-grandmother anticipating the birth of her two great-grandchildren. She lived into her nineties which was quite a feat back in the sixties.

I have told stories about her to my children but it’s not enough. They are busy making their own memories with the people in their lives.

It’s hard for me to think about that quilt getting thrown out after I’m not around to protect it. I’m trying to learn to let go but I have a soft spot in my heart for people who take the time to make beautiful things for others.

The spiritual life is about letting go. I realize that my great-grandmother is a part of me and maybe I enjoy quilting because of her. I don’t need to worry about the quilt, I can continue to enjoy it, look at it, give thanks for it, and then let it go. It’s not the physical object, it’s the memories that are important. They shape us.

Instead of trying to pass on the quilt, I want to pass on the gift of creating. I hope one of my grandchildren will learn to knit, sew, and quilt. I hope they will know the joy of giving a handcrafted gift, one that will be treasured.

I will never take being warm for granted. In 2015, I spent four weeks in Chile studying Spanish and living with a Chilean family. Although it was a modern apartment building, there was no heat. I was there in June which was the beginning of their late fall/early winter. The cold was a surprise every day when I walked into the apartment.

I made an important discovery during that experience. If I waited until I felt cold to put on an extra layer, it would be too late. I couldn’t get warm unless I climbed under the covers with all my layers on and waited for my body heat to catch up. This would take hours. Normally, I would have jumped in the shower but the water was barely lukewarm.

I became hyper-vigilant about the temperature and my clothing layers. When the sun started to go down, it soon became automatic to put on another layer.

What it taught me was not to wait before taking action. That it’s better to try to prevent coldness than try to warm myself up.

This is true in relationships as well. It’s better not to wait but to take initiative. Apologize, make the call, say the prayer, read the scripture, go to church, answer the call, whatever the Holy Spirit is prompting us to do.

It’s easy to let things lapse, get cold, and make us uncomfortable. It takes much longer to find the energy to get warm and restart. The longer we wait, the harder it becomes.

If I let my spiritual practices lapse for whatever reason, I try to jumpstart myself as soon as possible. Now, I look for signs of boredom. Do I need to switch the prayers I’ve been using, insert some hymns, find a new spiritual knitting project, enlist the help of a prayer partner? This is the equivalent of putting on a coat at sundown.

Each Lent as I sit down each day and pray, I’m surprised and grateful for the grace that layers my life before I get cold. It’s available like the coat, we just have to put it on.

What is my biggest fear besides death and taxes? Not belonging.

I heard a sermon once on the importance of community. The priest started talking about how he had been ostracized by his family and friends because he was different. He talked about the pain of trying to understand why he was different. Hadn’t God created him this way?

He ran away from home and ended up living on the streets until he was found by a priest who reassured him that God loves what God has made and therefore he was loved by God. Years later, he became a priest in order to pass that message of love and acceptance along.

Imagine having feelings as a child and telling the people you love most in the world how you feel and having them be horrified.

People feel most comfortable around people like themselves. We may say we celebrate diversity but diversity is challenging. Whether it is race, gender identification, sexual preference or fill in the blank, it can be hard to be accepting when we don’t understand or we can’t relate.

One of my son’s friends came out as non binary and uses the pronoun “they”. I had a hard time remembering to use the pronoun. It sounded incorrect because I thought of they as a plural pronoun rather than a pronoun for an individual. However after spending time with them, I had a better understanding of why “they, them” was a good choice.

I’ve always felt like I belonged. I have family, a church community, and other groups. I have never been ostracized or shunned for my identity. I can’t imagine what that would be like. Don’t we all have a need to be accepted and loved?

One of the many reasons I’m Christian is because Jesus was so accepting and reached out to those who were ostracized and shunned. He spoke with people that no one would speak to or touch.

We have a lot of labels that we use today to let others know who belongs and who doesn’t. If you are from the opposite political party then you don’t belong, if your skin is a different color than mine than you don’t belong, and if you are LGBTQ, then you don’t belong. This is NOT what Jesus told us about the kingdom of God. In the kingdom, everyone belongs.

We all know people who may be feeling ostracized or shunned for any number of reasons. We need to keep reaching out and reassuring them.

Do not fear, you will always belong.