KKQ 2016: Monday Morning, Season after Pentecost

Here is where I explain what this little series of posts is all about.

Monday Morning, Season after Pentecost
Psalm 104; John 14:8-20

For everything there is a season...  On our church calendar, we're still in Epiphany.  But in KKQ time...it's the Season after Pentecost.  The long, slow season when Easter's alleluias and Pentecost's fires have faded, and we are faced with ordinariness once again.  The long, slow season when Kanuga's toast isn't on our breakfast plates and we aren't surrounded day and night with other knitters and quilters, and we are faced with work or school or cooking dinner or cleaning up or whatever else it is that keeps us from stitching.

The Season after Pentecost, the season after Kanuga, is the longest season of the year.  It's where we spend most of our lives, day in and day out, with good days and bad days, long days and whirlwinds, celebrations, distractions, steady progress, standing still.  Some days it can seem like we're slogging through, like when we knit a thousand rows and our sweater only grows half an inch, or sew a thousand rectangles on a border that only reachers halfway down one side of our quilt.  Other days, though, are the ones about which we've been telling each other stories all weekend.  The day a grandchild was born.  The day a wedding was held.  A house was sold.  A surgery was undertaken.  A shawl was worn.  A quilt was finished.  A prayer was answered.  A prayer was asked.

On the Sundays in this long season, as we go about our ordinary days, we will hear story after story about how Jesus went about his ordinary days.  The gospel record for us healing and teachings, journeys and resting places, excitement and anger.  How might we record, in this slow season, what we have done?  One knitter has imagined might pause in our work from time to time, lay out what we have done, look at where we've been and how far we've come.  Whether it seems we made progress or none at all, we might pin a note to our work at the end of the day at the end of our last row, on the last piece we sew to our quilt.  "My high school best friend called out of the blue today."  My neighbor across the street died.  I got a new puppy today.  Our son started kindergarten.  I fell in love again.  All of these things, day by day, will be part of our stitching, woven into our hearts and our handwork.

And Christ will be part of all those things, and part of our stitching, too.  His story unfolds in ordinary days, and he promises that the Spirit abides with us, not just on mountaintops like this one but in the long, slow season.

When we return home, it is not just our everyday work that will be waiting.  Our yarn and our fabric are also there - I know you, I know we all have a stash.  The season after Pentecost may be long and slow, but that is what growth requires.  It is a fertile season, when things take root and unfold and become.

Saint Elizabeth Zimmerman wrote, "I reconnoitered my wool-room yesterday - it is full of possibilities for the new year... By this time next year some of these will have been achieved and some scorned and abandoned.  Some as yet undreamed-of whims will have taken shape.  I'm ready for them; my mind is open, my wool-room full of wool, my needles poised, my brain spinning like a Catherine-wheel.  My word, such good fortune.  I can only hope the same for you."  Amen.

Tiny felted heart left on the windowsill in the chapel.