Dust Bunnies

It always happens: I'm cleaning an area for a while, I have the tools that I need for the job whether it is vacuuming the stairs or scrubbing the bath tub, mopping the kitchen floor, dusting the high spaces. I cover every inch of my target area with my cleaning. I pick up the clutter, I replace the items that remain on the counter (after wiping them down, too, naturally). I think I am finished, I sit back and survey my work, begin to put away my tools. Then, I see it - the corner, the spot, the cobweb I missed. I know I went over that very spot, yet somehow that which I had scoured away has returned. It is maddening, and a little demotivating to actually finish the task! 

In Sunday's gospel reading, Jesus teaches: "When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is woes than the first." While the obvious analogy is to the hobbits that we make and attempt to break, with spring leaping around the corner, cleaning, opening up, refresh and renewal were are on my mind. 

Lent is a chance for many things: self-evaluation, reprioritizing our relationship with God, making new habits, austerity that we may appreciate the good in our lives, and these are only a few broad categories. The heart of Jesus' teaching here is: when you have cleaned your house, swept away the grime of the evil spirit, what do you fill your house with to make the space uncomfortable for the spirit to return to? Metaphorically speaking, that is: a visually uncluttered space is handy for tasks such as cooking! Once you have cleaned your house, what purpose do you put it to? How do you actively use the space you have prepared so that evil spirit cannot move back in?

~Rev. Andrea Joy Holroyd