Rev. Don Erickson

I am old enough to remember when airline flight attendants were called stewardesses. Maybe there were stewards, as in a male version of stewardesses. I don’t know. But stewardesses much like flight attendants do now were tasked with taking care of the needs of the passengers flying with them as well as the cabin itself. Stewardesses made sure all was well in any particular flight to a particular destination. They served food, coffee, snacks. They assured lanes were clear and the restrooms clean. They informed folks of safety protocol and calmed nerves amid turbulence. These things and so much more. I’ve known stewardesses, or flight attendants as they are known now, to comfort crying babies in flight in only to give their parents a rest. I should also note that airliners weren’t the only moving vehicles that employed stewardesses. Ships, cruise ships namely, employ them as well. Thinking of the work of the stewardess, we come together for Stewardship Sunday. We are called

Remembrance Grief. Even days, months, years after the hurricane that is a loved-one's death first arrives on our shore, grief still brings strong winds across our skies, our fields, our pathways.  If there is Joy, it is somehow mixed with sorrow, with the awareness of loss, with the knowledge that someone whom we shared so many holidays past with, so many special times, so ordinary times with, is now not here. Maybe there is that nagging sense that things are too different now. It brings to mind that Emily Dickson poem, which may describe the feeling: “There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes.” In the wake of losing someone who was always there, our days’ slant of light has changed. The heaviness, the heft aches even amid sunlight.        Time progresses, as time in its nature does. And hopefully, we are able to see a little more easily. We are able to feel the many gifts this human life offers. The