The First Lily of Summer
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Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Yesterday the Parks and Rec department of our town held the third annual food truck festival. We bought supper at the festival and then I volunteered to clean up when the event shut down at 9 P.M.
Today all that its left to show that a thousand people gathered in the park yesterday is the event tent, the portages potties, a flat bed that the Battle of the Bands used and the deflated bouncy house all awaiting pick up by the rental companies.
Today Amanda and I went for a couple of hours to help a church family with a move. Tomorrow I will preach the next sermon in our series from the Book Of Revelation.
Yesterday, today and tomorrow. Each day comes to pass. What remains is the relationships we build with each other.
Sometimes It Takes a While
In 2013 I was given an opportunity to be part of a project geared to bring our community together.
Our small committee of very diverse individuals representing several micro communities and various town boards in our town met for months trying to come up with a project that would bring the whole town together.
After several months we came up with an idea. Ingleside!
Ingleside was a 43 acre waterfront property owned by a local private school. We wanted the town to purchase the property somehow and to turn it into a gathering place for all the communities of our community. The dream was that it would come become a uniting place.
It took a few years and A LOT OF MEETINGS to work out the land deal.
Obtaining the land was just the first step. Clearing the land and turning it into a meeting point was the bigger job.
The shifts in ministry in 2018 meant I ended up leaving the committee after the land deal was done. My little part of the dream of Ingleside was done.But others picked up the gauntlet and ran with it.
Trails were blazed
Uniting points were created.
Last year a grant was obtained to build an outdoor amphitheater.
On Saturday I got to volunteer as an usher for the grand opening of the amphitheater!
Sometimes it takes a while, but dreams really can come true!
Destrangling the Vicarage Pt. 2 Memorial Day
Today was Memorial Day here in the States. That means it was a big weekend. Pastor Amanda and I had a going away party for a service man being deployed and then a pastor/ staff/ board celebration dinner on Saturday. Sunday of course was Memorial Day and Pentecost Sunday and then the church celebration for Pastor Amanda’s ordination. We were EXHAUSTED by Sunday afternoon.
I find I need most of a day to recuperate from a busy weekend and most of a week to gear up for another one.
So today I spent resting in prayer and moving very slowly as Worked around the Vicarage property.
Today I was working on a stand of sumac that has gotten out of control and become infested with bittersweet vine. It went from this:
To this.
More to do tomorrow.
Destrangling the Vicarage Part 1
Those who have followed “Notes From The Vicarage” will remember that last year at this time our family was living away from the Vicarage as it got much needed surgery for survival into the future.
We had the pipes torn out and replaced; The shingles torn off, new insulation put up and siding put on; The bathrooms were gutted to the studs and remodeled; The floors downstairs were refinished; Eight windows were replaced; The sills were replaced and the trim painted; And the stone porch which was falling down was removed.
As an afterthought we ended up having to replace all the pipes from the house to the street, and then the town had to come in and replace the pipes from the edge of my property to the center of the street..
As it was all happening I kept reminding myself, it had to get worse before and got better. And it did get better. We love the Vicarage and the work that was done inside.
This year we will be working on the outside.
It turns out tearing down a three-quarter- of- a -century old stone porch and digging up your yard not once but twice is not good for the landscaping.
Parts of the Vicarage are barren moonscape and others are…. well….. Strangled.
So as we get ready for upcoming fencing and masonry work to get done. I am starting to destrangle the Vicarage.
This might not look like much yet, but at least now the mason will be able to get to the disintegrating pillar.
Today’s Decision With Noom
Every morning I get up, walk the dogs, make my bed, listen to my morning Bible chapters for Prime prayers and then do a brief lesson in my Room weight loss app.
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This morning’s lesson was “Defining Your New Reality”.
In it I was asked to name three emotions, mindsets or conditions I wanted to experience along with three behavior shifts I would make to obtain those conditions.
I AM CHOOSING TO BECOME: MORE CENTERED,
MORE HEALTHY
AND MORE, FLEXIBLE
TO GET THERE I WILL FOCUS MORE ON PRAYER AND SLOW MINDFULNESS
ON EATING RIGHT AND EXERCISING
AND ON DAILY STRETCHING
I have been stuck on my first weight loss plateau for about a month (20 pounds down). It is time to settle in to the deeper behavior change that is restful and sustainable.
Between Bunnies and Ordination
It has been a very busy couple of weeks. This new series we are doing as a church has been taking a lot of prep time and prayer time
I am also finding myself emotionally spent from the preaching and teaching of it. It is really good stuff, but it is also very emotional stuff.
We are also coming up on a very important meeting with the congregation about our parking lot.
And we are in the midst of a relaunch in our town of the council of churches.
Sooo… yeah it’s a lot.
In the midst of it here are two really high points from the last couple of weeks
Here is Amanda at her ordination banquet with friend and missionary Rev. Kim Ferguson.
And then of course the bunnies in the back yard are always a welcome distraction.
Between the ordination and the bunnies my heart is full.
OK folks, it is time for me to go pray. Big meeting tonight to plan for a bigger meeting next week.
HEY KIDDO, WHAT A GREAT WEEKEND!
Last weekend was a busy, wonderful, productive meeting.
Friday night was the culmination of our One Book One Community Project.
Jarret Krasozcka, the author of our One Book One Community read came to address the town.
He spoke to us about his process, the power and the pain of writing this personal memoir.
My favorite quote from the night was, “In real life, there are no heroes or villains, just people who live on a sliding scale of complicated.”
That was Friday. Saturday about twenty of us attended a training at Cornerstone Church. We are working through a study entitled “Coach the Person Not the Problem”
Finally on Sunday, I got to preach my third sermon on the Bait of Satan. It was a powerful service followed by powerful board meeting in which we discussed the repairs to our church parking lot
Things are getting busier, but I feel like work is getting done….a lot of work. That makes me feel productive.
WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL PRODUCTIVE?
Slowing Down to Get More Done
My life statement is , slow constant and intentional. I have trouble keeping my life between those goal posts. I have always thought that is mostly because I fill my life with too much. I have always thought that this fullness of schedule makes me end up going too fast. I often feel I have to rush because there is so much to do. This makes me lose the ability to be constant. Intentionality also suffers .
In prayer I was asking the Lord to teach me how to slow things down a bit. In answer I heard this line from Star Wars
It is Yoda rebuking Luke for letting his mind run too fast., Yoda says, “All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, hmm? What he was doing.”
Sooo…..Slowing down means taking in where I am and what I am doing? It involves learning to stop thinking ahead to the next thing and learning to be present in what I am doing?
Today was another trip up to Claremont, to see Grace. Usually I let myself feel rushed: Hurry Up, (pray along the way), visit, Hurry back (pray on the way back). I usually squish grocery shopping into the drive back and then when I get home I go quickly on to next thing.
I have wanted for several months to turn one of these trips into a photo trip, but I always feel too rushed to do it.
Today I decided to fight those feelings and to just stop for picture taking. In fact I INTENTIONALLY DECIDED to make several stops.
I learned something. Slowing down and stopping in a planned way did not really significantly change the time it took to accomplish my visit to Grace.
Slowing down did not really change my schedule. But it did challenge my attitude. I found the urge to rush was not actually time bound but emotion bound. My schedule was not rushing me my heart was. The problem was not an external scheduling issue to be solved. It was an internal mindset to be torn down.
All day long I kept finding myself trying to rush to the next thing and I had to fight to keep my mind and heart from looking to the horizon away from where I was and what I was doing.
I am wondering if slowing down is about retraining my brain instead of rethinking my schedule.
WHAT DO YOU DO TO SLOW DOWN YOUR MIND WHEN YOU CAN’T SLOW DOWN YOUR SCHEDULE?
TO RELEASE THE OWL
About two months ago Amanda rescued an owl from an unkindness of ravens that was trying to kill it (an unkindness is a group of ravens that gather around here. They often group to attack birds of prey).
Animal control came and collected the poor creature which was in shock and had a broken wing.
Yesterday just before church Amanda got the call that the bird was healed and ready to be released back into the wild. We were asked if we wanted to observe the release so at 4:30 in the afternoon we were at the church to watch the event.
The little fellow looked a little nervous, but with a bit of encouragement he was able to leave the box and go back to his home.
Notes From the Vicarage 