It is Christmas and with Christmas comes the visits from extended family. I love these times of sharing and family memory.
Kristine’s Mom called today from Ilo Ilo and I imagine we will be hearing from Kristine’s sister n Singapore sometime this weekend. I also expect we will be chatting with Brenda from The Netherlands. And my son Joe will undoubtedly chat with his friend Bill in South Korea as well.We are a global family!
I enjoy hearing about the goings on around the world. I also love seeing family, right here at home, we don’t get to see very often. Aunt Carol and Uncle Tom stopped by this afternoon and stayed for a visit.
Usually they just pop in with a holiday bread and pop back out. Mom, Carol and Tom are the last living members of their generation in our family. Mom and Carol are the last sisters from a family of eight. Both are living with dementia and both are easily tired out. Today was a good day, though, and all three felt like visiting. So I put on a pot of coffee.
Uncle Tom pulled up a chair for Aunt Carol in the living room and we left the sisters to visit while we had our coffee around the new dining table Joe and Kristine bought me for Christmas. Mom and Aunt Carol chatted for about an hour about their grandchildren while Uncle Tom and I talked about wildlife and ancestry. The stories of the old days are some of my favorite conversations.
Our visit today reminded me that I still need to pick up some holiday breads and drop them by the cousins houses before Christmas comes. Well that’s a job for tomorrow morning. Tonight I need to do some wrapping of the Christmas presents I bought this afternoon.
Today’s Wisdom From the Alpacas is…“SINCE YOU GET MORE JOY OUT OF GIVING JOY TO OTHERS, YOU SHOULD PUT A GOOD DEAL OF THOUGHT INTO THE HAPPINESS THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO GIVE.” ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
is also a season of rushing. I am not sure how it happens, exactly. I go into it with the best of intentions. I plan to be ready to put “a good deal of thought” into what I am able to give. Yet every year I find myself whirling around at the last minute trying to get things ready to give in time.
I have my lists. I have my plans. But life sort of gets in the way and I never get to the place of executing those plans until just a few days before. I know what I want to get for everyone. It’s the actual getting of things that seems to be the problem.
In the fall I actually planned to take a few days in November to do the Christmas shopping. That never happened. I ended up buying a grand total of one gift before Thanksgiving (oh and this year I did succeed in sending gifts off to The Netherlands in time for SInterklaus).
So here I am four days before Christmas just beginning the Christmas gifting process. Well it’s better than some years. I have four days not four hours….so let the shopping begin!
I thought when I bought THE WISDOM OF ALPACAS, that I was buying a book of quotes on individuality. Apparently I was mistaken. It seems to be a book of quotes on happiness. Today’s quote…
“HAPPINESS IS A HOW, NOT A WHAT. A TALENT, NOT AN OBJECT.” HERMAN HESS.
I like that. In our materialistic and perfectionistic culture it is hard to remember that happiness and joy are never found in things or in circumstances.
First of all, I think joy is a gift from God that we can either access or block.
We receive joy when we practice being thankful. Once when I was having a hard time I made myself write fifty things every day I was thankful for.
We reject joy when we complain.
We receive joy when we choose to celebrate the ebb and flow of life. This week is Christmas. I am not done my shopping yet, but I am refusing to stress about it. I will get it done and the giving is just one part of a much larger celebration. The celebration will happen whether I stress out or not. Christmas will come whether I finish my shopping or whether everything is perfect according to my definition of perfection or not. What will make me joyful or not is how much I participate in the celebration . Participation in the day… that is my choice.
It is the first weekend of Advent! That is the season where we celebrate the arrival of Messiah, and for those of us in the Pentecostal church it is a special time of reminding ourselves that Christ will come again.
The hi-light of this weekend for me was the first ever Winchendon Christmas Cookie Crawl held on the day of the Winchendon Wonderland Celebration.
The purpose of the Cookie Crawl was to promote town awareness of different micro communities and businesses.
It started at the Old Murdock Senior Center. The Senior Center hosted a huge craft fair in their auditorium. My first step was to pick up my Crawl card at the Parks and Rec table, and then to buy a few stocking stuffers for the fam!
My first stop after the Senior Center was Fidelity Bank. Andrew the branch manager was the cookie warden for that location. I chose a soft chocolate chip cookie for my first try. Andrew and I had a great conversation around prayer.
My next stop was the Historical Society’s Old Centre Church.
Peggy was the Cookie Lady there. Our conversation was built around Christmas wreaths (which she makes) and singing (which I have been known to do). I also got to meet her Yorkie Chester.
Megan was the cookie lady at Ruschioni’s Flower &Gifts on Rte. 140. We talked about how and when she started the business and about the fact that we are neighbors. Our church is right up the road a-piece.
Pattie’s Jewelry was next. I didn’t have time to chat with Sherry, the owner. She was super busy; So I just got my cookie (another chocolate chip) and went on my way.
I had a great time catching up with Michelle, a school mate of mine, and the owner of T Each His Own Design. I also got to chat with her about how I had met her pastor Father Henry at the last council of churches meeting.
At Not Just produced, I talked for a bit with the owner Beth Hunt and we shared stories about care giving for people with chronic and terminal illness.
At 108 Ipswich I got to talk with a few of our local farmers about their products and how they were made.
At the library I had a ginger snap while I caught up with one of the library trustees. She was the nurse for my previous PCP.
After a stop home I met up with my daughter Melanie and granddaughter Abigail at the Winchendon Community park which was hosting Santa and the Grinch for “Winter Wonderland.
The Grinch had put Santa in Christmas jail. People could pay towards getting the key to set Santa free before the town tree lighting. What a great idea for a fundraiser.
My day ended listening to Santa’s elf telling the kids a story.
While I was at Bible study this morning, my daughter-in-law broke out the Christmas tree. I was just thinking this morning that it was almost time to decorate the Vicarage.
The Lillies of The Vicarage send you Christmas greeting and well wishes for the New Year.
The Vicarage is nearly ready for the Christmas holiday. We set up the main tree on my birthday. Melanie, James, Amanda, Daniella and Abigail all helped. It was a truly wonderful day.
Since then I have been setting up little bits and pieces of Christmas each day. It has been a wonderfully relaxed way to decorate during this normally very busy season.
The first snow has fallen making the outside of the Vicarage look all Christmassy. It is heavy shoveling but perfect snowman snow.
Last Tuesday two of my grandys came over to stay with me for a few hours. James, Melanie and Amanda all had ministry commitments at the church. That left Oz (that’s what the grandys call me) to sit with them for the evening. So they came to the Vicarage. The girls visited with Great Gramma, and we set up the children’s tree and then baked cookies.
I am so looking forward to next Christmas when I am hoping to have a tree set up, and Christmas cookie night with Oz. for all my grandys.
Joe, Kristine and Sevy are still wading through the immigration process from South Korea. But I am hoping that sometime this winter they will be here with us at The Vicarage for keeps.
The church is also set for Christmas thanks to a team of very dedicated volunteers who came just after Thanksgiving to deck the halls.
Of course there is much more to a year than Christmas. This year I took my first sabbatical of ministry. It was a powerful time of prayer and prophetic utterance for me and for the church. It is leading us into the new year with a greater sense of destiny and soberness than I have ever felt before in my thirty one years of ministry.
Brenda was home at the end of my sabbatical and we took a much needed day up to Maine. This photo was taken at Nubble Light
Also during sabbatical, work on the Vicarage continued. After the tear down of the stone porch we had the pipes to the street dug up and replaced and this fall just before snow flew the town came in and replaced the pipes from the edge of our property to the main pipe in the center of the street
We have stopped work now for the winter, but come Spring we will have a lot of landscaping to do. I am looking forward to that time. I think we are about to invest lots of sweat equity into this place. I sense things are about to change for us as a church and a family. I am excited and trepidatious as I look into the future. I feel we are about to face some of our greatest challenges and some of our greatest victories.
We have gone through a tremendous change in the last year.
Both at home, and at the church.
The changes have been both physical and spiritual. We don’t look the same. We are not the same.
I also know the changing is not done. We are on the edge, in the place of preparation for the biggest changes yet. What has changed is just a seed, a spout of what is to come.
I have not yet spoken about Mom and the changes that have overtaken her this year. Mom has struggled with vascular dementia for the last several years. This year it has advanced significantly and her physical condition has slowly declined as well. She wonders many times why she is still here. I know it is for us kids. Mom still remembers much of the distant past and the stories she is able to tell are important for us to know. Our lives today are links in a very long chain. History is not just prequel. It is also the key to prophecy. What was shall be again. The foundation laid determines the course of the construction. What we are is, in part because of those who came before us. So the story of our lives has been told in the stories of those who have gone before us. Mom still has a job to do. My hope is that as we all face this future together she will embrace her new role even as we each have to embrace ours.
God has told me that the world is a tapestry that is torn. Each of us are threads in that tapestry and our future relies on us being able to see both where our threads have come from and where they are going. Success demands that we fix all the tears and bring the tapestry back together…. Destiny and sobriety…..
Christmas is a time of great rejoicing. We rejoice over what has been. We rejoice over what has been accomplished. And we rejoice over the possibilities yet to come.
My dreams for Notes From the Vicarage were so big when I started. I had this vision of giving the blogosphere a glimpse into the life of a ministry family that is unique in its makeup and experience (at least it seems that way to me). One of the drawbacks of ministerial life however has gotten in the way. BUSYNESS!
So much has happened since August and contending with all of it has taken up so much time that there was little time left over to write about it. But now that the holidays are over…or almost over, I am coming back to this template to try again to open a portal into our world.
Christmas at the Vicarage was a small affair. That is Christmas Day was a small affair. The Christmas season was as big as ever. We had several parties to attend. There was Christmas shopping and wrapping. My sister attended an annual cookie bake. We decorated two trees at our house and of course the church had its own decorating day right after Thanksgiving. Our artist’s community had two caroling opportunities one at the town’s annual historic Christmas house tour and the other as we went to several elderly complexes to share the joy of the season. It all culminated in our church’s annual Christmas Eve candlelight service which was absolutely wonderful.
So a quiet Christmas Day was well in order. We had 7 to Christmas brunch. That may not seem small to you but when you compare it to our church receptionist Wendy’s gathering of 35 or our Board secretaries gathering of 64 well…I’ll take 7!
James, Melanie and Daniella arrived at about 9:30 in the morning. That was perfect timing. It gave Mom time to wake up and prepare herself but not enough time to fall into her usual doldrums over the holidays. Daniella has this magical power to lift my mother’s spirits.
I made stuffed French toast, turnovers, sausages, a pasta dish, a fritata and cole slaw. We broke out the egg nog, wassail and apple cider. Then after we had brunch we opened gifts.
Amanda made this stuffed Yoda. It was Melanie’s gift to her husband James. I have such talented daughters.
James had to be to work so the Franklin family left at about 1:30 in the afternoon and then it was naps all around and then the traditional evening at the movies. We saw Jumanji II!
Does it seem odd to you that a ministry family would go to the movies on Christmas Day?
Notes From the Vicarage 