inspiration

The Multiplicity Of Minds

/ joseph elon lillie / Leave a comment

Paul the Apostle warned his followers….

“Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.[d] 4 Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, 5 so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

6 In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. “

As the Vicarage has filled up one of the things that has become clear is how differently the various Lillies all think and practice this thing called life. The differences show up in big and little ways. For instance my son and his wife have taken over washing the dishes. I never considered that the three pockets on the edge of our strainer are for presorting the silverware into spoons, forks and knives. When I do the dishes the silver just falls into whatever pocket I happen to chuck it. Joe and Kristine just seemed to understand that the pockets were there to help with the organization.

MIND BLOWN…

My sister and I are headed out for vacation on Saturday to a Missionary retreat called Eden Ridge.

The kids are taking care of things when I go. My daughter Amanda has the incredible thought processes of a lead administrator. She called the whole Lillie/Franklin team together for a planning session last Monday night so that schedules and duties are all marked out before my departure.

It is so powerful to see this multiplicity of minds working in my family. It is also beginning in the church….AS WE DISCOVER OUR GIFTS WE WILL CHANGE THE WORLD.


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Outreach

/ joseph elon lillie / 2 Comments

Our church at Cornerstone is organized into what we call DLT groups. Each group has five purposes.

  1. To study the Bible together
  2. To pray together
  3. To break bread together
  4. To build Authentic Transparent Vulnerable relationship together
  5. To use these methods to outreach our community

I have just started a new DLT group. It is composed mostly of octogenarians in the church. We call ourselves “The Saints of Fire and Valor.” Our outreach is to the Senior Center in our town. We are joining in with another group, “The Warriors of Fire”.

Here are some photos from our first outreach as a group.

I WISH I COULD READ THE MINDS BEHIND THESE EXPRESSIONS.

Shake It Off

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My grandson, Sevy, is a climber. He climbs stairs with no gates. He climbs gates blocking stairs. He climbs chairs and stands up on them if unattended. He has knocked more than one chair down on top of himself.

My grandson, Sevy, is a runner. He runs everywhere he goes even when he has nowhere to go.

There is no stopping this young man. I think is part mountain goat!

Anyway. because he is a runner and a climber he is often falling down and banging himself on things.

This morning he was running in the kitchen and fell down.

This is actually Sevy sleeping not falling down, but it serves the purpose of illustration.

He started to cry.

My sister said, “Shake it off!”

He did.

I thought how from the very beginning of life we are trying things and falling down in them and having to learn to “shake it off”.

Shaking it off may be one of the most important lessons we learn in life.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Four Days Goes Fast

/ joseph elon lillie / 2 Comments

It has been four days since I last wrote anything here on Notes. Four days goes fast and four days brings a lot of change at The Vicarage.

Four days ago Amanda was just returning from. her time at St. Scholastica.

Four days ago Joe, Kristine and Sevy were in South Carolina visiting with family and friends.

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Four days ago Brenda was getting ready to preach her final message before vacation, was still packing her bags for her trip to the United States and was still getting her house ready for her house sitter.

Today Amanda drove me to the office, as my car is in the shop, Joe has started his new job at Gardner Middle School and Brenda, Sevy and Kristine are at the Vicarage with Gramma. When I left them Sevy was playing trucks in the front room and Mom, Brenda and Kristine were finishing their morning coffees.

From quiet house to full house. Four days goes fast and four days can bring great change.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU IN THE LAST FOUR DAYS?

AND YET…

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There is this poem, by Yeats, that has troubled me for years.

The Second Coming 

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

I believe in the Second Coming, not as Yeats did, but I believe. I feel sometimes we are close. I feel the collective despair and fear and anger of the world held in a basin for years is ready to be poured out. The words of Revelation 1:7 echo in my mind even now.

“Look, he is coming with the clouds,”[b]
    and “every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him”;
    and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.”[c]
So shall it be! Amen.

AND YET

I have this hope that God is always good and that He has a good plan for saving those who want that salvation.

I have this hope that God’s goodness dwells in people who choose it, and in these days is still expressed in love that overcomes despair and fear and anger.

I have this hope that where people of faith dwell the darkness that threatens to engulf the world will be held back.

I have this hope that this little town where I live is one of those places where love and faith will grow and the darkness will be swallowed up in the light of people who will work together to bring about the good.

I cannot stop what is coming on the world, but I can help make a boundary across which that darkness cannot cross for a time.

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A BUNCH OF CLEANING FOOLS

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The Vicarage is emptying out this week.

Joe, Kristine and Sevy are on their way to visit Joe’s Mom and her husband and parents in South Carolina for the week. They will be enjoying a week of southern hospitality and warm beaches.

Photo by Kres Thomas on Pexels.com

Amanda is on vacation this week and is taking some time at a local priory to center her heart for the season ahead.

That leaves me and Mom, the cat and two dogs to get the house ready for next week when we will be full to the brim plus one. Amanda returns on Friday. Joe and his family return on Sunday and Brenda arrives on Monday.

So tonight Melanie and the girls are coming to help me get Brenda’s room ready for habitation .

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We will be a bunch of cleaning fools.

HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR A FULL HOUSE?

Tie-Dye Dreams

/ joseph elon lillie / 2 Comments

I love my little town in the North Central part of Massachusetts. These people are my tribe! We are greatly varied in the way we view the world, but we hold our region in common and the land ties us together in deeper ways than most of us realize.

TRINITY THE TIE-DYE ARTIST

The first line of our church’s mission statement is ‘WHILE DOING LIFE TOGETHER”.

DOING LIFE TOGETHER is how we are beginning to see the world. We are in this TOGETHER. We are better TOGETHER. It is WHILE DOING LIFE TOGETHER that we now share the LOVE OF CHRIST.

AMANDA AND PAM, TIE-DYE ARTISTS

I am proud of our little town. Over the last few years I have sensed a growing spirit of cooperation. Oh, we still have our divisions, but I see a growing number of people willing to reach across the chasms of thought to join together in making our region a stronger community. I see it in the work of the HEAL COLLABORATIVE. I see it in the dedication of the Winchendon Community Park. I see it in the Taste of Winchendon Fairs and the Parks and Rec events throughout this summer. I see it in the library’s One Book One Community conversations.

TRINITY STARTS MY SHIRT

AND I saw it today in the town’s first ever WINCHENSTOCK. A tip of the town’s hat to the 1970’s and a fundraiser for our local COMMUNITY ACTION COMMITTEE. My daughter, Amanda, and her team ran the tie-dye booth. I was afraid to tie-dye my own shirt, so Trinity did the art work for me. I can’t wait to wear this in the pulpit in honor of what is building in our little community!

MY SHIRT WILL NEED TO SET FOR NINE HOURS AT LEAST AND THEN BE RINSED OUT THOUROUGHLY AND DRIED

RUNNING ON EMPTY

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I approach today exhausted from the weekend.

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It was a phenomenal weekend!

Family reunion Saturday! What an incredible day it was.

Then Sunday was church! It always amazes me how much energy goes out of me when I preach and pray.

Normally I take off from Sunday right after service until Monday evening Men’s Ministry. This week though I had a quick church board meeting after service and then several pastoral calls to make Sunday afternoon.

Monday morning was the big change though. I have been praying for some time about launching another DLT (which stands for doing life together) group on a morning during the week. I think it will be on Mondays at 9:30 A.M.

So this week I met with a group of people to talk about the launch of this group. It looks like it is a go.

So I will be moving my day off from Mondays to another day of the week.

In ministry work schedule changes are almost a seasonal thing. They are generally led and created by God (or at least by seeing where He is working in your community and responding to that move). But I have found that no matter how inspired or called or ordained the change is, it generally takes my body some time to adjust to the new rhythm. In the in between time I often find myself extremely tired and easily distracted when I should be focusing.

WHAT ARE SOME THINGS YOU DO TO HELP YOURSELF ADJUST DURING TIMES OF TRANSITION?

“You Must See What I Am Doing!”

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About five years ago I began hearing this line over and over again in my private prayer times. I hear it to this day.

This morning one of my congregants posted a question in my Facebook Feed.

WHAT WAS THE GREATEST TEMPTATION JESUS HAD TO ENDURE?

His answer and my response brought me right back to this long standing question.

Ray says…What was the greatest temptation Jesus had to endure? The answer to this question will confirm why prayer is so vitally important. The answer was everyday, He had to surrender His Will and His Freedom to God. Are we willing to let go of our greatest idol, our will and our freedom in exchange for Jesus. We will never experience true freedom in Jesus until we completely surrender and trust in Jesus. We have to destroy the idol we keep hanging onto. It’s name is SELF. MY RIGHT. I AM ENTITLED, and the one we love even more, MY WILL BE DONE, not yours. This is why we must surrender in prayer everyday.

I responded…Jesus did surrender daily to the will of His Father. He never did anything He did not see His Father doing. When you think of how much Jesus actually did, that He saw His Father doing, it does make one wonder how much we are missing of the Father’s work around us.

HOW MUCH OF WHAT THE FATHER IS DOING ARE WE NOT SEEING?

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THE SPEED OF THE DAYS

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Has anyone else noticed that time seems to be going faster and faster?

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Maybe it is just because I am getting older and so have less time on this side glory than I used to have but it just feels like there is less time for more things and I am saying “no” to more things than ever before.

Last week the Lillie VI family arrived at the Vicarage and began to settle in. I cancelled almost everything on my schedule before they got here thinking that the settling in was going to need most of my attention. I was right and I was wrong. It was good I had the time so that I could help ease my son and his family into life here in Massachusetts. Jetlag really effected my grandson’s sleep schedule.

And so my son and daughter-in-law’s sleep schedule was likewise effected. They muscled through and it got a little better everyday. Then I got sick with a bug my son brought back from The Philippnes. I ended up cancelling even the things I had kept in the schedule.

The week ended with a family party for my oldest granddaughter.

This week our schedules went back to normal.

My son had two job interviews and two job offers. My daughter-in-law’s social security card came in and today the Lillie VI family is beginning the search for an apartment.

My schedule of meetings has been completely full to make up for last week and Amanda’s schedule has blossomed as we approach the coming of fall and the restart of our children’s school programs (it is unbelievable to me that we are almost to the start of the new school year!).

I am filled with awe at how fast things seem to be moving. At the same time I have this sense that it needs to be this way. Something is coming and we must be prepared.

DO YOU FEEL IT IN THE AIR? THERE IS A CHANGE COMING!