In the last two days Brenda and I have driven from PA to TN. We have spent something like 15 hours in the car together.
A rest stop in VA somewhere.
We stayed the night in Nashville with one of Brenda’s friends and mentors Rob Fraser. Here we are going to Five Daughters Bakery.
We visited with the Fraser’s until about 1 PM and then meet our way back up the plateau into the Cumberland Mountains to our cabin at Eden Ridge.Here is the sunset from our cabin deck.
Here are some photos of our drive today.
We left the vicarage just before 8 AM
We were in the Catskills by 11.
By 4:30 PM we were at the Shady maple smorgasbord in New Holland Pennsylvania
.
We drove through some back. Roads of Amish country as the sun set. We arrived at our hotel for the evening sometime around 7:45 PM
We are coming g up on the beginning of the 2023 road trip for me and my sister.
The car has been to the mechanic.
The notes for running the house while I am gone have been written.
The food for the road trip has been bought.
I have been to my bank to make my deposits and to let them know I am on vacation.
I still need to: pack.
I still need to set up Mom’s pills for the next two weeks.
I still need to give the dogs a bath.
Joe and Kristine have to go to New York tomorrow to meet with someone from The Philippine consulate. So Amanda, Brenda and I are watching Sevy for the day.
I still have one meeting before I am on break.
But I feel ready!
WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR YOU TO GET READY FOR VACATION?
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.
Our church at Cornerstone is organized into what we call DLT groups. Each group has five purposes.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
This summer has gone by so fast. It seems like just yesterday I was enjoying the lilacs. Today we are enjoying the late summer and autumn flowers which are in full bloom.
It seems like everything is about two weeks ahead. The blackbirds are flocking in large numbers to my feeders. They are nervous things this year and getting pictures has not been easy.
But twice a day about 100 grackles and starlings and cowbirds swoop into my feeders eating us out of house and home.
Last year I remember commenting on the fact that there wasn’t any flocking at all in the area. So I certainly won’t complain. But it does seem early to me.
DOES IT SEEM EARLY TO YOU?
There is this poem, by Yeats, that has troubled me for years.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Notes From the Vicarage 