writing

Still Life Broken and Repaired

/ joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

The season has changed again. We are right back to winter overnight. This is one of the warmest winters I remember. I have only worn a coat one or two days this year. Maybe it’s just my thick northern blood, but something is changing. All season we have been going back and forth between freeze and melt. Today the ground is covered with snow. Tomorrow we could be back to the mud. It’s a change.

I am currently taking part as a reader in a book launch for a friend. Poet and story teller Tracy Rittmueller has written a book of poetry entitled, Still Life, Broken and Repaired. The book is about life changes, especially those changes between life partners as aging happens. The effects of dementia on relationships is a key theme in her poetry. Right now this book is speaking to me about the plethora of changes I am walking through with my own Mom and with my life long friend Grace.

In her poem, “Healing Is a Never Ending Departure”, Tracy writes

“Life calls us
to our never ending story.
All is still well.
Take heart, dear heart.
Release, that you may heal.”

Excerpt From: Tracy Rittmueller. “Still Life, Broken and Repaired.” Apple Books.

Right now life is requiring a constant releasing. My mom’s life, Grace’s life are like this winter. Some days you get warm sunshine and all is well. Other days are filled with mud and confusion. And then there are the days where the cold chill of the future just sort of sweeps over you. Each day requires a releasing of what was and an acceptance of what is now. My world is busy and grand in its smallness. On that note I leave you with these thoughts from Tracy’s poem, “In A Cove In The Yorks, Maine, I Dare To Hope Again.”

“And so I sit here for hours intent to hear the healing
beginning of another pilgrimage, any conscious progress
to inspire our next, necessary transformation.”

Excerpt From: Tracy Rittmueller. “Still Life, Broken and Repaired final.” Apple Books.

I am embracing the change whatever it may be. I know God has us in the midst of it.

If you would like to read more of Tracy’s work you can find it at TracyRitmueller.com

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This Day At the Vicarage 9-8-20

/ joseph elon lillie / 4 Comments

I often write with music playing softly in the background. Somehow the rhythm and the sound help me to focus on what it is I need to say. It is like the sound draws the words out of me.

Maybe that has something to do with my years as a worship pastor. I remember one of my mentors teaching me that in order to lead worship effectively, I needed to be able to move beyond the place where I played music into the place where the music played me.

Yesterday I wrote to an Epic Celtic Album on Youtube. Tonight I am playing the Easters. Somehow their music fills me with hope and just a touch of melancholy. Those things might not seem to go together. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they are polar opposites like the yellow and purple on a color wheel.

Color Wheel Primer | HGTV

Maybe that tension is what I am looking for when I write or when I sing or when I do art. Maybe it is what I need. Maybe it is what is required for me to move into my muse. The muse would be God ,so I guess that makes sense. The tension….the inner conflict somehow drives me to seek the Lord and in that seeking I find my creative spark. And that creative spark is the pathway to the music playing me instead of me playing the music or in this case it is the pathway to the space where the Writer reveals to me my story rather than me striving to make it up.

There’s a whole book in there somewhere. The tension is rising within me and that means the story is about to arrive.

Now I am really looking forward to tomorrow dear friends.

Pastor J

Settling In

/ joseph elon lillie / 6 Comments
Person Sitting Outdoors

In prayer over the last several weeks I have felt that 2020 is revealing a process of transition in me. I feel like January, February and March were a time of REALIZATION. I sense April, May and June will be about SETTLING IN. I think July and August and September will be about LAUNCHING. October, November and December will be ACCOMPLISHING months.

Settling in is turning into a time of incorporating the pandemic rhythm into my everyday schedule and practicing those things which God has shown me to do.

PRAYER:

I am settling into a rhythm of prayer and reading the word: Morning, Noon and Night. I am discovering my morning prayer time tends to extend well beyond the boundaries of the hour, while my noon time prayer tends to hover somewhere around 30- 45 minutes. My night time session has yet to find its most comfortable space between 8 P.M. or just before bed around 10. It seems that this night time regimen is the one most affected by the needs of the family.

WRITING:

I am very excited that writing and blogging have become part of my everyday routine. I am managing between 2 and 3 hours everyday.

This week I blogged everyday. Kept up with a reading schedule and finished three poems.

Winter Still Holds On

Is Everywhen

And That Is Time

In addition I wrote several short pieces in answer to several challenges.

The Watch Human

Rebuilding From the Table Up

Lost In White

The projects list for my book is ready for Monday when I am launching into a big week of editing.

WORK AROUND THE VICARAGE:

The weather has broken and we have begun the gardening in earnest. We are calling this year’s garden “The Victory Garden”. I have planted 23 pea plants 18 carrots, and 26 spinach plants. Inside I have 4 Romaine lettuce plants, 2 celery, 4 tomatoes, 5 peppers and 3 strawberries


So many other things are happening at The Vicarage too. I feel like each of us are settling into what is to come.

More updates to come…..

J. On Getting An Artistic Reboot

/ joseph elon lillie / 2 Comments

Many years ago God gave me a phrase I felt I was to live by: My life is to be built Slow, Constant and Intentional. I have never really struggled with the “Constant” part of that command. I am a pretty good plodder. I can keep going and going and going. I don’t have problems showing up early or staying late.

I feel like I have learned to be “Intentional”. That hasn’t come naturally. It has been a process learning to plan and live my life by a God rhythm. Even all these years into practicing the lifestyle I find there are moments where my intentionality misses a beat or six. In those moments, I have to replan and resubmit myself to the process of being intentioned or thought-out. Mostly I feel my failures in complying with God’s three-step plan have been founded in the trouble I have with slowing down.

Nothing in my life feels slow enough. I feel rushed everyday. Even when I am intentionally taking it slow I feel like the world around me is screaming “HURRY UP!” That external shout makes my insides fight against my attempts towards easing up on life’s gas pedal.

Image result for pedal to the metal

I can be intentionally moving along at a proper God-set pace, then the world comes along with its myriad requirements and my intentions which are geared to a slower lifestyle fly out the window. I am left scrambling to try and figure out which intentions to keep and which ones to throw away so I can go once again live as fast and furious as the rest of the world.

I’ve noticed over the last year how much this kills my creativity. I run from one thing to the next and frankly sometimes I feel like I am just “phoning it in”. In those moments I sense most powerfully there is something inside of me that screaming for a return to excellence.

Image result for phoning it in

I know this all just sounds like so much complaining about first world problems. Maybe that is part of it, but somewhere in the middle of that is a conviction from the Holy Spirit that things are supposed to be different.

When Brenda and I were discussing her return home I think we both knew that adding more complexity to our already complex lives was going to cause us to rush even more than we already were. I think we both also knew how much this would threaten our creative well-being. That is why even before she came home we had decided to do a study on rebooting creativity. The study by The Artist’s Way author Julia Cameron is entitled It’s Never Too Late To Begin Again. It is a study created to help people facing life transitions to recapture their creative selves (It deals specifically with retirement as a transition but I am finding much in it for our particular transition at the Vicarage). I want to give thanks here to my blogging friends Cee Neuner and Chris Donner who put the book in my pathway.

Yesterday I spoke about the messy mental and spiritual threads I was encountering in the midst of this transition….

Image result for Messy threads

To this pile we are now adding an artist’s study thread, but as I open the pages of this book I am seeing that perhaps this particular thread will bring together several others. Perhaps, this will begin to help us make sense of the mess.

If you want to join us on this study the Book is available on Amazon.com.We have just finished the introduction and I took my first stab at writing the “Morning Pages”. My arm fell asleep…imagine that a writer who can’t write three pages without his fingers cramping up….