The Benedictus: Byrd Short Service - Choir of Mariners' Church, Detroit

My church's choir can beat up your church's choir!   Just saying.

My Ageless Wife

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of photographing my wife Cindy, who is more beautiful than the day nearly 30 years ago when I married her!  The shoot took place only one month short of her 57th birthday.

My point in posting these few photographs from that shoot (in addition to bragging about my wife, of course!) is to point out what is now becoming more and more obvious:  these days, you can in large measure choose how old you want to be.  The decay that has always come along with aging, and to which we have always surrendered, is in some measure being thwarted these days by those willing to eat right, live right, and exercise right.

Cindy is a Personal Trainer by profession, working primarily in Senior Fitness.  If you have (or are yourself) a potential client for her, please contact me and I can put you in touch with her.

Maggie (poem for a friend)

Maggie

“Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.” – C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

No man can tell in what arch-farrier’s fire,

Or in what blessed blacksmith’s forge some morn,

Or how by that great Girlsmith’s good desire,

Those smoldering dark eyes of hers were formed.

With hair like darkest wood she was endowed,

But textured with the grace of flowing silk,
That formed a dark and brooding glory cloud,

To frame a face as smooth and white as milk.

For any man who struggles to be chaste

(And such a man I was and am today),

A danger clear, she was, in form and face;
A most bewitching alloy, I assayed.

But then, as prompted by the Paraclete,

I took a deeper look at her and saw,

The fire of her holiness complete,
And all her beauty, tempered by the law.

So let this lady’s power here be known,
That makes me ever truer to my own.

-- © Paul Erlandson, 2015

Litany for Users of Social Media

Remember not, Lord, our social media offences, neither take thou vengeance of our mis-postings.  Spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, and be not angry with us forever.

Spare us, good Lord.

From propagation of internet hoaxes; from sharing without verifying; and from posting things we simply wish to be true,

Good Lord, deliver us.

From using thy name in vain to guilt-manipulate others into sharing the crap we post,

Good Lord, deliver us.

From paying for our own joy with the tears of our friends,

Good Lord, deliver us.

From the posting of inappropriate images, of the seen which cannot be unseen,

Good Lord, deliver us.
From the mindless amping up of our vapid words by use of the f-bomb,

Good Lord, deliver us.

From cowardly blocking of those who have offended us,

Good Lord, deliver us.

From capricious unfriending of good people,

Good Lord, deliver us.
From sharing of drivel which happens to support our own political views,

Good Lord, deliver us.

In all time of our schadenfreude, in all time of our snarkiness, and in the hour of logging out,
                Good Lord, deliver us.

Stood Up By Tall Girls

I think their names were Pam and Tracy.  The fact that I'd remember that 38 years later says something about the effect these two girls had on my mind.  The two very tall girls I never met.

For the 1976-77 academic year, the powers that be at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) made a very foolish decision.  Their dormitories on West 27th Street were not filled to capacity, so they agreed to let some engineering students from Cooper Union stay in their dorm rooms.  Bob and I were roommates at FIT that year.  It was a great deal for us, if not for the school and its students.  We were on the meal plan, which was an all-you-can-eat affair for both breakfast and dinner, which had to result in an economic loss for FIT in our cases.  And all the more so since we stayed and ate longer than absolutely required by our appetites, simply to watch the splendid walking fashion show put on by the female students of FIT, who were mostly knock-outs, and who never wore the same outfit for both meals.

But, some stuff happened.  I'm not sure about the statute of limitations for some of those things that we allegedly did, but we were not invited back for the Fall of 1977.

Bob and I occupied Room 814 during the 1976-77 school year.  Back then, there weren't cell phones.  There were two pay phones in the hallway of our (co-ed) 8th floor.  If someone (e.g., parents) wanted to get hold of a dorm resident, they called the 8th Floor pay phone and whoever was nearby (or could hear it ring from her/his room) answered it and then fetched the person being called.  So, anyhow, we had this number memorized.

This is how it came to pass that, in September of 1977, Bob and I (being lonely and desiring female companionship) dialed up the 8th Floor pay phone, and asked to speak to either of the girls in Room 814.

"Pam or Tracy?" asked the girl who answered the phone.

"Either," we said.

And so Bob and took turns talking to Pam and Tracy.  Probably they should have hung up on us right away, but were too nice.  We told them that we had lived in their same room (814) the year before.  They asked what we looked like, and we told them.  As far as I can remember, we told the truth.  We asked what they looked like, and they told us:  they were both slender; one of them was 6'0" and the other was 6'1" tall.

Our jaws dropped.  I was 5'9" and Bob was 5'7", so by all societal standards of which guys belong with which girls, it was a mismatch of epic proportions.  Still, they talked to us for more than 30 minutes.  And, even when we called back a different day, they answered and talked to us further.

You have to understand how primitive the dating scene was in those days.  There were no chat rooms, no dating sites, no eHarmony or the like.  But, as relatively unattractive males, we needed a way to interact with girls without them immediately becoming aware of our physical unimpressiveness.  Without knowing it, we were trying to invent the internet.

One day, we asked them to go on a date with us, and they agreed.  It surprised us, honestly.  The date was set for a Saturday around noon, just under two weeks from the time we called to ask.  In the intervening time, we assembled spiffy outfits.  We planned.  We drew pencil marks on the wall to graphically illustrate how tall 6'0" and 6'1" girls would be.  Our two other roommates thought we had gone off our rockers.

Finally the day came.  It was a gorgeous sunny September day in Manhattan, and we were to meet them in Central Park.  I had donned a lavender dress shirt, and we both had corduroy vests which we had purchased at the open air market on Orchard Street the previous weekend.  I think we had each doused ourselves with about half a bottle of Old Spice.  We went to the appointed large rock in Central Park and waited.  Of course, they never showed up.

What to do?  Of course, there were no cell phones, so we couldn't call to see if they'd gotten lost.  In the event, we took the subway down to FIT to see if they were in their room.  Maybe they had forgotten our date?  I don't remember how we got past the guard desk and the entrance to the FIT dorm (perhaps he remembered us from the year before), but we did. We rode the elevator up to the 8th Floor and knocked on the door to Room 814.  For a decently long while.  Of course, they were not there.  Probably, they had agreed to the date knowing that they'd both be out of the city that weekend.  Even then, I hoped that they hadn't had to skip town just to avoid meeting a couple of short guys.

We never bothered them after that. and they didn't call us.  As I began to write this memoir, it occurred to me for the first time that possibly they had lied to us about their heights and appearances.  Perhaps Pam and Tracy had actually been rotund little short girls.  I know we still would like to have met them.

If my memory serves me, we then headed down to McSoreley's Old Ale House.  There are very few wounds or sorrows that cannot be alleviated to some degree by sharing a few dark ales with a good friend.

Why The Church is Losing

As is our custom, my wife and I arrived at church about 10:25 am this morning, in anticipation of the 11:00 am worship service.  Our most excellent choir happens to practice their anthems in the nave at that time, and it is our habit to sit on the pew in the narthex to listen to their angelic singing.

At around 10:30, the first usher, Mr. J, came grumbling into view.

"Well, I guess it's hurry up and wait!  Just like in the Army.  They want us here at 10:30 am, but there's not a damn thing we can do until 10:45, when the choir is finished."  I think he may have addressed this to myself or my wife, but we both had our eyes closed so as to better focus on the voices of the choir.

Mr. J set to loudly jingling the change in his left trousers pocket, until another parishioner came up the stairs.
"Well, I guess it's hurry up and wait!  Just like in the Army.  They want us here at 10:30 am, but there's nothing we can do until 10:45, when the choir is finished. Heh heh."

The other parishioner also made no reply to Mr. J, but soon he had a third opportunity to make his little speech about the hardships of usher duty.  I believe that the third parishioner gave at least a grunt of acknowledgement in return.

As the choir concluded its rehearsal, it occurred to me why Christianity is losing traction in our culture.  It is Mr. J's fault.  Well, not just him, but those like him.  Those for whom fifteen minutes of standing in silence at the door to the nave to keep the choir from being interrupted is simply just TOO much to bear, an unthinkable burden.

Meanwhile, those whose religion makes them enemies of Christ are often willing to die for their religion.  I don't think you can defeat (or outpace) a religion whose adherents are wiling to die in its defense with one whose adherents think that showing up to church fifteen minutes early is in unspeakably horrible imposition.

Exothermic (Yet Another New Poem)

This morning, I wrote another poem for my wife.  This one is essentially intended as a "Nerd Remix" of the Song, "My Gal is Red Hot"  (see below).  I set two main rules for myself in writing this:  (1) I could not use the word "red"; and (2) I could not use the word "hot".

Exothermic

My gal is exothermic; yours is not.

Allow me to expand upon this thought:

She violates thermodynamic laws.

Her temperature would give Lord Kelvin pause.

She radiates both infrared and light,

And shimmers like a ruby in my sight.

Her aura is a bright photonic maelstrom

Of wavelength nearly 7000 Ångström.

Allow me to continue with my boast:

Her enthalpy of fusion is the most!

Her burning beauty your gal cannot touch.

(About her ΔS, I’ll not say much.)

My opening volley is my parting shot:

My gal is exothermic; yours is not!

© 2015, Paul W. Erlandson


Here is the song mentioned above:

Dividing By Zero (Another New Poem)

I've written another poem. This one, I'll dedicate to my wife Cindy (like most of them), but also to all the cool Math teachers everywhere.


Dividing By Zero 

To not divide by zero was the rule
My teacher taught in elementary school.
Upon you Something Bad must needs be wrought
The day you make denominators naught.

You cannot find that quotient if you try!
(She never would reveal the reason why.)
“It’s undefined,” she said, but what she meant
Was, “To define it, I’d need your Mom’s consent.”

She couldn’t speak of orgasms or anti-matter –
Too risqué the former, too arcane the latter.
And so she had no licit language to employ
In explanation of Divide By Zero joy.

But children do not stay in school forever,
So I went out with hot Numeric Fever,
Grabbing sundry numerators by the collar,
Dividing them by numbers smaller and smaller.

Until one day I divided my failure
By my wife’s negligible lack of valor.
We shot up like tan(x) at 1.57,
Far up off the graph, beyond the highest heaven.

So, all you grade school kids, don’t play the hero;
You must be THIS tall to divide by zero.


© 2015, Paul W. Erlandson

ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach says "Hey".

This is a big day in the life a humble Anglican layman such as myself.

There is an Orthodox Church Council happening in Atlanta, GA. A clergy friend of mine is attending. He texted me this, about bumping into a well-known Anglican there.

HOW COOL IS THAT?

July, 2015 Visit to Grace Church, Mt. Washington (Pittsburgh)

Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? * or who shall rise up in his holy place? 

Even he that hath All-Wheel Drive, and a stout motor; * and that hath not let his clutch foot to slip, nor sworn when his car hath rolled back at the stop sign.

Visiting my favorite Anglican parish church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania involves driving up a very steep hill on Sycamore Street.  And there is a stop sign for a cross street just at one of the steepest places.  So, when worshipping at Grace Church, Mt. Washington, it really does feel as if one is ascending into the hill of the Lord!

In fact, it feels as if one is being taken up into heaven.  And the reason for this is the best possible one:  that one actually is being taken up (if only for an hour or two) into heaven!

I've visited Grace Church before with my family, and it feels like heaven every time.  Everything about the church and its people makes us feel at home.  My visit today proved no exception to this rule.

I did make one mistake at the outset of this morning's worship, and that was not to grab hold of the little goldenrod sheet of paper that contained all of the Scripture readings, including the Psalm, which was chanted responsively.  But even this worked out for the best, since I had worn my voice out a bit on the processional hymn, and not having the Psalm in front of me gave my voice a needed break from singing, and the congregation a needed break from my voice!

The sermon, given by Fr. John Porter, focused on the Gospel lesson from St. Mark, the 6th Chapter.  It is St. Mark's account of the feeding of the five thousand.  At the reading of the Gospel, perhaps inspired by the amazing incense used at Grace Church, I noticed something about this story I'd never noticed before, and it was something rather comical.  Verses 31 through 33 tell the story:  

"And he said to them, 'Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while.' For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 

 And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves.

 Now many saw them going, and knew them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns, and got there ahead of them."

How did I never notice this before, the comedy of it?  The Lord of the Universe is simply trying to get some rest from the ceaseless round of crowds coming to see him, and he is thwarted (by his own creatures) in even that.  It is as if God the Father allows his Son to be outwitted, in a sense.  As I visualized it through the cloud of incense, it seemed to me like something out of a comedic silent movie, like a scene in a Chaplin or Harold Lloyd film.  Jesus and the Apostles trying to make their getaway, but being thwarted by people from all the surrounding towns racing on foot to beat them there, so that there were 5000 men in the "lonely place" by the time they got there!

To borrow (and highly modify) a phrase from a Lightnin' Hopkins song, "Travel on the heel is faster than travel on the keel."  (What Hopkins actually said was, "Rubber on the wheel is faster than rubber on the heel.")

Fr. Porter's sermon made several good points about the Gospel story, which I won't go into here, but soon it was time to "ascend into the hill of the LORD" for the Lord's feast.  I probably shouldn't focus on details like this, but one thing that helps a person of weak faith such as myself is when I am allowed to receive more than just a few molecules of consecrated wine from the chalice, and today I was granted a nice large swallow.  (Perhaps there was the suspicion that I had a particularly large number of sins to be washed away, but I rather think that this generosity was shown to all.)  In my 25 years as an Anglican, I've encountered quite a few chalice bearers who seem to take is as their Prime Directive to give as little of the wine as possible to those receiving.  I've never understood this phenomenon.  But that was certainly not the case here.

I should mention that there was a guest organist today (I did not get his name) who did a very fine job!

The entire worship experience, from start to finish, was a complete joy.

After the service, a coffee hour was held in the undercroft, after which a truly special treat was in store.  For today's Adult Spiritual Formation class, we learned about Anglican priest and poet George Herbert from J. D. Wright, a scholar in the study of Herbert and the Metaphysical Poets.  This was not only a great and very informative session, but it was spiritually very moving as well.

I can hardly wait to come back and visit Grace Church, Mt. Washington again!

Perspective

A woman was sitting outside the front window of my gym this morning. She looked just like Michael Moore. She was at least 100 pounds overweight, and she chain smoked the entire 40 minutes she sat there. Every so often, she would take a swig from a bottle of soda pop. Several times, she glanced inside the gym to see what we meatheads were doing in there. 

So, I started composing a mental blog ... likening her situation to those who remain outside the church. All the solutions to her problems (well, at least the problem of looking just like Michael Moore) were just a few feet away. But she would not come and join us. 

And then, because I've done a lot of laps around the track of life, I realized that her occasional glances were not looks of admiration, but of pity. She pitied us because we were breathing recycled air under a steel roof and tangle of ventilation pipes, while she breathed the fresh morning air under God's own sapphire pavement. We listened to horrid pop tunes and watched a poker tournament on a small TV while she heard the songs of the birds and watched the sunrise. We looked forward to a half cup of dry oats and 5 oz of dry chicken breast, while she had clearly feasted on the richest food the earth can offer. Yes, in her tobacco-incense-filled reverie ... she pitied us poor meatheads. 

And as she sat and smoked, she composed a mental blog about how we bodybuilders were like those who sat trapped in the world, unwilling to come out into the expansive universe of God's great love and beneficence. 

Perspective

Stars, Bars, and the Wrath of The Market

There has been a bit of hand-wringing and knee-jerking (mostly from folks in harmony with my own politics) about companies cleansing their shelves (virtual or real) of "Confederate flag" related merchandise. 

I myself was mostly astounded at the speed of the thing. It scared me. I don't like mob rule. But upon further reflection, these are simply wealthy corporations (which I love and defend) attempting to react to perceived (future) market forces.

All good companies do this. And with the world so inter-webbed and with worldwide communication causing news and trends to move with lightning speed, a company has to move nimbly to get out ahead of the coming wave of consumer wrath. In this environment, being perceived as having to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into conformity with The New Consensus (on any given subject) is a kind of economic suicide. 

The Market moves very quickly in our day. And haven't we (Right-minded people) always said to trust The Market? Yes, we have. And I do. It is possible that The Market shall punish eBay for disallowing the purchase of "General Lee" Dodge Charger car models. But, I don't expect so. 

In short, I can find no fault in these companies having done what they have done. There may be some fault elsewhere, which we can discuss if you like.

The Language of Privilege

At long last, I have identified what it is that really bugs me about the language of Privilege. You know, as in Male Privilege or White Privilege.

I mean, I already had two solid objections to it before my epiphany this morning.  For one thing, in practice it is mainly used to shut up white males.  If a Liberal has no substantive reply to a valid point made by someone who is white, male, or both, she merely has to reply with, "Check your privilege!"  Which roughly translates to:  "I haven't got any substantive answer for you, but you shut up, because your Privilege makes anything you say invalid."

Then, too, I have noticed that all the successful people who are from racial minorities or who are women have never achieved that success by wringing their hands about Privilege.  They either ignore it, or find a way past it.

But what I noticed this morning was something else, which may be the real reason so many object to the term.  And it has to do with where you draw the "zero line" for what is tolerable in the treatment of one human being (or set of human beings) by another.

For it the language of Privilege, simply being treated fairly or being left alone is labeled as Privilege, when clearly it should not be seen that way.  Being treated fairly should be the norm!  If you Google the phrase "examples of white privilege", you'll turn up links like this one.  And what are the examples given in these lists of White Privilege?

• Because of white privilege, you’ll never have to worry about becoming the victim of law enforcement officers.
• Thankfully, you’ll never have to know what it feels like to see your teenage son’s death being mocked.
• White privilege means not having to worry about your hair, skin color, or cultural accessories as the reason you didn’t get a job.
• White privilege means you don’t have to worry about being monitored in a store just because the hue of your skin is a bit darker than most.

Now hold on just one second here!  These are PRIVILEGES!?!?!  No, these are all things that didn't happen ...  they are non-entities, non-events.  It is not a privilege to not be beaten by police officers.  This is how everyone ought to be treated!  If some groups are not (and I don't dispute this fact), call it a crime against the injured parties, not a privilege for those who simply didn't get persecuted.



What are the effects of calling it Privilege to be simply left alone?

1.  Being mistreated is now the norm.  You are being treated better (given a privilege) if you are not mistreated.  This is no way to go through life looking at things.

2.  The "Privilege" is seen as the problem, and therefore solutions are implemented to punish those who have "Privilege."  But the fact that some people are not persecuted is not the problem:  the problem is that some are!  By this verbal shell game, those who use the language of Privilege have diverted attention from where it belongs (punishing those who persecute and mistreat members of groups they don't like) to a place where it does not belong (those who, minding their own business going about life, have the gall NOT to be persecuted.

Dylann Roof's Thievery

Much has been said and blogged about the tragic cost of the actions of racist mass-murderer Dylann Roof.  The cost in terms of human life and grief is incalculably large.

Dylann Roof stole joy and life from the people of this faith community.  

The family members of the nine Charleston Martyers handled this incredibly difficult situation with overcoming Christian love.

But Roof stole other things, too.  One thing he stole was the ability for us to easily trust one another.  Can you imagine being a member of an all black church, and having a white visitor come and join your church in worship?  What thoughts would go through your mind?  Would you not wonder if this visitor was the next in a series of Dylann Roofs?  You could not be blamed for thinking such a thing.  And it has a chilling effect on everyone involved.  The white visitor of good will may easily choose not to visit, not wanting to scare anyone.

When I was a grad student at Purdue University, I sometimes visited a small C.O.G.I.C. (Church of God in Christ) parish, which was 100% African-American.  It afforded me the opportunity to worship with brothers and sisters in Christ in a way that was outwardly very much different than the Dutch Reformed-style worship of my own home church at that time.

I profited from attending there.  But today, in the wake of the Charleston church murders, could I even visit that church?  I don't think I could.  Not for a long time, anyhow.  It wouldn't be fair to the parish to distract them from their worship of Almighty God, wondering about the Other in their midst.

Time can heal some wounds.  But not if men like Dylann Roof keep ripping them open.

1962 Mercury Meteor - New Exhaust, 2-Tone steelies, & M/T Drag Radials!

We've made a few improvement to our 1962 Mercury Meteor, in anticipation of a few cars show, but mostly in anticipation of the 2015 Michigan Gumball Rally!  We'll be #62!

My Daughter's First Time Drag Racing!

I suppose it is a sort of rite of passage in our family.  When you get to a certain age, you head down to the drag strip and make some passes.

This is my 17-year-old daughter Violet on her first day at the drag strip, piloting her 2005 V-6 Mustang.  I'm proud of her!

A New Poem - Wifely Beauty

I was finishing up my leg workout in the gym today, and thinking about how it is that my wife keeps getting more and more beautiful to me as the years go by.  It seems to be some really deep magic in operation.  And then, the basis of this poem came to me.

Wifely Beauty

What if all women have beauty sublime?
And what if all men are quite blind?
And what if the scales will not fall from our eyes
Until after the covenant’s signed?

And what if her beauty, unseen until wived,

Is hidden until you give plight?

And what if that covenant, faithfully lived,

Is the balm that will strengthen your sight?

In that case, my son, I suggest that you vow,

That you promise, commit, swear, and yield.
And do not seek beauty to cause you to love;
But love, and see beauty revealed.

©2015, Paul Erlandson

Down Syndrome as Superpower

I remember when Down Syndrome used to be considered a disorder or a defect.

The March of Dimes apparently still thinks so:
"Down syndrome is a chromosomal disorder that includes a combination of birth defects."

But recently, to my great surprise, two very trusted Anglican priest friends each posted this meme with an Albert Mohler quote, which paints Down Syndrome as something that makes one infinitely more beautiful than other people.  It is in fact (according to Mohler's logic) something of a superpower.



I'm not sure that I trust a Southern Baptist to define or delineate the Christian worldview for me.  But this quote is wrongheaded any way you look at it.

Can any one person be "infinitely more beautiful" than another human being, when we are all made in the image of God?  Mohler robs cover models of the Imago Dei.

"But," someone will object, "surely he is focusing on the airbrushing, and not the model."

Doubtful.   But let us yield, for sake of argument, that airbrushing blurs or mars the image of God in us.  Do not aging, incapacity, defect, and disability mar it also?  The God whose right arm is not shortened cannot be perfectly modeled by a man whose birth defect is to have no arms.  The God who sees all cannot be perfectly reflected by a blind man.  But just as these defects do not take away the image of God from the disabled, so airbrushing away of wrinkles does not take away the image of God from a cover model.  Or, it ought not.  It apparently does for Mohler.  How else to explain the fact that another human being is "infinitely more beautiful" than she is?

It's a funny thing about blindness.  When Jesus confronted it, he healed it.  He did not stop, upon seeing a blind man, and say:  "Behold, a blind man!  His face is infinitely more beautiful than the faces of the sighted."  No.  He saw a defect, and he fixed it.  He healed it.  He remedied it.  He undid it and reversed it, like the effect of the Fall that it really is.

Would Jesus heal the defect (only quoting from the March of Dimes, mind you!) we call Down Syndrome?  I say he would.  Moher must say no, because to do so would be to rob that individual of infinite beauty!

In sharp contrast to the spirit of Mohler's quote, I was always taught that the Christian worldview demands that we "love the unlovely."  And now that Mohler has informed me that airbrushed cover models are the unloveliest people of all ... I intend to dedicate the remnant of my life to loving them.

A New Movie - Killing Poe

A friend of mine, Nathan A. Jacobs, has directed a new film, Killing Poe.





Take a look at the trailer!

A Real Live Flannery O'Connor Character!

You never know what or who you will find on facebook.  This morning, I found a real live Flannery O'Connor character.  His peculiar concoction of God-hauntedness and sin-blindness was amazing, and I ended up reading his entire timeline.  I will call him Dwayne (not his real name).

Consider a few facts about him, and try to make them all fit into one person:

1.  He talks about his own recent failed suicide attempt.  He failed this time (if he even really attempted it), but promises to do better in future.

2.  For several hours in a row, he posts the one photo he possesses of himself and his (ex?) wife, begging her to "come home".  Because he is lonely.  Because he is horny.  Because he is so incredibly needy.

3.  Worked at:  Disabled.  Studied at:  Didn't.

4.  Frequent admonitions (to us readers, or to himself?) to "pray."

5.  Blames the "dirty, nasty cops" for breaking up his home.

6.  Says the cops run the church.

7.  Says all Christians are mean.

8.  Has about 3 dozen facebook Friends, all of them are scantily clad women half his age.

9.  Says he "really needs to get stoned."

10.  States that people need to be nice to crazy people, because he is right on the edge, and if people don't learn to treat him nice, some people are going to get hurt.

11.  Can't spell to save his life (e.g., cercomstances for circumstances, camit for commit)

12.  Posts memes with Scripture verses.

13.  Claims to be a defender of the downtrodden, especially strippers and models.

14.  Posts memes about trusting God.

15.  Says that Jesus is a whore who has stabbed him in the back.

16.  Claims he is going crazy without his wife, then adds request for his wife to bring him cigarettes at the loony bin.

17.  Posts the pic of him and his wife (for the hundredth time), pleading for her to come home.  Then immediately posts a photo of "my favorite model" in a bikini, seductively pulling down her bikini bottom.  Mixed messages?

Well, you get the idea.  He's not very bright, but he's very angry.  His career, for a long time apparently, has been to be Disabled.  Lack of productive work will do terrible things to a person.  We may think it's great collecting money we didn't work for, but it rots us from the inside out.  Deep inside, we know we are slackers.  Deep inside, we know the wife is very wise to stay away.  But we need someone to lash out at.  So we befriend pretty models on the internet, hoping that one of them will make the mistake of getting close enough to hurt her and (maybe) make the anger go away for a moment.

I start off trying to be very compassionate to such people.  But you can tell from his Timeline that a lot of people have already tried that (the church, women, law enforcement, Jesus).  He rejects them all.  They are all losers; only he is vindicated out of all humanity.  Compassion is sadly lost on such a person.  In the Bible stories (e.g., the sinful woman washing Christ's feet), there is a difference.  They had shady pasts, but in the present, they admit their wrongness, and own up to their own wretched dirtiness.

But what is one to do with one who has sinned more than any of them, but holds his head up high, strutting like a peacock in his pride?  Who (unlike the humble man in the story of the publican and the sinner) confesses sin, but only the sin of others against him?  Such a man is very like some of the characters in C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, who instead of merely doing sin, have in the final end become their sin.

My Martyrdom, Booty Pics, and the Musée des Beaux Arts

Bear with me, and I will show you how these three things are related.

Let's begin with my possible (future, of course) martyrdom.  Everyone who cares already knows that the "Islamic State" just martyred 21 Coptic Christians in the name of Allah and of Islam.  I won't link to the video of the beheadings; I suppose that anyone who wanted to see that has already done so by now.

I used to read a magazine called Touchstone - A Journal of Ecumenical Orthodoxy.  I enjoyed it quite a lot until I realized that what some of the editors meant by "Ecumenical Orthodoxy" was that all Protestants and Catholics must convert to the Eastern church.  I even had several cartoons of mine published in this journal.

One time, perhaps 20 years ago, I attended a conference held by Touchstone in Chicago.  Nearly all the speakers predicted a coming wave of martyrdom for the church.  Triumphalist Reconstructionist that I was at the time, I thought to myself, "To hell with that!"  I rejected the notion.  But it is now clear that they were right and I was wrong.

So now I come to look at the martyrdom of these Coptic Christians, and to look forward to my own possible martyrdom.  In the past, I've always liked the quote from a Flannery O'Connor character (in A Temple of the Holy Ghost), who opined that, "she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."  But the martyr-makers don't always give us that luxury.  And so I picture myself at the moment of death, picked out for especially inhuman treatment because of the large and glowing Christ tattoo on my back.  I wonder if I'll go calmly.  But I also wonder what the world will think.

Or, anyhow, I used to wonder.  Now I know.  I know from watching the internet response to the brutal murders of the 21 Copts.  Most people of good will are shocked and saddened, of course.  But, we go on.  We get past it, and mostly pretty easily.  And I had reason to know this, even before watching the response to recent ISIS murders.  In the 1974-75 school year, I took AP English, and our teacher spent a day on W. H. Auden's poem, Musée des Beaux Arts.  It is a very important poem, as I am learning.  It has much to teach us, none of which I really comprehended back in 11th Grade.


Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W. H. Auden

And so I know just how my martyrdom will go.  There will be a nice, high-definition video of the thing, and a lot of good people will post in on facebook and elsewhere on the internet.  And other well-intentioned people will click the "Like" button beneath the video, presumably not Like-ing the fact that I've been offed, but rather to thank the person who posted it.  And then, just as the figures in Breughel's Icaraus, they will move past it, to the next item in the facebook feed.  Maybe it will be a macaroni-and-cheese recipe.  Or possibly a meme about the opposite political party.

But I think it highly likely it will be a booty pic, a sexy female derriere, in tight yoga pants.  A most fitting stand-in for Auden's horse, scratching "its innocent behind on a tree."  And the soul who just recently mourned my passing at the hands of the jihadists shall click "Like" on this magnificent photo, and pass on.  It's what we humans do in the face of suffering.  And I'm kind of okay with that.

More Paul-Hating from the Arch-heretic.

I can't believe I wasted 14 minutes of my Sunday listening to the Archheretic preach. But I did.

If you skip to 6:45, you can hear her explain why St. Paul had a completely wrong attitude in Acts 9:22 - "Saul became increasingly powerful and confounded the Jews, by proving that Jesus was the Messiah."

"Yet the sad reality is that others soon began to tell his story as one of reversal, of trading violence toward one group for power plays over his own people. What originated in an expanded awareness of truth gets narrowed down again to a tale of winners and losers."

"That's the story told by a people who still feel afraid and anxious. See how powerful our leader is? How thoroughly he conquers the unbelieving?"

She goes on to say how it is not Christ-like to be successful at apologetics.

Barf.

Steve Works Out (obsolete novel chapter)

This was to have been a chapter in my (as yet unpublished) novel, Love $ick.  But it became evident that the character Steve did not contribute to moving the story forward, so he ended up on the editing room floor.  Since I won't be using the chapter, I thought that I would share it with you all.

Steve Works Out

"TGIF", Steve thought, as he dressed to go to the gym.

Everybody liked Steve.  What was not to like?  He had a good car, a good physique, a good head of hair, a good job, and no major vices to speak of.  And he had the gift of gab.  It was the greatest weapon in his arsenal.  Everybody liked it when Steve talked, everyone!  Other lifters in the gym, colleagues at work, random supermarket shoppers, postal clerks, waitresses, literally everyone.

It was partly his deep, mellifluous voice, of course.  But it was more than that.  It was his easy facility with words, his eagerness, and his general joviality.  He knew how to put his listeners at ease.  He knew how to tell a story, too.  Timing was everything, and he had a great sense of timing.  He could also read a room better than anyone else he'd known.  He could work a crowd.  He'd even considered a career in politics, where he could have put these talents to better use.

Today was chest day for Steve.  He had chest day and arm day.  They were really the only two body parts he cared about.  He cared about arms and chest because he knew that chicks liked pecs and biceps.  There was no need to waste precious physical resources training legs.  How many times did he go into a bar with shorts on?  That's right, never.  Who cared if his legs were a bit spindly.  He could set his jaw, puff out his chest, and the cuties would come running.  It had always been this way, and he planned to keep it this way.

Steve downed a quick protein shake, pulled a sweatshirt over his head, and palmed the keys to the pride of his life:  a dark maroon Chevrolet Trailblazer SS.  His Trailblazer made him feel better than every other man in the gym.  Hell, better than every other man on the planet!  It was going to be a great day.  And, then, tomorrow was Saturday.

"Live for the weekend," was another motto of Steve's.

He would begin his Saturday by detailing the SS.  But now he turned the key, brought it roaring to life, and backed out of his driveway.  Steve lived in a little rental house, split into two units, each with its own driveway.  He didn't have a lot of stuff, so he didn't need much space.

"The girls can't see my place from the bar, anyhow.  But they can see the Trailblazer in the parking lot!", Steve mused, punching the throttle.

The SUV scooted happily down the street toward Steve's gym, the Body Blast.  He parked it in his regular space, all the way in the far corner of the lot, so that it could never have a chance of receiving a ding from the door of the vehicle of some mere mortal.  It was well worth the extra hundred paces to the door of the gym, to keep his baby pristine.

Steve winked to Kristi, the morning desk girl at the Body Blast.  Kristi really liked him, he knew.  They had sometimes talked for more than two hours.  She never got tired of listening to Steve talk and dispense fitness advice.  He would just chat with her a few minutes this morning, to keep her up to date on his life and workout progress.

He headed for the locker room.  His ritual here was very precise, and he allowed himself no deviation, no matter how slight.  He placed his lock in a certain orientation on the bench, set his gym bag down just so.  He unloaded it in a precise order.  He gave himself three generous splashes of Aramis cologne.  It made him feel powerful.  He even imagined that he could get a few extra reps with the cologne.  His next step, after stripping down to his boxers, was to admire his physique in the full length mirror at the end of the row of lockers.  This was an important passage in his liturgy, and it occurred twice: once when changing into his workout gear, and a second time just before showering.

Steve looked himself up and down in the mirror.

"Handsome devil," he thought.

He noticed some belly fat, at the front and sagging around the sides of his abdomen, but he gave it little attention.

"It's not fat," he assured himself.  "I'm just holding a little water, that's all."

He donned his workout gear, laced the left and then the right shoe (it didn't feel right doing it in the opposite order), and fastened his leather lifting belt around his waist.  He tightened it two notches tighter than snug, to hold in his waistline.  He needed to present his best image, especially in the gym.  All the lifters were always jealously checking each other out, even if they would never admit it.  Every male in the gym felt a  rush of exhilaration when he spotted someone punier than himself.  And every man felt a horrible, disabling despair when he spotted a gym member more muscular than himself.

In some men, this despair took on such severe physical manifestations that they felt the blood draining away from their muscles, felt they would faint, and had to cut short their planned workouts.

Others, however, had developed coping mechanisms to deal with the possibility of meeting superior male specimens in the gym.  Steve had this mechanism in place.  It had several layers of programming, and is best illustrated using the following flow chart.

This is, of course, a simplification of the Steve's mental process.  In reality, there are more decision points.  For example, he can declare his rival an inferior specimen if one body part can be seen to be clearly undeveloped.

"That guy has no traps whatsoever!  What a pencilneck!"

As he got ready to step out of the men's locker room, Steve checked his posture, puffed out his chest, and pulled his shoulders back.  He held his clenched fists at his sides, about a foot to either side of his hips, to make himself appear wider.  He was ready.  He pushed the locker room door open with a firm blow to the stainless steel plate on it, and nearly knocked over a scrawny man in his thirties.  The man was startled, and cowered a bit until Steve had marched past him.  He looked back over his shoulder at Steve, as he was entering the locker room.

"Loser!"  Steve muttered to himself.

He proceeded to his home-away-from-home, the flat bench press station.  It was one of two in this gym, not counting the Smith machines, and they were in high demand.  He hated it if he had to wait for someone.  Sometimes, he had even stormed out of the gym and skipped a workout if both benches were taken.  But both were available this morning.

He slipped a 45-pound plate over each cylindrical end of end of the Olympic bar.  Forty-five pounds for the bar, plus ninety pounds for the two plates, made 135 pounds, his warm-up weight.  He positioned himself on the bench and looked up at the weight.  Even with a light weight like this, Steve did a lot of preliminary huffing and puffing before carefully grabbing the bar at the exact place on the knurling.  He pounded out fifteen very rapid repetitions, with nearly full range of motion.  He brought the bar down all the way to touch his chest on each rep, but did not go all the way up at the top.  Close, but not quite full reps.

He let the barbell clang down onto its resting posts, and jumped to his feet victoriously.  It was going to be a good workout, he could tell.  He loaded another 45 on each side of the barbell, and then celebrated the good warmup set by walking to the front desk to chat with Kristi.

"Miss me?" he asked?

Kristi smiled at him with what he took to be a very sweet smile, but said nothing.  Steve knew it was his signal that she was lonely and wanted to talk.

In actuality, Kristi's tortured smile was a prayer for help, for deliverance from this loudmouth and his gift of gab.  He tortured her every day this way, and if she had not feared losing her job, she'd have long ago told him to take all his talk and shove it.  But she couldn't do that.  She had to be polite.  A careful observer of the smile in question would have looked not only at her mouth, but at her eyes, filled with fear, pleading:  "Please, please go away, you wretched old man!"

But this was not a message Steve was inclined to accept.  Besides, he had some really good stories about cars he had raced on the street with his Trailblazer.  After those, he would tell her some more of his old football stories.  They were always a hit with the desk girls.  After that, they could talk about country music for a while.

Kristi's eyes glazed over.  She thought about the routine maintenance tasks she was supposed to be taking care of at this moment:  vacuuming the carpet, cleaning the restrooms, and moving stray weight plates back to their proper positions on the weight trees.  This guy's constant talk was really setting her back.  At this rate, she'd have to stay after her shift to get all her tasks checked off.  Couldn't he see that she was not interested?

No, he could not.  One of Steve's other weapons, along with the Gift of Gab, was a defensive one.  It was the Inability to take a Hint.  It served him well.  It was only on extremely rare occasions that anyone would say anything explicit to him, asking him to alter his behavior.  Almost always, they dropped hints.  But he did not have the ability to pick up on hints.  Or, rather, he had a useful and powerful inability to take hints.  This was a beauty thing:  it allowed him to maintain his original course of action in nearly every situation, unimpeded by the thoughts and feelings of others.

It was 42 minutes before he returned to the bench press, his 225-pound Olympic barbell still waiting for him.  He lay on the bench and performed another set.  This time it was ten slower, more controlled repetitions, still not going all the way up at the top of each rep.  He racked the weight, stood up, and reached for his water bottle.  He loosened his leather belt between sets, to give him the ability to breathe a little more deeply.  His eyes scanned the perimeter of the gym, looking for the next person to talk to.  He saw Philip.

"Phil, baby!"  he called over to where Philip was in the middle of a set of T-bar rows.  "Lift big or stay home!"

He chuckled loudly to signal to Philip that he was in a good mood and therefore, Philip was also required to be in a good mood.

Philip was a very knowledgeable nutrition expert in the field of fitness and bodybuilding, but he had a quiet, understated personality.  Though he knew fifty times as much as Steve, it was always Steve who advise Philip on dietary matters.  It was strictly a matter of Steve being a completely confident blowhard, and Philip's time being too precious to him to bother correcting Steve's every clueless statement.  He saw the path of least resistance as being:  feigning interest, nodding his head, and then excusing himself to do the next set.

This was not always completely efficacious, however.   Steve often stood alongside Philip while Philip performed his next set, still talking about his latest theories.  Philip took it all graciously, as far as any visible signs showed.  But inside, he was seething.  Early on in their lopsided relationship, this had ruined many sets of cable rows, squats, pulldowns, calf raises, incline presses, laterals, and leg curls.  But, then, he'd gone through a paradigm shift.  It happened during a set of wide grip pulldowns.  Philip was trying to concentrate on his latissimus muscles, to feel them as he moved through the full range of motion of the exercise.  He had a death grip on the iron bar that hung suspended from a cable.  The cable ran over a pulley at the top of the machine, and attached to a stack of weights.  The stack of weights could be anything from 10 pounds to 250 pounds, depending upon where a pin was inserted between consecutive weight plates in the stack.  When the pin was set for a lesser weight, there was a polished steel shaft with a pointed end that was visible below the weight stack when you pulled down on the bar to lift the stack.  The end of the shaft was pointed to help guide it back through the holes in the unused plates.

Philip had been working out with 140 pounds when the new idea came to him.  Steve had been chattering at him about distilled water and positive nitrogen balance, and Philip's blood was boiling.  He suddenly had a vision of Steve's fat head, sitting on its side atop the unused weights.  Each time he lowered the 140-pound stack, he pictured in his mind the pointed steel shaft plunging through Steve's head, sending blood everywhere, and leaving Steve's mute tongue lolling out of the lower side of his mouth.

It was a powerful vision, and Steve's incessant nutrition and workout lectures only enhanced its power.  Somehow, the momentary imagination of Steve's head pierced by the one-inch shaft gave him a superhuman strength for the next downward pull on the bar.  The 140 pound stack fairly flew up to the top of the apparatus.  At the end of this set, Philip bumped the weight up to 180 pounds, more than he had ever used to that point.  Steve kept up his monologue, Philip kept visualizing Steve's head being impaled, and ten perfect, clean reps were accomplished.

This was the paradigm shift.  Philip had packed on five pounds of solid muscle since he had begun to impale Steve with the weight stack shafts.  Of course, variations had to be devised for free weight exercises, but Philip's mind was nimble, and he found plenteous ways to link his lifting performance to the successful dismemberment and silencing of Mr. Gift of Gab.

He still would have preferred never to have heard Steve's voice again, but this new inspiration Steve gave him, and the muscle derived from it, was certainly among the best silver linings he'd ever found behind any dark cloud.

Steve was oblivious to all of this.  He reasoned that his pal Phil kept silence because it was simply the proper thing to do in the presence of a superior.  His physique and knowledge, he felt, were far superior to Phil's.  But he would help Phil catch up to him … a little bit.  Never all the way.

Soon, it was time for his next set of bench presses.  He added a 25-pound plate to each end of the bar, bringing its total weight to 275 pounds.  The increased weight required that he perform more gyrations on the bench, making sure that his back was symmetrically located, and that his hands were not even one millimeter off to either side of their appointed places on the knurling of the Olympic bar.  If he doubted his hand placement, he took both hands off and started again.  He wiggled his but to get it centered on the bench.  Finally, he was in position.

Steve took eight deep, rapid breaths to fill his bloodstream with oxygen.  He unracked the weight.  At this weight, his form was different.  He bounced the weight off his sternum at the bottom, using his ribcage as a spring to reverse the momentum of the falling bar.  For the first three reps, he was able to keep his butt on the bench and get the weight up.  But beginning with the fourth rep, he arched his back and lifted his butt off the bench, to bring his stronger lower pectoral muscles into play.  He managed five reps in all.  That was Steve's chest workout.

He headed over to the treadmill.  He punched in his desired speed and incline, along with his body weight.  He added ten pounds to the body weight number, because it made the automatic calorie counter go up faster, which made him happy.  He walked briskly for two minutes, jogged at a quicker rate for one minute, and then did a two minute cooldown walk.

He paced to the men's locker room, making sure to hold his fists out from his side to make himself look wide.  He puffed up his chest.  He loved chest day.  He showered and shaved at the gym, and put his work clothes on.  The world was his oyster.

1955 Cadillac Print for Sale!

I completed this oil painting of a 1955 Cadillac near the end of 2013, and it is now available as a Limited Edition print (100 prints total).














Here is the link to purchase the print on ebay.  The cost is $30, shipped to anywhere in the United States.

2014 Michigan Gumball Rally Video!

My son Eliot and I went on the 2014 Michigan Gumball Rally in our supercharged 2003 Mercury Marauder.  We had a blast!

This video summary of the 3-day event captures some of the fun, including Eliot driving on a 1/4 mile paved oval stock car track, me drag racing (and beating) a Shelby Super Snake, and Eliot doing the cool burnout right at the beginning of this video.  Also, see if you can spot the close-up of our boost gauge, which makes an appearance later in the video.