Introducing ... the Jetfire Guitar!!!

All the way back in April, 2008, my son Eliot Erlandson drew out a quick pencil sketch for a guitar we wanted to build together.  We knew it had to be a kind of "Jetson's" type of retro look ... maybe it could look like a rocket or something.

Then, too, we knew we would build it based on some hardware (bridge, tremelo, and pickups) from Hallmark Guitars, since I own two Hallmarks, and love the way they sound.  Other than that, we didn't constrain ourselves too much.  We wanted a solid-body electric with two single-pole pickups, with the body being out of mahogany.

Here are some photos from our eight-year journey (in fits and starts) to get this concept of Eliot's brought into reality.  Today, it is a gorgeous, very playable electric guitar (videos to come!) with a gorgeous Candy Magenta paint job using House of Kolor automotive paint.

Routing out the body ...

Eliot cut the body shape out with a band saw ...

The plan all along was to have all the electronics mounted to a fairly large pickguard, and we stuck to that plan ...

Finally, the big day came, and we had the beast painted by Clifton Darnell of Darnell Rod & Kustom.  Fabulous!  When the sun hits this baby, it shatters your retinas!

Changing the Way I Pray

I'm changing the way I pray for people. In the past, I generally prayed for good things to happen to good people, for good people to be delivered from their troubles, and for bad things to happen to bad people (Oh, don't pretend to be shocked! David did this all the time in the Psalms.).

But there are drawbacks to my old way of praying. One of them is that I first have to determine which people I am praying for are in need of benediction, and which in need of malediction. It's a lot of calculation, with scant amounts of data, and well ... when you get right down to it, we're all worthy of God's curse.

So, I've adapted the words of absolution from the Holy Communion service in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and I pray it for all of the people in my life: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I pray this:

Have mercy upon [them]; pardon and deliver [them] from all [their] sins; confirm and strengthen [them] in all goodness; and bring [them] to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

There are 6 petitions here:

(1)  That God would have mercy on the people for whom we pray.  We all need this.

(2)  For bad people (sinners) to be pardoned for their sins.  Of course this implies with it conversion to Christ as a necessary condition for forgiveness.

(3)  That these same bad people (all of us, I suppose) would be delivered from their sins.  Think about it.  Visualize your worst earthly enemy, and then imagine that person being delivered from all of his/her sins.  Wouldn't that be great?   Some of them (us) would scarcely be recognizable!

(4)  For those of us who have some good in us, that this good would be confirmed in us.

(5)  That the good in people would be strengthened.

(6)  That the object of our prayer would be brought to eternal life in Christ.

No longer do I have to calculate the goodness or badness of a person before praying.  This prayer covers it all.  Behold, the genius of the historic Book of Common Prayer!