I wrote this poem today, after starting on a painting of this model last night.
To My Model
This deathly space your body penetrates, This void between the markers' marbled weights. Sorrow, grief, and tears on tender cheek bones, Soften faces of impassive grave stones.
Your limbs enact the passions of my heart, Your face shows the intentions of my art. You toss your hair about you, fling it free, Like chains of some medieval weaponry.
And on the stone of one who, too young, met his fate, Commemorate death's dance a century too late With stately kinematic energy, Then fall to ground from spritely apogee.
And now the shadows, lengthening apace, Remind us of the transience of this grace. I whisper benediction on my knees, And watch you standing taut against the breeze.
I do an awful lot of worrying. I worry about money. I worry about the souls of friends and relatives who have left the Faith. I worry about Socialists taking over our once-great nation. I worry about Sharia law. I worry about the insane clutter of my basement and garage. I worry about this widespread acceptance of homosexual sex, and the attendant loss of souls for eternity. I worry about my cars breaking down. Will my children make it in the world? What kind of a world will they face? Will their faith endure and carry them through? Will my wife stay married to me, even though I'm a jerk? Will I ever get over the injuries that keep me out of the gym?
But every so often (and this doesn't happen as often as it should), I just get hit with the reality that none of this can ultimately touch me. Even if the forces of evil capture worldly institutions or churches, even if I never get my act together, God still loves me:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I'm not saying that I am going to ever become unconcerned about the affairs of this world. But I am saying that nothing in this world can touch God's salvation of me through the power of Jesus Christ and his Gospel. That is forever, and it doesn't depend upon me being a "good guy" or successfully stemming the rising tide of evil in the world. I ought to relax a bit, knowing that I shall have eternity to spend with my Lord.
But the Gospel urges us on to take action, and if I am not careful, this eventually becomes a kind of semi-Pelagian false "gospel", in which my own works play the deciding role in my eternal destiny. It is so easy to fall into this, because it is the natural bent of the entire world. I love this Jefferson Airplane song, Good Sheperd. But, the lyrics are about salvation based on works. There is a list of things you must do "if you want to get to heaven":
If you want to get to heaven
Over on the other shore
Stay out of the way of the blood-stained bandit ...
... Stay out of the way of the long-tongue liar ...
... Stay out of the way of the gun shot devil.
It's a lot to worry about. But the true Gospel bids me instead to rest in Christ's finished work. Will I do it? I hope so. I still worry a lot. But every so often, unexpectedly, the phenomenal promise of God's grace in the true Gospel come and hit me with full force, and I am at peace. It doesn't matter if President Obama gets re-elected; I am safe in the arms of God.
I heard a story on the radio this morning to the effect that today's teens would choose internet access over having a car. The content was very similar to that found in this article.
I suppose this should not have shocked me, but it did. Fewer teens are learning to drive, and are finding that the internet can take them most of the places they want to go.
My assumption, as I listened to the radio bit, was that I myself would by an infinite margin choose the automobile over internet access. But on further reflection, I believe I only imagined that to be the case because it has been so long since I have really gone without internet access that I can hardly imagine it. What I now think is that both the automobile and internet access are indispensible for modern life, and that I really would not wish to do without either. With this in mind asking someone whether he'd sooner go without a car or internet access is a bit like asking which he'd rather go without, water or fire. I mean, ideally you "need" both of them. One doesn't replace the other; they do different things.
Still, this shift away from getting one's driver's license at the earliest moment possible is something I cannot relate to in any way. This is because I think of automobiles as creatures of such majesty (well, okay, only the older ones) that I cannot imagine not wanting to get behind the wheel as soon as possible!
To be sure, internet access now affords one the sort of freedom that driving did back in the day. This sort of freedom is a major theme in Flannery O'Connor's brilliant novel Wise Blood.
Hazel Motes: I don't remember this here interstate. Weren't nothin' but a dirt road once.
Truck Driver: I t ain't been here about a year. Just long enough for everybody to drive off on it. There ain't practical ly nobody left i n Eastrod or Melsy. They al I done took out for the city.
The automobile allowed one to move outside of the restrictively small world in which one was raised. The internet now does this to an even greater degree. In fact, it seems not at all unnatural to reword Hazel's most famous dictum (Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.) in modern terms as:
Nobody with a good internet connection needs to be justified.
I began to think about all that the internet and easily available personal computers have done for us. We can use it to order a pizza delivered to our front door. It can bring us an infinite variety of beautiful images with only tiny motions of our fingertips. With careful use, the internet can make us wise. And aren't these the things we've always wanted?
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. (Genesis 3:6)
I'm not trying to say that the internet is sin, but rather to explain why today's teens might prefer it to the glory that is the automobile.
I do think that to some degree, the automobile has been and will continue to be marginalized by the PC and the internet. It is, after all, "old tech", originating over 100 years ago. But what I hope is that as people stop customizing, adoring, loving, and driving their cars, the folks who do continue to be "car people" will band together and do this with ever greater passion.
As I say, I will leave that for you to ponder, because I have weightier matters on my mind. I mean hot rods! As with Prohibition, government constraints on auto manufacturers (I know, I work for one) have forced them more and more to produce bland, overly-safe, overly-quiet, transportation appliances ... the very opposite thing of what a hot rod has always been. As the new, draconian CAFE standards come into effect there will be, to the minds of many, no new cars worth owning or driving.
And this is where the Old School (a.k.a., Ol' Skool) rodder will begin to shine. Because the need for hot rods, the glory of hot rods ... these are things that will not be denied. If Chesterton's cocktail theory is accurate, increasing government restrictions will only make the fires of automotive love burn hotter in the hearts of customizers and hot rod fabricators. And I believe that you can already see this happening. Behold, the impractical, loud, danger-defying creature that is Aaron Grote's Atomic Punk.
So your fan appears to be "slipping" sometimes, not rotating at the full speed of the water pump pulley ... what to do?
Simple! Just weld the fan clutch bolts to the drive hub. Fixed!
This "repair" was found on the fan of the 1963 Buick 215 Aluminum motor we bought on ebay. The right way to do this (assuming the fan clutch was even broken!) is to purchase a replacement fan clutch. The clutch is designed to slip for a reason!
On our way back from picking up the engine, we were driving north through Kentucky on I-75, trying to find the NASCAR race on the radio, when we heard this preacher. In our estimation, he was not an Anglican.
When I realized that my son and I would be trekking to North Carolina to pick up the motor and transmission he bought on ebay, I looked at what Anglican contacts I had in the area. It was to be a weekend trip, so we hoped to visit an Anglican parish on Sunday morning before heading back to Detroit.
We ended up visiting St. Luke's Anglican Parish in Landrum, South Carolina. It is only a few miles from the North Carolina border, and so did not involve a huge amount of extra travel. Our friend, Fr. Peter Geromel, is the Vicar at St. Luke's.
The parish meets at Landrum Presbyterian Church (see photos below), which was easy to find. Our visit was on the Third Sunday in Lent.
The service was that of Holy Communion, from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, by the book, with no funny stuff, which I really appreciated. The 1928 BCP is still what I am most at home with, and it was great to worship by it once again.
I didn't get an exact count of those present, not wanting to turn around to count those behind us, but I would say that we numbered about 30 souls.
We sang one of my favourite Lenten hymns for the Sermon Hymn, which was #61 (The Hymnal 1940), The Glory of These Forty Days.
The sermon itself was given by the Rector Emeritus, Fr. Frederick Holck, and was very helpful to me in my Lenten journey. Fr. Holck opened by stating that the foundation of any Lenten discipline must be that it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us, and that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. He warned about treating Lent as a mere appendage to an unchanged life, as if we were to put a small patch of new cloth onto a worn and threadbare garment. It is our entire lives which must be changed, and without this, adding or subtracting things as Lenten "disciplines" is of little use. What matters is a new creation (new fabric from top to bottom), and meeting Christ is a life-changing experience, Fr. Holck told us.
I wondered about my own life and devotion. Sometimes it does seem as if my Christian faith and worship are merely things I have added on (as I would add one more hobby) to my life, and that perhaps I have wandered from the devotion which I once had. It was a sobering thought, and I sat through the sermon very convicted, staring at the gnarled tree in the window (see photo above).
Fr. Holck told a great story to illustrate what the wrong kind of Lenten devotion looks like, one which does not change our core. His story was of a Catholic priest in New York City, who was heading to the rectory after mass when he was held up at gunpoint. As he opened his jacket to reach his wallet, the thief became distressed at seeing the priest's clerical collar. "I did not know I was robbing a priest!", he said, and offered repeated and profuse apologies. The priest, seeing the distress of the young man, offered him a piece of candy, in an effort to calm him. The thief's reply was telling: "Reverend Father! I do not eat the candies in Lent!!"
And so it is with us who add Lent as a mere appendage to our "same old" lives.
I always give "extra credit" to any parish which does not have the Passing of the Peace, and St. Luke's earns full marks for this.
In all, a very profitable way to spend a Sunday, and a highly recommended place to "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness".
I used to be quite the Lynyrd Skynrd fan, starting around the age of 15. I still am, I suppose. They go over the same sort of material, with the same sound, multiple times. Some might even say that they made essentially the same record several times over. Maybe, but it is a very good record.
I had either forgotten or underestimated, however, how much of a Skynyrd fan my 17-year-old son is. We were tooling northward up through Kentucky when this gem came on the radio, and we both loved it, grooving on the great guitar work:
What a great track. Yes, the worldview leaves something to be desired, buy my son and I are precisely agreed about that, too.
We talked about the group some more, and then it occurred to me to tell him how when I lived in NYC, I had this exact Lynyrd Skynyrd belt buckle. The photo really does not do justice to it; it absolutely sparkled, like a red glass taillamp lens on a shoebox Ford.
Kinda wish I had not thrown it away. I would have liked to hand it over to my son as some kind of Rite of Passage:
Son, I bestow upon you this Lynyrd Skynyrd belt buckle. I pronounce and declare you to be now a man!
