KEEP THE CAR RUNNING

Strike the Tent

2009-04-04T11:20:00.002-04:00

I had the pleasure on Tuesday of sitting in my study at the church and listening to the piano tuner work on our sanctuary upright. Except for meeting times, there's no attempt at climate control in the large room and an unchecked Georgia summer sun will certainly relax a string or two if not cause the whole thing to spontaneously combust. For almost an hour he could be heard methodically striking his way through the scales. I suppose one couldn't call it beautiful music he was making; but it was awfully satisfying to hear sour note after sour note turned sweet as dissonance gave way to resonance. My heart and mind have been similarly warped by the often unchecked and oppresive glare of Satan - I pray the presence of the Holy Spirit and sing along with Robert Robinson "Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace."

From Inspectah Deck's New Charlotte Office. . .

2009-03-10T13:15:00.004-04:00

I strongly encourage you to find and read an article entitled "The Coming Evangelical Collapse" that is currently posted on the website of the Christian Science Monitor. The article is written by Michael Spencer. I'd love to know what you think.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html

It's a Blockbuster night at 10 Downing Street!

2009-03-10T12:36:00.004-04:00

Alright, so our president gave their prime minister a gift of 25 dvds. What's up Gordon Brown - you better come strong when Obama crosses the pond! You're going to have to do better than that red, white, and blue festooned Rolls Royce you have picked out. Show some class and have wrapped the latest Harry Potter book - and make that a hardcover kid!

Gleanings from Lost Hours

2009-03-07T11:04:00.004-05:00

"Come away with me and they won't see us for the dust!" Great line for sure. It loses it luster not a little, however, when it is learned that the inspiration for such an exclamation was a married woman and the caller a married man. The bloom is lopped clean off the rose when it is further revealed that the adulteress was shortly thereafter hacked to pieces with an ax whose wielder was the adulterer's deranged butler. The tragic couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney. The place: Taliesin in Wisconsin. Had they only read Anna Karenina or noticed Lazarus at the gate.

My sometimes Irish Idee Fixe

2009-03-05T17:25:00.010-05:00

As I stood in line at the Best Buy here in Augusta to dutifully buy the latest U2 album I got to thinking back over some of the other times and places I picked up one of their records. Here are the ones I could remember in chronological order:
1) The Joshua Tree purchased at the Idyllwild Pharmacy in Idyllwild, California. Trent McGath
played this album devotionally all summer and when he left to go back to Twin Peaks I
realized I was hooked.
2) Achtung Baby purchased at the Ben Franklin in Fair Haven, Vermont. This is still the single
record of transportation for me - and to think - I almost spent the $7.99 on licorice and such.
3) Zooropa purchased somewhere in the bleak and blighted north end of Pittsfield,
Massachussetts -probably the K-Mart. I can't hear the title track or Stay (Faraway, so
Close!) without thinking of BICS.
4) Pop purchased at the Wal-Mart in Toccoa, Georgia. I can't say if that was the first time I
felt old or the first time I realized I was already too old; but listening to
Miami in my dorm room I knew the spell was broken
5) All That You Can't Leave Behind purchased in Augusta. I always think of my time in
Wenham, South Hamilton, and Benson when I here this one. Listening to Walk On with
white knuckles as I steered the Caprice home to Benson after guarding the College of St.
Joseph's against itself all night as the snow piled up.
6) How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb purchased at the Target on Southern in Tempe,
Arizona. I always think of my drives across the Sonoran desert to visit Josh, Sarah, and
the Tates in California when I hear this album.

I know I bought other albums; but can't say where or when. I'm certainly not the biggest U2 fan in the world or even the family but they've provided a pretty cool soundtrack for several passages in my life. What images will be jogged when I hear a few notes from No Line On the Horizon?

All my original thoughts were used up yesterday.

2009-03-02T17:15:00.002-05:00

Here's a spiritual take on Shakespeare's line in As You Like It ~

Christians are April at the altar and December at the abacus.

an odd Mardi Gras memory for you

2009-02-24T15:04:00.003-05:00

From George Augustus Sala's America Revisited, 1883

"It was about ten minutes past nine when the Carnival began to boom in the form of a most tremendous clamour of brass bands. Shawm and pipe, psaltry, and ophicleides blown louder than ever; cymbal and triangles, and especially that very old friend of mine, the Big Drummer. He came along in the light of torches, drubbing away at the parchment as though for dear life. Last night he wore a splendid military uniform, and had on his shoulders epaulettes of red worsted as bright and big as prize tomatoes. But I was aware of him many years ago, when he wore a leopard skin mantle and a brazen Roman helmet, with a white plume. I was aware of him when he was in the service of a travelling dentist, when he administered a thundering whack to the drum simultaneously with the extraction by his patron of a patient's tooth. The whack drowned the patient's yell of agony."

Xanadu Community Church

2009-02-20T15:05:00.003-05:00

Alright - so Charles Dickens, by creating the character Ebeneezer Scrooge, gave the church in England a mirror with which to see how hideously deformed its visage had become.

So - can you think of a similar instance in which an author has done the same for the church here in America? I know it wasn't Orson Welles' conscious intent - but I think the character Charles Foster Kane - Citizen Kane - is a good nominee. The movie's autopsy of the blighted soul of one sold into slavery to the sole values of personal peace and affluency is powerful preaching indeed.

What do you say - other nominees?

The Curse of King Midas

2009-02-17T17:04:00.003-05:00

In 1685 England's King Charles II died from kidney failure having inhaled excessive amounts of toxic mercury vapors. Alchemy can be a deadly obsession. Only the truly obsessed would devote millions of man hours and dollars in the pursuit of transmuting base and common metals into precious ones. Alchemy is all but a dead science today - people know they can't meddle with magnesium and make gold, tinker with zinc and make silver, or alter aluminum and make platinum. Sadly, however, spiritual alchemy is alive and well and has millions chasing the mechanical rabbit around the track. Christians are desperate for faith, hope, and love - just not desperate enough to mine them. They'd much rather try and make faith out of the abundance of their inclinations and hope out of the abundance of their daydreams and love out of the abundance of their blessings. Gold is valuable because it is rare - I'm afraid the same is true for Christianity's precious metals.

Happy Valentines Day!

2009-02-14T12:00:00.002-05:00

Love is always worth celebrating. But does saying so betray a lonesome experience? Perhaps. It's more likely the evidence of a slavish concern to secure the unpitiful good opinion of the erotic class. Whatever the case - I have no idea why I've known so much love in my life.

The Accidental Blogger

2009-02-14T11:43:00.004-05:00

It's been said that he who would pun would pick a pocket. Well a purloiner of pantaloons I'd rather be than a pedantic . . . ah never mind - I hate puns. I really do.

Carolyn Joy Tate

2009-01-22T17:37:00.002-05:00

Happy birthday to the girl who gave to the Culture lexicon the gifts "heek" and "scrumpster dumpster". In fact - I remember "heek" was so white-hot for a time that we all grew hopelessly weary of the interjection and had to officially retire it to the scrumpster dumpster. The halcyon days of Hot Pockets, sheet-cake dinners, and voyages on the Mimi - I love and miss you tonight Carolina Absoluteee. God bless you. . .

Tongues Without Chests

2009-01-13T10:48:00.002-05:00

It's by no means an absolute rule - but in general I don't want to hang out with people who use the word "freakin" as a minced oath. Either be profane or be creative. Of course I prefer the company of the latter; but the former will always do instead of suffering the half-hearted. One can't effectively combat evil who is discontented with good and as one engaged in the fight I want not their fellowship. Let's have the courage of our contentments as well as of our convictions.

January 11 - Happy Birthday Josh!

2009-01-10T11:21:00.003-05:00

Georgia's an alright state. I suppose the worst thing I can say about it is that it happens to be situated some three thousand miles away from Idyllwild, California. I'd love to spend some of every day in the company of my brother Josh. He's one of only a handful of men that I would entrust the entire world to. Among the albums of my Josh memories, I suppose the most treasured page would be the one bearing the images of April 28, 1986 when he and I both accepted Christ in the Washington D.C. Convention Center after hearing the gospel call given by Billy Graham. Brothers indeed! Love you and your family Josh - I wish so very much I could be there to celebrate the day with you. . .

Now for a conversion of another kind

2009-01-06T14:21:00.004-05:00

With the forty dollar coupon I got from the suits yesterday I went out and purchased a digital converter box for my tv. The picture is certainly far better but I can't say as much for the view. "And upon the fourth horse I saw a most curious rider. He had the body of a man and the head of a hyena and was endowed with a vulture's wings for arms and talons for feet. He cackled as he rode and the masses called after him chanting 'Maury! Maury!'"

We'll always have Baghdad. . .

2008-12-19T13:54:00.003-05:00

I suppose the passage of time will help diagnose more conclusively the causes of my helpless endearment to the President; but here's what I know: John Wayne wouldn't have done anything different at that press conference in Iraq and he would have had a script. Being a cowboy should never have become a bad thing.

I can't recall who sings them but these are some fine lines from the forbidden genre:
"I should have been a cowboy
I should have learned to rodeo ride
I'd be wearing my six-shooter
Riding my pony on a cattle drive

Stealing the young girl's hearts
Just like Gene and Roy
Singing those campfire songs
I shoulda been a cowboy"

Oh Kay. . .

2008-12-13T13:48:00.003-05:00

I hate to break it to Jane Seymour but the world already has a universal symbol of hope and love.

Happy Birthday Job!

2008-12-12T15:14:00.005-05:00

Top Ten Ways My Life Would Be Different If I Didn't Have Job For A Brother:

10) Less rock more talk
9) The coach handball highlight reel would be bereft of the "Lance Allworth"
8) I would never have been treated like royalty at Houghton College
7) My seventeenth viewing of "Tremors" would have been by myself
6) None of my mixtapes would have anything by Everclear
5) My face would have half the laugh lines
4) I would never have been able to pull off the "blue steel" pose
3) My prospects for a night's lodging in the Lincoln bedroom would be nil
2) My ping-pong self esteem would be much much lower

and the #1 way my life would differ sans Jobie Won Kenobie

1) My Bedford Falls would be a Pottersville

I love you Job - I pray God's richest blessing on you today!

Fun with Eponymy

2008-12-08T10:54:00.002-05:00

Ok - I'll give you the city and you guess which person the local airport is named after.

1) Paris
2) Rome
3) Venice
4) Anchorage
5) New Orleans
6) Tel Aviv
7) Liverpool
8) Delhi

To see is to be in debt

2008-12-08T10:48:00.002-05:00

This from A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. . .
"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

I love you Dad

2008-12-05T13:25:00.008-05:00

I'm planning on getting my Christmas tree this evening - the whole thing went so swimmingly last year that I've had to consider whether I was just lucky or if the whole process isn't nearly as complicated and confounding as my upbringing led me to believe. My poor dad. One Christmas season in Castleton I recall riding shotgun as my father drove me, Josh, and Job out to Orwell in the Ford Tempo. Our mission - find our tannenbaum out "in the forest somewhere". The first offering we brought back home made it inside but didn't remain long enough to melt the snow on its boughs. "Barry, I believe what you've got there is a bush" was my grandma's greeting. While all agreed that our organism certainly had the general shape of a Christmas tree it was, sadly, not in fact a tree. Back to Orwell. With Sunlight fading we happened upon the loveliest balsam one might ever hope to see. It was almost Christmas itself and it was huge! Probably twelve feet tall with branches extended way out wide like a hoop skirt. My time for this tale is short as I write this at the library and I'll have to leave out much of the case-study material for another telling; but one moment of valor must be sketched out for you. Like I said, this tree was massive and it is more accurate to say that, in preparing to take the thing home, we put the Tempo under it. As we draped it over the car, the only window that we could see out of was the windshield and that view was certainly impaired as well. But we headed for home with our prize. All was well until we started across the windswept plains of 22A in Benson. I'm not sure where we lost the old tree but the "when" was not in doubt as the car stood up and the light shone in from all around. Now the snow banks had all but taken away any shoulder that the road afforded and dad got off the road only a bit. We all hopped out thankful that traffic was light. We hefted and hoisted the tree back on the Ford and hurriedly began tieing her back down. Maybe it was the bitter cold turning our hands to ice or the eighteen-wheelers beginning to come in either direction; but we lost our heads a bit. In our haste we had successfully tied the tree snug to the car as well as all the doors snug to their frame. Yes - with the windows down and the doors shut we had run the ropes through the inside of the car effectively locking ourselves out. Josh instinctively began to untie the ropes to reverse our error when my dad stayed his hand. "I think we can climb through the windows boys" were the words I remember. What came next one could never forget - in fact I'm sure there are probably a few truck drivers telling the same holiday tale somewhere right now. My dad was a gamer that day and even the russian judge, I'm sure, would have awarded him a high score as he shoehorned himself into the Ford and my everlasting admiration.

Alexander the Great never had a more successful campaign

2008-11-29T11:26:00.004-05:00

1965 Websters dictionary entry for "Sade":

Sade, Donatien Alphonse Francois (Marquis de Sade); 1740-1814. French Soldier, pervert.

2001 Websters dictionary entry for "Sade":

Sade, Donatien Alphonse Francois (Marquis de Sade); 1740-1814. French Soldier,notorious for his paraphilia.

Another lure for your tackle box men. . .

2008-11-22T11:30:00.001-05:00

"Hey there - I thought this was a non-smoking area."

Samsonite Luggage

2008-11-22T10:59:00.007-05:00

Thomas Paine once said: "Time makes more converts than reason." That may be so. I just tire of the nearly countless inhibitions binding those whose faith was found only after the exhaustion of all their fancies. Experience is a fine teacher if one is learning a trade or refining a discipline but is a terrible teacher if one is determining the veracity of the words of a viper. Such a student might say: "The Bible tells me that peace is only found in purity. But what of the whispers that it may be achieved more enjoyably in complete moral liberty? I can think of only one way to find out!" These are the same sort of folk who would determine the legal load limit of a bridge by experimentation. What needless destruction. If you believe in the word of God for forgiveness - believe in it for direction as well.

moonroof musing

2008-11-17T11:46:00.002-05:00

One man's theology has us all hammers while another's has us all nails - actors or the acted upon. I, for one, fancy myself a hammerhead striving to fashion a handle for the God-sized hand.