ABC&PTL

 

Studebaker, I never owned one, but my senior year at UnivFlorida, Linda's landlady there in Gainesville, the matriarch of a local family of dear friends, had a cream-color Studebaker sedan that she called "my little Champion". It must have been a 1947 year model. Mrs B let us use her car anytime my car was out of sorts. Three speed shift, of course, it had overdrive in which the transmission could be shifted between first and second, and between second and third, without using the clutch. I thought the car was a little dream, a wonderful size, and if I were going back in Time, there'd surely be a Studebaker Champion in my life. The last time I admired a Studebaker in the showroom would have been in 1957 or 1958, in Rhode Island. Studebaker and Mercedes-Benz had hooked up corporately, and the Studebaker Lark 

had donned a  grille that was supposed to be subtly reminiscent of the Mercedes radiator grille. 

The top picture is a 1950 Commander Starlight Coupe, the Commander model was larger than the Champion but not as large as the Commander Regal Deluxe Land Cruiser, which sat on a four inch longer wheelbase. 

The cars pictured here are dated before cars were air-conditioned: note both the vent in the door window and the small side vent just forward of the door. Plus, the Land Cruiser had a vent window in the rear door window as well. Those side vent windows were for controlling the direction of air flow into the car. On a hot day, getting some fresh air flowing into the car was important. Cannot be seen in the photo, but there also would have been a cowl vent in the center just forward of the windshield.

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This odd, one-off +Time blogpost was/is not meant to be about Studebaker at all, or even about cars; and what the little fingers tippy-typed above was the result of my having set them free to type about worldly things and paying no attention to what they typed while I focused my mind on heavenly things. Well, no, on churchy things - - which, granted is not heavenly at all but is as worldly as any other subject. 

After ten, nearly ten and a half, years, including daily blogging through two agonizing election years four years apart and yielding to despair, I wearied of what had become the daily grind of taking care lest I offend someone with my outlook on a divided nation. A few blogpost drafts, likely including this one by the time I'm finished with it, are sitting in my blog as "draft", and I'll not be pressing "publish" for them. At eighty-five years and seven months of age I find myself a cross and crotchety old man no longer of a mind courteously and pastorally to tolerate b.s. and Certainty, and so I've stopped daily blogging, or even blogging at all on any sort of schedule or commitment, except to keep a longstanding commitment to blogpost transcripts of my sermons. 

Which, even the sermons have come to reflect my evolving Being, as in, again, that question on my General Ordination Examination taken at Alexandria, Virginia Seminary in January 1983, "Would you say that your personal theology is settled or changing, evolving?" (not necessarily a verbatim quote of the question). And my answer then and still is "evolving, changing, fluctuating, constantly examined and re-examined", not least because of my almost lifelong interest in astronomy, cosmology (that's not cosmetology, folks) and my certainty (yep) that Faith (Hebrews 11:1, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen) that is contradicted by things seen, observable, demonstrable, experienced, and with ever-evolving science, is hopeful thinking at best, baloney at worst. I'm wanting to be that man in the picture (here it is again) 

who pokes a hole in the Firmament and looks out into the greater beyond. Some sort of Truth beyond trillions of galaxies. And what I have to cling to is that voice, "I AM speaking to you, Tom Weller". Who or What was that? I was wide awake. 

Granted, my mind was in turmoil that night, so does the mind play tricks on itself? I think it does when it realizes that the body that sustains it is dying, is in the throes of death, or even is dead the heart already having stopped, the mind fighting back with illusions, panicked delusions of self-preservation that we sometimes call near-death experiences. But I wasn't there, I was wide awake and astonished. I'm a telescope person, and I AM spoke to me? I AM, who conversed with Abraham and Moses? The Urban Dictionary has a popular acronym of skepticism, of incredulousness, that I may use in some contexts, but not this one. So, I wouldn't believe it if you told me it happened to you, but I'm the one who was there, like that other Thomas. 

"My Lord and my God". My faith fight as a telescope person is trying to keep my God from being Too Small. A divine Being obsessed with my sins, whatever that means, and especially that I must be ransomed from an adversary's claim on me, C S Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, as Aslan gave himself to be murdered by Evil to save Edmund the repentant Traitor. Religiously, spiritually, theologically, homiletically, I'm not into Lent as a time to contemplate my sinfulness, about which I am not in the least concerned, but as a time to double-down on my mindfulness of my baptismal covenant; which has everything to do with how I live in relation to others, and nothing whatsoever to do with afterlife, being "as sure for heaven as if I were already there", to recall a pastor whose theology is a-hundred-eighty-out from mine. 

So, what's my problem? IDK. Maybe it's all the Stuff of human construct. Maybe it's personal integrity, coming face to face with myself and not looking away.

alphabet & PTL

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