the Buggy Works

 

Wednesday afternoon: out here on 7H porch, the moment is idyllic, ideal temperature, a mostly cloudy sky, low humidity for the Florida Gulf Coast, a gentle breeze. St Andrews Bay is calm, a sailboat way across near Davis Point, and six tiny small craft moving, one of them coming in the Pass. 

Sometimes one must write, I guess. Think and write. The thinking happens unbidden and whether I write it down or not, so actually there's no call to write, I could just sit here and let the mind wander as it ages on me. I don't mow the lawn, I don't cook supper or do the laundry, I do try to earn some credibility by washing the dishes, but a dedicated feminist would have kicked me out ages ago. 

For some years starting this second half of my life after growing up and Navy years, I researched and "sermonized" was the word Linda crafted for it. The writing part was my work to sort the thoughts into something respectable to tell folks on Sunday mornings; but I'm retired with a Big R now, resolved to relax into it, which is to say wandering out into my own sort of wilderness, if slowly so. 

Which now and then includes writing something down in my weblog that passes for journaling and sometimes diary, when so inclined. Just thoughts, wherever the mind drifts to and pauses. If I write, I write for me, to get it out, it isn't necessary to feel that, if one must write, it has to be worthy of adding to some universal body of wisdom or to Marcus Aurelius' Reflections; nonsense is sufficient.

In an Atlantic essay this morning, I read that geniuses are largely made, either by self or by others. Once one decides one is a genius there's no way back, and one eventually believes that one's genius is universal and infallible, applies not just to an area, like Mozart hearing a concerto once and then sitting down with his photographic memory to write down every note of it on paper; but a business magnate believing self to be ingeniously infallible in matters of economics or government reform. Every narcissist is a self-certain genius who is incapable of knowing his own mistakes and wrongs.

See, I'm wandering, can't help it, it's why I never stood up in front of a congregation and preached without notes, it would have been unordered chaos and no way to wrap it up.

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So, I'm thinking about religion. From my perspective as a lifetime amateur and hobbyist astronomer, I'm bothered about Galileo, that religions set doctrine, dogma, creed in concrete Certainty instead of confident Hope, and refuse to rethink or to accommodate developing and expanding awareness, knowledge, reality, condemning and expelling as heretics those who think and question. 

It bothers the heck out of me, does it bother others? It must bother some folks, as, for example, in recent decades religion in America shifts from "a Christian nation" toward the "Nones" and it isn't simply Sunday morning laziness. Why do people drop away, is it because to them, dogma, doctrine and creed beg credence, lack relevance in the expanding Universe?

Unchangeable Christian orthodoxy, the Nicene Creed. Anyone who wants to explore its history should read "Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years" by John Philip Jenkins. My denomination strives admirably to be on the cutting edge of sociological development that moves away from hurting people and perpetuating hurtful attitudes and practices, yet theologically clings to the ancient in creed, liturgy, tradition even as scientific discovery and knowledge expand; as Bible scholarship progresses wonderfully; as Hubble and JWST see farther and farther into the historical realities of Creation that make nonsense of the views of the church ancients about what lies beyond the clouds and the blue firmament.

Another book again: "Your God Is Too Small, A Guide for Believers and Skeptics Alike" by J B Phillps, challenging the constraints of traditional religion. Religion, theology, should advance, perhaps guided, but it does not, it's a Model T Ford, or a horse and buggy. 

In my growing up years, the Chevrolet dealership in Pensacola was "Pensacola Buggy Works." With my cousin Bill, we were there many Times, collecting new Chevrolet brochures, and once we persuaded Proctor to sell each of us a scale model replica of the new 1950 Chevrolet; Bill bought a StyleLine 4-door sedan and I bought a FleetLine 2-door sedan from Proctor. He was our contact there, a relative or family friend or church friend at East Hill Baptist who was employed, my grandfather didn't say "at the Chevrolet dealership," he said, "at the Buggy Works," as the business had been known since its founding in the late nineteenth century. Selling cars was added later but the name lasted well into the twentieth century.

There was a charm in "Pensacola Buggy Works" that is gone except in Pensacola's history and memories - - just as in the church we have charming things that should be moved from the Sunday bulletin to "Historical Documents" in the back of our prayerbook. 

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No scholar, no genius, no theologian, an ordinary, unapologetic human being who, late in life, notices things and lets them bother me, and writes what I DWP!!

RSF&PTL

T89&c