Travelzoo Temptation Of The Week

"This," remarked Freud, "is the one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."

Can you not go? Enough said.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE

That's right, folks. Move along now.

Mildly Interesting Photos Of The Week

(Waterford, NY / 11 March / Casio EX-Z750)

Travelzoo Temptation Of The Week

On the theory that any geographic extreme is generally worth visiting for its own sake, why not the most artificial place on Earth? Besides SoCal, of course.

In fact, you may want to do it soon. While it's still habitable. (Relatively speaking, i mean.)

And You Wonder Why Certain TV Shows Are Popular With Our Friends

In the category of Phrases You May Never Again Hear On Television:

"Dude. We're lost in the middle of nowhere, and we still haven't delivered our camel."

--Amazing Race, air date 4/19/06

The Gulf Coast, In Five Photos Or Less

For the interest, mainly, of past Mercy Ships crew who were in Gulfport with the Caribbean Mercy pre-Katrina:

This used to be the Waffle House on Highway 90.

This used to be the First Baptist Church.

This used to be a whole neighborhood.



This used to be Marine Life. (Recognize?)



And this used to be crew. ha ha.
A little the worse for wear, perhaps, but hey, we're all smiling. It can have that effect, seeing people you love. Awww.


(all photos Gulfport, MS/16 Apr/Casio EX-Z750, except the last one: Mobile, AL/same/same.)

Mildly Interesting Photos Of The Week

[Special,Um, Aircraft Parts Edition]

(southbound, NY--DC /13 March / Casio EX-Z750)

Work

Ah, work.

There was a two-part plan for our time in Jacksonville, for me. This job was a surprising shortcut toward Part One. Three months into my new life as an, um, apprentice aircraft parts repair guy, and i find myself studiously avoiding the term "mechanic." Maybe someday i'll be one, but so far, most days i've gone to sleep feeling dumber than when i woke up.

Still, they seem pleased with my progress. Now, i can report with a fair amount of certainty that this line of work is perhaps not as eventful as the new careers of certain of our friends. (I am not a neuroaudiological medical assistant and therefore do not have to clean up after a Seeing Eye Horse. Unlike some people, who shall remain nameless.) And yet, the job does have its moments. For one, the Twin Otter, whose parts i meddle with, is probably the studliest airplane in the world. (link.) I mean, you can land the thing in a gravel pit if you want to, and turn right back around and take off. I helped take apart a nose gear from Costa Rica yesterday and there were actual chunks of turf falling out. Historically, the two largest Twin Otter fleets were in the Norwegian tundra and the Indonesian jungle, which should tell you something. Today it's a bushliner workhorse for countries all over the world, and they send their broken parts to us.

I have a kind of weakness for mechanical things that are ridiculously tough beyond any reasonable expectation, and the Twin Otter would have to fall into that category. Which is probably good. One of the technical terms i learned today was the Calibrated Whack. As in: "Next, we give the axle a light tap with a small hammer." WHANG! WHANG! WHANG! So, yes, there are indeed seveal similarities between this and the Caribbean Mercy deck department. (Percussive maintenance, anyone?) Although i have to say i never used a micrometer while working in Deck. So that's new. On the ship we measured the holes, i mean the hull, just in inches, give or take. Thank God for the FAA. After all, when you need a plane ride in Outer Mongolia, you generally really need one. I mean, let's face it. Yaks are less trouble, but they smell.

Signs Of A Fine Establishment, Pt. 30: Special British Hygiene Edition

(October 2005 / Stratford, England / Samsung Digimax 530)

Mildly Interesting Photos Of The Week

(11 March / Waterford, NY / Casio EX-Z750)

Travelzoo Temptation Of The Week

Hmm.

First off, we have tested this very option in the U.K. and found it to be of surpassing excellence. (proof)

Now, the law of averages could mean that upon entering the land of The Dog this company will begin a slow decline to match that lowest of all common denominators, which is of course Greyhound itself. (Public notice: We reserve the right to mix metaphors freely if they have anything at all to do with math. --Ed.) That said, however, there may be few better ways to meet your fellow travelers - whether you want to or not - than this.

Clearly, you owe it to yourself to try it.

Church Shopping, Part Two, In Which I Engage In A Long And Rather Pointless Diatribe On The Funny Way You Talk

Still hunting for a church home here.

We didn't want to be without one for this long. And it hasn't been for lack of visiting. The original plan was to try and find something nearby - which, in this city, means within half an hour's drive - but this isn't exactly a big churchgoing neighborhood. Now, usually that seems to be where you find the best kind. But the one we'd had some hopes for is over-50 only, and they're lapsing back into the thees and thous.

Actually, lapsing isn't the best word for it. Actively steering seems to be more the case. This is the neo-Anglican startup, and i think they're reacting against all things Modern Episcopal instead of just the sagging doctrine. (Notice how well i resisted using the word "eschew" there? It's not often you have the chance, you know. Just wanted to point that out.) Reminds me a little of the "prophecies" spoken out in some churches i've been in. As often as not, they're in the King James English. Funny that God is so behind the times. When Jesus walked the earth it was a wonder he didn't speak in ancient Sumerian or something instead of his everyday Aramaic. Since, as we all know, if he were here today and speaking English, he'd sound like a diplomat, perfect as the Queen - never like some provincial blue-collar minority-born homeless guy.

Oh, wait.

So yes, that was a little sad, to me. Especially since the Anglican church worldwide contains a couple of the few churches i've really ever felt at home at. (Not that feeling at home is always good, but that's another topic.) These congregations, these collections of people, didn't feel the need to deal in the cliches. They somehow managed to communicate their passionate faith using the same words as regular people, rather than the melange of NKJV Old Testament phrases and Christian newspeak that pervades so many other evangelical churches today.

The exception to that would be the liturgy, but hold on to that one for a minute. The irony is that the average "evangelical" church was born fleeing the rote indecipherability of the liturgy, which, at its best (though it's generally not) is a rich tapestry of the entire life history of Christian worship. It's been a touchstone of orthodoxy against two thousand years of the latest religious fads. The accumulated wisdom of Christians over the ages - and in such beautiful language, if you care to listen. I'm not saying everyone should like it or use it. It absolutely can get repetitive and lifeless if not cared for and updated. There's nothing magical about it, either. But what bothers me about the most liturgical churces is the same thing that bothers me about most "evangelical" churches that can't stand the thought of an old liturgy. The new evangelicospeak has now become its own language, as bizarre and impenetrable to the average person as any droning Latin mass ever was.

And by "average person," i mean just that: non-Christian.

Cuz Christian speech, Christian conversation, really is becoming a newspeak. It's an insular language-culture with a life of its own, growing quickly but inward, beyond its now-forgotten roots. Unless you use these same old catchphrases people are familiar with, some places i've been, they're very concerned you're talking about something dangerous.

Why is it so hard for us to just deal freely and fully in the cultural vernacular, spiced with the best of rich tradition? Why doesn't something sound spiritual if it's not stated in canned and precisely defined terms? If Jesus showed up today, i don't think i'd recognize him. I'd be too busy looking down my nose, keeping an eye out for the cyanide Kool-Aid. And i don't think i'd be alone. What this really is all about, it seems to me, is holding one's doctrine too tight.

I'm in trouble from my sister at the moment for procrastinating on a promised theological argument. She has a master's in systematic theology, and i have a weakness for playing devil's advocate, so we enjoy making each other mad now and then. But i'm realizing i look very differently at the world than i did as a college senior. And the difference has come from working. Not in any particular job, or even in any job, but working, in the doing sense. I used to think there was no excuse for anyone who didn't care about learning, or knowledge, or theology, or whatever you want to call it. (A dangerous string of nouns to lump together, but let's leave it.) But now, i realize that i really don't either.

Let me clarify: I thirst for knowledge. I'm a sponge for news and information and culture and all manner of useless facts. I care deeply about truth in all its tiny particulars; i think we need to be thinking about them and striving for excellence in the intellectual area as well as in science or any other. (As if they could all be separated. ha ha...oh, sorry, inside Wheaton joke.) It's just that the tiny particulars can seem less important once you've seen what else you could be doing with your time. Particularly when some of them will always be above our collective human head anyway.

I think it's Mercy Ships' fault. Putting together a hundred different denominations from forty different countries and any number at all of different cultures, making them live in close community and get along and work towards a common goal...terrible. Awful, really. Instead of spending all their time and energy arguing over heated opinions and getting angry and refusing to associate with one another, they actually cared more about feeding the hungry and curing the sick and helping the poor. What a travesty.

But aren't they both important? (I'll just ask the questions for you.) Aren't you saying this just cuz you happen to be into aid work? Can't you care about both? Obviously. On the ship, we used to sprawl around in the crew lounge and argue in good fun all the time. You need to do both. But it doesn't seem to me anymore that the one's proper place is as prominent in life as the other's. When you've seen how big this world is, and how very much there is that so desperately needs to be done....

I don't know. But please, God, may it not be true that evangelical Christian culture, intellectual or anti-, is as hidebound, unwritten-rule-bound, and arrogant as its lingustic counterpart.

"Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, at best, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannot subsist without right opinions, yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either love or one right temper toward him. Satan is a proof of this."

--John Wesley

"Those things belong to the deep and mysterious profound of God's omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints."

--A.W. Tozer

"You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God's Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment - the absolute basics! - you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that's wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons?"

--Jesus

What, that doesn't sound like him?

All right, then. Click here.