Rest in peace.

I watch the price of gasoline go up, sometimes every day, and I wonder what to do.

When I first bought my current car, a 2004 Saturn Vue, I had some concern about the efficiency. It’s quite thrifty for a small SUV, usually around 28 mpg in combined driving with occasional post 30 mpg performances. But I was used to very efficient cars. My first new car was a Ford Festiva, tiny as a shoebox but routinely getting over 40 miles per gallon, so I had my doubts. In the end I chose to go with the size, safety, and storage capacity of the VUE, and for the most part it has been a great car, a wonderful multi-tasker and steady in rough weather.

Yet as the price of gas has gone up so have the second thoughts. Did I do the right thing? Should I try to trade it off for something else? I hear about dealers refusing to even take SUV’s in trade because they have such a hard time selling them. My head says that for the most part everything is okay but I have to admit there’s a part of me that panics a bit as well.

Economically its probably better to keep the car. We’re down to one year’s worth of payments and the cost of fuel is not yet so high that better fuel efficiency will make a difference over and against the car payments. Trading it in now just makes the payments go up because they’ll roll the current loan into the next one. With less then 70 thousand miles on the odometer there’s still a fair piece of life in the vehicle and unless fuel jumps to even more unbelievable levels we’re still money ahead.
Someday, I suppose, there’ll be no more travel and then the mileage (over 1000 miles per month just going back and forth) will level off as well. And I must say I do like the ability of this vehicle. Traction control and ABS for safety, a high riding position, absolute stability in the rain, and the capacity to haul groceries and boxes with ease. I once sat in a Honda Insight, 70 mpg but no back seat and no trunk; not exactly the car for a long highway trip.

Now if gas would only go down to $2 a gallon…

Death camps for cats. No. Really.

I’ve had a comment posted on Orthodoxy Today’s blog. Check it out (I’m comment 15) and check out the site, a politically and morally conservative spot on the www for Orthodox Christians.

Check out xxxchurch an evangelical site with resources regarding porn addiction and sexual healing. With the internet full of the stuff having resources like this can make all the difference.

An interesting link from “Get Religion” detailing the LA Times efforts to play fast and loose with poll numbers regarding Californians opposition to same sex marriage. I’ve already seen this article, with the misleading headline, in my own hometown paper. When it comes to yours make sure you do the numbers.

Did you know that German Christian Youth at a recent rally were harassed and physically assaulted as they peacefully gathered for meetings? Find out more about this and other acts of persecution of believers at http://www.christianophobia.eu/.

Got another Obama email today. I’ve had a few over the past months.

Some have been conspiratorial, some have had facts, some have been a little of each. In this case the email was an article written, apparently, by a New York journalist which attempted to bring the “real” Sen. Obama to light. Large portions of it were accurate. Sen. Obama is very left leaning for an American politician and despite his rhetoric about change and unity his voting record indicates a person occupying a fringe of the political spectrum. People who appreciate his speaking skills, and like many politicians he is adept at saying much about little, probably have never taken the time to actually examine his record and if they did some of them may be shocked.

One of the great problems in the politics of our country is that too much of what we see and hear is filtered through media and people in this country are still naive enough to believe what the television tells them without learning for themselves. At present the television loves Sen. Obama and to date very few hard questions have been asked. The article, written by an African American journalist (therefore avoiding the Obama campaign’s not so subtle argument that any criticism of the candidate is, in fact, closet racism) opens up the record and exposes what, for traditional Christians, may be some significant issues in the realm of life, family, and marriage among other things.

The hard part came at the end when the person who sent the chain email, not the author of the article, added “The book of Revelation teaches that the antichrist will be a man of Muslim heritage in his 40’s…”. and then went one to describe this antichrist as a person with flowery language who persuades the world to follow him by offering peace and harmony and then suggests that perhaps “you know who” might be that figure. Talk about a stupid addition to a thoughtful article.

Conspiracy thinking is lazy. There is a simple reason that our culture may be on the verge of electing someone to its highest political office whose values on issues of life, family, and marriage are only tangentially connnected to historic Christian faith. We’re lazy. Given the freedom to proclaim our message and live our faith we’ve chosen largely to do neither and because of this our impact on the larger society has drastically decreased. In large swaths of America the church is no longer taken seriously because, quite frankly, the people inside the church don’t take it seriously either.

And that’s what I wrote back to the those who received the email. Conspiracy thinking is just a way for Christians to avoid responsibility and blame others for the world they let happen. When Christians bend their knees and roll up their sleeves we’ll really have the “change we can believe in”. It’s as simple as that.

When the prices rise you look for bargains and so an old friend has made a return. Pepsodent was the toothpaste I remember from my childhood, one of those products like Tide and Ivory soap that were just part of my life. Somewhere along the line we just started using other things and then when saving a dollar or two makes a difference we rediscover them. In this case Pepsodent is basically identical, in its core ingredients, to most toothpastes at about half the price. Oh, and it actually tastes pretty good too

I’ve been looking at some of the time stamps on my posts and it occurs to me that I keep some really wierd hours. It reminds me of the 36 hour, as I recall, day adopted by the Men in Black in the movie of the same name. I think the line went something like “Well either you get used to it or you go totally insane…”

The truth is I do sleep, but my mind keeps working and sometimes I get a dose of “holy insomnia” where I’ve had enough sleep and something seems to want my attention. I use the quiet of the wee small hours to pray and think and write and sometimes play music at a very LOW volume. One of the cats usually comes along to join me, they keep odd hours as well, and we watch the sun rise or listen to whatever sounds travel through the night.

The truth is I dislike sleep, it seems like wasted time. I know I need rest and and I do rest but it seems unfair that a third of my life is spent in semi-conciousness an the rest is spent in 21st century America which, sometimes, is another form of semi-conciousness.

Oh well…