For my friend..

Don't give up lady.



Y'all are still loved.

Ooh! New clothes!

Well, sorta.

At the CAP meeting tonight, us newbies got taken back in the hangar and signed out some surplused flight suits. They even have a nice little tag in back saying something to the effect of "probably won't melt to your skin if you're in a crash." Charming. :)

Mine's a little tight in the boobage, but otherwise good. I'll tell ya though, they sure make ya feel all kinds of official. Best part is - Halloween is gonna be easy next year. I just need to find a couple "Stargate" patches or something and it's all taken care of.

Help! I'm stuck on a glacier with McGuyver and he can't think of anything..."

Progress, I reckon.

Well I had a wonderful afternoon hanging with some friends from church, then came home to do some reading/studying. A bit of MAF stuff, a bit of catching up on textbook chapters I'd..um... not taken the time to read yet, and a bit more wrestling with VOR. It all makes sense when I read it, but once I hit the practical problems I'm all confuzzled again. Nothing for it but to practice more.

Also, I just took my very first closed-book sample test over at Sporty's. Even skipping the calculation questions in the interests of time, I managed to squeak through with a passing score. Although there's still a little left to go over in class, most all the material is at least familiar already, even if I don't have all the right details memorized yet.

At this rate I feel pretty comfortable I can tackle the written fairly easily in a month or so. The practical, well - I have to admit looking at the hours requirement is making the little cash register in my head shrink back in fear, but given the current plan of "save all winter, fly my tuckus off in spring" I think it'll work out okay.


Off to rest now I reckon. g'night all.


PS - this tzatziki recipie is pretty darn good - though it could use about double the mint and it's a touch too salty. Still - nummers! :)

For John

John was gracious enough to drop by and comment on Thanksgiving's musings - he is of the opinion, if I understand correctly, that a belief in God is not enough to arrive at the conclusions below. To that I have to agree - but it's not a matter of a belief in God. It's a matter of where one's focus is - on the body or the soul. And that's where the distinction is - without belief in the soul, in some essence of self beyond a neat electro-chemical phosphorescence going on in our brains, all of the below is meaningless.

So - let me quote Mr. Lewis here, as in Chapter 5 of Mere Christianity he offers an excellent summary:

... every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other."

"That explains what always used to puzzle me about Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another. They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important: and they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven. But I have come to see that they are right. What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which on one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure - or enjoy - for ever. One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be very much the same in both. Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage the next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it. Each of them, if he seriously tuns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not. The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.

Even from the point of view of a single mortal lifetime, after which is nothing but a void, the point remains. We have to live with what we do to our souls regardless.

The difference is one of scale - a pattern of being that would create merely unpleasant consequences over a single mortal lifespan will, if given an eternity to play out, truly pull a soul into a self-created heaven or hell.

What belief does then is to change one's perspective of what's truly important. Let's take Marko's example in give them nothing then. I agree with him completely on the worldly level. Allowing someone to get away with a crime, especially a violent crime, not only hurts the innocent, it also encourages more crime as those committing it are emboldened.

As to the side of the soul? There I can't say I have answers, at least not yet. I can only say I've things that aren't answers. I can't respond with Col. Cooper's "It is my earnest endeavor to see that it does*," nor with Marko's impassioned righteous anger.

Both my care for my own soul and my love for that of the other preclude that response for me now. Neither however can I answer "give them what they want" for both Marko's reasons and my own. The best I can answer now is "polite refusal," along with a willingness to pay whatever cost that brings. That's not much of an answer, I know.

Neither is it a position that can be dictated, for without the choice of violent response, there can be no true choice of grace. And it is that choice of grace, forgiveness, and its aftermath that we see the miraculous, be it on Palm Beach, Nickel Mines, or other places we never hear of.

So I don't know yet. Don't know as I ever will. But there's a start.

Thanks for dropping by darlin'.

-J



* To those not familiar with the good Colonel, when asked by a well-meaning if thoughtless interviewer if violence did not lead to more violence, he responded: 'I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure--and in some cases I have--that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy."

Those Big Questions.

A little more musing on this quiet Thanksgiving morning.

You see, a friend of mine back Tennessee way wrote a pretty darn good essay a while back on self defense and all. Something about the vociferousness of it kept nagging at me though, and a couple weeks ago I realized what it was - that passion reflects the fundamental difference in worldview we have.

Here it is -

Marko is, as I'm sure he'll proudly tell you, a strict materialist and an outright evangelical atheist. On the other hand, I've always believed in - no - felt the presence of God in one form or another, and more recently have returned to the Christianity I grew up with.

The obvious difference there is that since he does not believe in an afterlife and I do, the stakes seem much higher on his side of the fence. For me physical death, whenever it comes, in the greater scheme of things not that big a deal. Not something I wish for to be sure, but a simple bump in the road that's sure to come along sooner or later. For him it's truly the "end of all things" - and having it forced upon him would certainly be a great indignity and cause for anger.

But it goes beyond that.

We're back again to the "big things become small and small things become big" of Lewis. I begin to see the stakes as much higher than simple life or death.

I find my thoughts toward a hypothetical someone such as those Marko speaks of turning not towards anger, but pity. In attacking my body, they shrivel and crush their own spirits, drive their beings further from God - and how cheaply do some thus sell their souls!

So for that reason certainly I'll agree with Marko that "give them what they want" is a poor response. But not for the same reason, not for my worldly loss. Rather, as I see it now, for their eternal loss. It allows - encourages - them to continue with a horrible self-murder.

So what is the right response?

To that I don't have an answer. I imagine "it depends."
Submission though is certainly not the way - though neither is anger.



Give what you can't keep.
Gain what you can't lose.

Enough on that for now I reckon.
Enjoy your holiday all.

-Jenny

Only my skin is afraid....

The little Cessna worms its way through jungle valleys, surrounded by cloud. Sporadically visible through enshrouding mist and rain come wisps of tree and rock, clinging to the sides of unforgiving mountains. The pilot is nervous. Three of his four native passengers are terrified. The fourth... calm and at peace.

"Aren't you afraid?" asks the pilot.

"Only my skin is afraid" responds the passenger.

At the pilot's urging, he continues.

"I see the mountains, they are so close. I see the trees and the rocks as they rush by. I see the rain, and I hear its beating on the glass. I see the clouds all around us. All I see brings fear to me. I didn't know this big bird of yours shook like this as it flew along. There is much to be afraid of here... but my fear is only as deep as my skin."

I am not afraid under my skin. I know the One who made the mountains. I know the One who made the rocks and the trees. I know the One who made the clouds and rain for today. He has told me that I don't need to be afraid. Why? Because He lives in me. Inside my skin. And He has promised never to leave me. Because of that, I am not afraid."

Max Meyers spins this little tale among dozens of others in his book Riding the Heavens of his time in the MAF. It struck me particularly on two levels.

The first was more prosaic. Working last summer at a lodge, the renown pilot asked me one day "want to go for an airplane ride?" Of course I jumped to accept. His Super Cub was stripped to the bones, and he flew it over mountains and glaciers like it was a part of him. The one part of the trip I will never forget was when he turned inside a box canyon to land on a glacier. Certainly he was legal, but my head couldn't help but start computing wing loading on that tight little turn, going over horror stories of moose stalls*. And yet I didn't have the slightest bit of fear in my heart, because I knew this guy's experience, and trusted him implicitly.

A good lesson. But a mortal lesson. And it goes so much deeper than that.

If there is but one lesson I retain from CS Lewis' Mere Christianity, it is this - that when we shift our concentration from the mortal realm to the realm of the soul, big things become small and small things become large.

To explain - if in driving to work tomorrow, a bigrig should slide on the ice and kill me, that's of comparatively little consequence to my soul. However, should I cultivate a habit, a way of thinking, that over the years of my life corrupts my spirit, filling me with callousness, bitterness and spite - that matters.

Small things become big. Big things become small.

Fear for the body fades, but one derogatory joke of my neighbor becomes a matter of eternal consequence. Life changes.

More to come on this soon, but for now.. enough.


-J

* Moose stall: a stall resulting from the combination of a steep turn and slow airspeed, so called because it often is the result of circling low and slow observing something on the ground - like a hunter stalking a moose for the next day's hunt. A stall here is bad news - too low to recover from the stall, but high enough to kill you.

In da Feet.

Work was gracious enough to let me work at home today so that I could go into town and get a new motor for my windshield wipers. Seems not being able to see the road for the snow makes it hard to get home.

Unfortunately I'll have to call back and take today as a sick day, as I got little done. On the way into town, the last of a series of problems with my dear truck came up. The oil apparently wasn't making it into the engine, the engine seized up, and now, well.. he's dead, Jim. A bit of walking around town and I got things lined up at the Credit Union to buy a replacement that hopefully has fewer problems. So bother, payments again.

On the bright side, I don't need to buy that wiper motor now. :)

Culture Shock

Wuh.. a dose of the foreign on two fronts today.

First, to friends and family back Dixie-way.. things be different here. What with all the ice on the roads, I don't think I've seen more than about a hundred square feet of asphalt between home and the highway in the last week. I'm told that's normal. Well.. not normal exactly. This is a balmy winter so far. Normal would be it having been this way for some weeks already. Apparently the locals just take all the ice for granted to. Coming in to work this morning I did all the right things - going slow, cut power early on, braked ever so gently.... and still slid about the last fifteen feet to a stop at the red light. The native guy walking in front of me didn't even look up at the big steel thing sliding not-quite-controlled in his direction.

eep.

Welcome to Alaska, I guess.


The other is homework - been doing the Civil Air Patrol take-home exams for basic membership. Jeez, I so do not have a military mind. Yeah, I know CAP is just a little civvie cousin of the Air Force, not some all-hooah Marine organization or anything. But still... having to actually learn this whole rank structure this and how to salute that, opsec the other thing. Feh - soldiers are for flirting with or spoiling with cookies, not acting like.

Oh well, it's for a good cause, and should Providence allow it'll give me a chance eventually to get some good experience flying in and working on the 206's like MAF uses. Whee!

Back to work, I suppose.

Thankfulness

I suppose it's a human thing to only really appreciate the things you don't have, or have done without - and to take for granted the blessings one has. I envy my friend's companionship in marriage, she envies my freedom in singleness. I can run on two legs, luxuriate in the melody of a song, and admire the beauty of a sunset - how many would give most anything for those experiences most of us simply assume?

What brings this to mind is the book "Peace Child" I am reading, describing the culture missionary Richardson encountered in Western New Guinea. The Sawi admired treachery, deceit and murder - they took luring another to his death with promises of friendship to an artform. The cannibalism which followed seems almost an afterthought to that horror. Outside the physical realm, they lived in constant fear of spirits and curses.

Like having whole limbs or possessing sight and hearing, I'm coming to realize just how much I've taken for granted the upbringing in western culture, and more particularly in the church. From my time in new-paganism, I can just barely begin to comprehend a worldview without a redeeming, loving, protecting God.

It's terrifying.

I see no other faith that offers the same assurance of simple grace. No sacrifices, no volumes of laws, no bloodshed, no dramas of 'smells and bells' ritual. All that needs be done is done already. What peace there is in that.. what calm assurance.

In this day and age it's common to rewrite our own tribal heritage as some kind of romantic ideal, forgetting the pains of generations past.

How very much we've gained that we simply don't see.
What blessings we have.

Halloween past...

okay, as promised... my costume from this year, thanks to a friend who was taking better pictures than I.

Here's me as 56 Henry, Nate Saint's plane. Complete with bucket for handing out gifts. Well, candy anyway. :)



Stuffed the tail with the innards of a cheap pillow and just held curved coathangers to make the "wings" all proper looking. Sewn from fabric in the dollar pile over the course of a day, kinda guesstimating on a pattern as I went. I know, I looked like a giant yellow lobster, but it was fun. :)

The needle's homing in...

So today we went over VOR in private pilot ground school. I've read the chapter three times, done the exercises, and played with an online simulator. I think I'm beginning to grasp the concept, but it's still driving me nutsy. Aside from the airspace rules, it's given me the most trouble yet. I'm assured though that it all makes more more sense sitting for real in the airplane. Hope so.

And yet.. the notion of following a needle home strikes a chord right now - I'm more sure than ever that my calling was to missionary aviation. I've zero interest in the airlines, couldn't fly military even if I wanted to (which I don't), and even the local airtaxi work seems so-so. The most interesting commercial work I've yet come across is what the local outfitter types do, ferrying hunters and such about on tiny little outdoor strips and carting moose bits back home. And yet even that isn't quite right.

And yet - I'm finding myself absolutely captivated by the stories of MAF. Two new books arrived today: Riding the Heavens and Giving Wings to the Gospel. Biographies of Nate Saint and Betty Greene are on the way - I'm drinking these stories in like water lately.

Oh, I'm sure there's points of doctrine or application I'd disagree with one church or another on, but those points of contention are tiny compared to the message itself. And showing the love of God to others through potentially life-saving service and aid - to say nothing of the chance to work in the sky - what could be better? A grand combination of technical work, the sheer aesthetics of the wind and sky, fascinating tours abroad - all bound up in the most heart-filling work of service that truly blesses the lives of others.

Even if there were no God, no "eternal reward" - I can think of no better use for this life than to spend it so. No self-gratifying toy or fling or tour has come close to the sheer simple contentment that this path has so far shown.

The needle seems to be lining up on course quite nicely now.

So back to the books.

catching up..

Oh my.. where were we?

Let's see.. the rest of the Halloween party was awesome. My pictures pretty much stunk, but a friend might have some I can post later. Much fun all around, and some great creativity.

Um... remember I said I sold a rifle to get a fiddle? The fiddle finally came. Pretty. The "D" string sounds particularly rich compared to the others. Not that any of the others sound bad, that one just stands out somehow. Odd. Anyhow, it's nice to feel the strings under my fingers again.

Class goes well. I still need to backtrack and spend some serious time with airspace regulations - that's what I've had the hardest time with so far. Just a lot of rote memorization of rules. The navigation stuff is actually fun. Sitting down with the charts and circular slide rule and course protractor-thingie - fun!

Work... work is good. People are incredible. Some sorrows early on to, but that's in God's hands and will surely work out for the best.

Went to another CAP meeting - again, good folk. They really remind me of the Search and Rescue folks I knew in Idaho. Similar civic duty preparedness mindset.

Aaand.. a couple more friendly get-togethers coming up - I can't wait to see some friends again, but already I'm finding I need to set aside a day or so to just hide under a rock every week or two or I get all frazzled. Whee!

Anyhow, that's the news. Mountains are pretty. Lights are on the trees. It's cold. Bout what you'd expect.

Take care y'all.