I'm afraid I'm still sitting on, I believe, over 8,000 words of unsent drafts for this newsletter that I haven't yet figured out what to do with. I'm confident I'll eventually finesse them into something.

For now, however, here's another thing I did recently: my first article submission to a magazine! It was rejected, which I rather expected. It's not terrible; it's also not terribly great. But that's the sort of content one puts in a newsletter, right? So, if you're interested, here is my short essay "The Goodness of Cars":
 

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I used to half-joke, when asked to explain my antipathy to automobiles, “I shouldn’t have to pilot a 4-ton death machine, with thousands of moving parts, powered by exploding dead dinosaurs, just to get groceries!” And I largely stand by this assessment — though I acknowledge the quip implying gasoline is actually liquefied dino is not strictly accurate.

What is strictly accurate about internal combustion engine-powered vehicles is that, in each of the many fast and hot (literally, explosive) expansion of gasoline fumes ignited by spark plugs to push pistons up and down, only a small fraction of the energy produced can be harnessed by the engine. The rest of the energy — around 70 to 80 percent, in fact — is wastefully dispersed, no longer accessible for use by the universe.


In his recent blog post “On Living” and subsequent chapel message on the same theme, Dr. Alan Noble spoke of the “prodigal[ity]” — the wastefulness, if you will — of God’s Creation: a vast universe, wholly unnecessary, filled with endless, seemingly unproductive resources, not because it fulfilled some existing need, but because it is Beautiful. Because it would be Very Good.

As I walked to class this morning, taking in the cool November air and brilliant blue sky, it seemed to me that the only real way to respond to this beautiful prodigality is to be beautifully prodigal ourselves. To be creative; to rest; to love unconditionally; to take Communion.

But instead we have created — and organized society around! — the car, which demands the extraction of oil and gasoline from the earth, to burn prodigally in service of useless utilitarianism, wasting most of the fuel it uses and polluting our world in the process.

This is the anti-creative nature of the car: it demands so much, at so steep a price (the monetary aspect being, perhaps, least), not in the service of Rest or Beauty or Love, but only to support our continued car-dependency. Without cars, we modern suburbanites would not, in fact, have found it difficult to get to work or the grocery store or church — at least, not more difficult than it already is with the risk of car accidents, and traffic jams, and parking lots so large they require a fair-sized walking commute in addition to the drive there. We drive, for the most part, because it is impractical not to, because we have made it so. We have gained little except a compulsive need to pollute our world and endanger our lives in the course of our daily work and leisure.


Far closer-seeming than the distant canopy of sun and clouds and sky this morning were the cars upon cars upon cars I saw strewn across campus, the symbol of our vast and systemic wastefulness, this empty wastefulness that takes rather than gives, leaving behind death and destruction and accelerated decay.

And I smiled — quite genuinely.


Because what I found myself unable to ignore, for once, is the inescapable beauty expressed even through these 4-ton death machines with thousands of moving parts. As much as I wish we didn’t feel obligated to fill up these parking lots — if not of universities, then at least those of grocery stores and public parks — every one of these cars is painted with one of God’s own colors. The wheels are round, which makes me happy; and they have shiny hubcaps, which also makes me happy. I cannot (and will not try to) begin to understand how the shapes of car frames are decided, and why they appear visually distinct from those of previous decades, although I don’t doubt considerations of aerodynamics, safety, and aesthetics are taken into account. The making of these many cars lined up in endless rows was guided by people, engineers and artists, and the final products testify to their skilled craftsmanship. They are creations to be proud of. They are creative.
 I want to be upset that this anonymous artistry and craftsmanship could not have been directed towards other pursuits; perhaps to some extent I am. But in this still-cursed and broken world, I have been greeted by beauty in the space between my apartment and Roddy Hall: in the sky and trees, in the glass and brick of the campus architecture, and somehow not least in the vehicles lining my walk.