Cars II

In our last post, we started talking in a serious way about cars and trucks and the way our culture is shaped by those vehicles.

And that influence even extends to the new temple we are building, because, while you probably didn’t know it, parking—that’s right, parking—is now pretty much an established science.

So, according to the experts who study this sort of thing, a parish needs at least one parking space for every 2 to 2.5 people who will be attending the same event or worship service. I’m still waiting to meet that .5 of a person, but the point is that the number of folks who can participate in the life of our parish is going to be largely determined by the number of parking spaces we have on our property.

Now, as we said in our last post, there are a number of people in our community who have intentionally purchased homes within walking or cycling distance of the parish. And we are constantly encouraging the folks who drive a long way to load up their vehicles with passengers—in fact, the person to vehicle ratio in our community is closer to 3.5 people for every car or truck.

But, as we also pointed out last time we were together, when it comes to our dependence on these machines, the only way to really address this problem is through our liturgical life.

After all, we are, each of us, High Priests of this Creation. That means our job is to offer everything up to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—even our problems, even the messes we have made.

But that doesn’t mean we have to form a committee and draft a Service for the Offering Up of Really Big Messes and then submit it to a commission and have it voted upon at the regional level and then approved for trial use until the next ecumenical council.

That’s not the way things work in Holy Orthodoxy (and let all the people say, “Amen”). Because, here in the Church, we already have access to absolutely everything we need, liturgically and otherwise.

So, for example, in Orthodox Land, we bless just about everything: homes, fishing boats, livestock, bees, wells, vineyards, gardens, barns, sowing seeds, gathering the harvest, the New Year, and the School Year. When we bless those things, we offer them to the Most Holy Trinity.

And, as it turns out, we also bless cars and trucks.

The prayer goes like this:

“O Lord our God, Who doth sit upon the Seraphim and doth ride upon the Cherubim, Who didst adorn man with wisdom and doth direct all to good by Thy Providence: Do Thou send down Thy blessing upon this vehicle, and appoint Thine Angel for it, that those who travel in it may be protected and guided in peace, and having successfully finished all their journeys, they may send up unto Thee glory and thanksgiving, praising the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

The priest then douses the vehicle inside and out with Holy Water while saying, three times:

“Blessed and sanctified is this vehicle, by the grace of the Most Holy Spirit, through the sprinkling of this Holy Water, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Folks will often request that prayer when they purchase a new car or truck, and we always include vehicles when we bless homes in January. But for the last few years, we have also blessed all the vehicles in the parish on the Sunday closest to the Feast of St Elias.

St Elias is the Hebrew prophet, Elijah; he’s the guy who ascended into heaven in a fiery chariot (II Kings 2.1-12).

His feast day is July 20^th, so, on the Sunday before, at the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy, we process out into the parking lots; we sing hymns; we carry banners and fans and lamps; we use lots and lots of Holy Water, and we bless all the cars and trucks and motorcycles in our community.

It’s a fun thing to do. Everyone washes their vehicle prior to the blessing, and we try to make sure that Fellowship Hour on that day is especially festive.

But you’re thinking, “OK. Yeah. That sounds fun…but what does it actually accomplish?”

Well, if you’ll look again at the prayer, you’ll see that each blessed vehicle now has an angel assigned to it…which means you really ought to think twice before cutting folks off in traffic or honking when someone doesn’t move right away after the light changes. You could very well be messing with Principalities and Powers.

To which you’re going to respond, “C’mon, get serious.”

Well, mess with the Thrones and Dominions if you want, but, sure, we’ll come at it from a different direction, and you can let us know if it makes more sense.

Here goes.

By blessing all the vehicles in our community, we’re not claiming that those cars and trucks and motorcycles will generate less pollution or consume fewer resources. What we are doing, though, is acknowledging our finitude. In other words, we’re owning the fact that these problems are way beyond our competency and even our comprehension. But rather than waiting around for some technological/sociological/political solution that is never going to come, we are committing those problems to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Now, granted, a lot of people are going to see this as an attempt to cope—‘through ritual’—with our helplessness in the face of cataclysmic pressures. But speculate all you want about our psychology: that does not even begin to address what happens at the level of ontology, at the level of being, and that is precisely the level of reality at which the Divine Services—those ‘rituals’—operate.

And it is through the grace and mercy of The Most Holy Trinity that is at work in those services, that this entire world—cars, trucks, motorcycles, all of it—is going to be redeemed and transformed.

Our new temple (and the parking lots around it) are going to be a manifestation of that redemption and a sign of that transformation.

Won’t you help us build it?

You can join us in offering the Akathist for a New Temple (PDF/video). You can take your subscription to the next level and become a Paid Subscriber. You can buy some of our great Come See Something Beautiful clothing. You can commission an image in the Calming Room of our new temple or make a donation to our building fund.

All this talk about vehicles has us thinking about that old song by K.C. Douglas— “Mercury Blues”. Here’s the quintessentially weird ‘80’s version by David Lindley and El-Rayo-X.