A box holding a diecast car.

Despite my well-earned nickname, I seldom buy diecast these days. It’s not so much a lack of interest, but rather lack of room and funds that have curtailed my buying. However, this particular car was one I had to have. I’d figure out how to afford it and where to put it somehow.

It was Dan Wheldon’s car from this year’s Indianapolis 500.

I prefer to remember him for that day in late May, not the one in mid-October in Las Vegas.

And I wouldn’t have been in the mood for the banquet.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

Life’s juxtapositions can create quite bizarre scenarios. Such was the case last Thursday morning.

There I was, heading down south to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California for my first time as an accredited media member covering NASCAR. Me. Diecast Dude. Accredited. Whodathunk.

Excited? Most definitely. Nervous? You betcha. Determined to do my absolute best? Absolutely. I had dreamt of, prayed for this opportunity. Living the dream? No way to know. Pursuing the dream to see where it may lead? Yes.

Then my brother called.

Our aunt was dead.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

My brother had taken the lead in tending to our aunt since she had become unable to take care of herself last year. Dementia had set in, robbing her of her dignity even as she was mercifully unaware her mind was going. Now she was gone in body as well.

Throughout, my brother had demonstrated strength by every right he shouldn’t have. Wracked by diabetic neuropathy and the onset of MS, nevertheless he did the work and then some needed. His faith in Christ empowered him. It encouraged me. My brother in every sense of the world; in blood, washed by the Blood, fellow right wing outlaw.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

I already had much on my mind heading into the weekend. Now I had even more alongside what had been laid on my heart and soul. Turning back and returning home wasn’t an option. The opportunity laid out before me had to be seized and seized now. I would need to postpone my grief. There were no other options.

I’ve occasionally noted for my own edification that for me, Diecast Dude is more than an oddball pen name. It’s an aspect of my persona. I haven’t been Diecast Dude very often for quite a while. Too busy with other things. Arguably more important ones, such as the book. Still, I rather missed mixing entertainment plus information centered around NASCAR along with sardonic combativeness and digressions into Spirit-desiring sentimentality. Now I needed to be that like never before.

I also needed my right hand to hold up under the ton of typing that awaited as I pounded out blog posts and tweets about the weekends events. Otherwise, I’d be all thumbs. As in writing everything on my iPhone, tapping away with my thumbs since that was the only way to avoid the sharp pains stabbing their way along my fingers. Which is slow going indeed.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

I logged on to Twitter and mentioned my aunt passing away. A few people responded with consolatory messages. To each of you, thank you. To those on Twitter who follow me but missed it because they weren’t logged in at the time, I know you would have said something.

To those on Twitter who follow me but either missed it or ignored it because they were too busy at CPAC…

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Well, it’s on me to forgive you.

It’s also on me to say, “Hey. What are you doing?” There’s nothing that can be done about what happened. Yeah, it hurt, but it’s over and gone.

What about the next time, though? What about the next person who makes public mention of loss? Will you treat that person the same way you treated me, so absorbed in yourself and whatever you’re doing at the moment you can’t take a moment to write a simple ‘I’m sorry’?

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

I had to put all that aside. Friday morning, there I was at the race track, press credentials and garage pass dangling from my neck in an improvised holder attached to a temporary lanyard. I got a real one at the end of the day. But back where I was: there I was, walking into the media center looking at people who before that moment were merely names on bylines. Now I was one of them.

As the weekend unfolded, while there were moments of pure fanboy fantasy (“Jeff. Gordon. Is. Sitting. Three. Feet. Away. From. Me. JEFF!!! GORDON!!!”) for the most part my time was spent doing what I’d come to do: observe, report, interact with other journalists and online with my fellow fans. Which I did as best I could. The hand pain delayed some writing, but it was all completed.

I met a few journalists, some of whom I’d had different levels of contact with online. They were all polite, some far above. Dustin Long is a true gentleman in every sense of the word. Nicole Manske helped me get in close enough to Jimmie Johnson when he was doing a brief presser behind his trailer in a noisy pit area so I could record the conversation. was gracious and friendly during Sunday’s race when we sat next to each other in the press box. Didn’t do as much one on one with drivers or crew chiefs as I would have liked, but I was able to find Robby Gordon and get a scoop.

Fundamental truth of the matter was even with the turbulence that enveloped me, I was savoring the experience of being where I had longed to be for years and finding it did not disappoint. Moments such as this are scarce commodities for most of us. Now I was in the midst of one. Nothing could steal my joy. The sorrows would be there to be dealt with upon my return. This was a time to celebrate.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

During the weekend, something that had been percolating since 2008 came to full brew. Racing news for the thinking unimpaired has returned. I’ve teamed up with my main man Bram Hume at Backstretch Motorsports. Our goal? Beside total world domination, it’s to be THE go-to site for racing news, information and opinion. A major task to be sure, and one that will involve much work. But if I want to pursue this dream, there is no option to doing the work. Bring it on.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

The weekend, of course, had to end. After the frenetic fun of Friday’s press conferences, the Nationwide race on Saturday during which I politely informed one and all on Twitter I’d be more than happy to repeat my defense of Danica Patrick in person, and Sunday’s torrent of tweeting during the race it was over. Time to pack up and head home to office demands and deadlines.

And funeral arrangements.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

None of us have a complete grasp on what’s going on, or why. We know as best we can the moment we’re in. But even that knowledge is extremely limited. Everything else may as well be lollipop dreams in a cotton candy sky. We are totally, wholly, utterly reliant on God.

Whether we know it or not.

but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

I don’t know why everything shook out the way it did this past weekend. I don’t know why this was the appointed time for my aunt to go to heaven, which is where I believe she is for she was a believer in Christ. I don’t know why a beloved online acquaintance went to the hospital Friday. I don’t know why the sister of my wife’s best friend, someone we knew, finally finished drinking herself to death Sunday. I don’t know why all this took place even as I was fulfilling a dream and started work toward making it my daily reality. I don’t know why one day I was in Disneyland and the next was at a funeral home.

I don’t know.

I know God knows, though.

That’s good enough.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

In the days of my youth I was a voracious reader, often reading the same book several times over. One of these was The Runaway Robot by Lester Del Rey. In it, the referred to runaway robot recalls a line he either heard or read once: ‘After a taste of freedom, captivity is no longer the same.’ While referring to my day job as captivity is ludicrous melodramatic bunk, now that I’ve sampled being a full-time NASCAR writer… ‘nuff said.

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

It’s ironic that what is most feared in life, namely its conclusion, is in fact our greatest liberator. No one in their right mind wishes to hasten their demise. Yet in death not only are we promised eternity with Christ, we are promised the answers we could never know nor understand during our tenure on this planet. What’s more, we are promised the full embrace of Christ’s love for us.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

There was magic and loss this past weekend. I could have done without the latter. The former, though… the former made the latter a little easier to understand.

Last Friday, I went down to Irvine in southern California to see a concert that was anything but just another rock’n’roll show.  (You can read the details here.)  It was a reunion, a celebration, a commemoration of what was and yet always is.  As one of the hosts noted, this was music that was the soundtrack of our faith.  Whether it was the joyous ‘80s synth-laden pop of Crumbächer, the punkish raw rock of the Altar Boys, the sophisticated textures of the Choir, or the somber power of Undercover, this was music that spoke to me on all levels during those heady days when everything seemed new and possible.  Here, for one evening, the music that is always alive was once more live, its creators having been through the fire yet still possessing the fire that gave their music and ministry life.

The artists that performed were not, and are not, wealthy people.  They didn’t sell millions of albums and play arenas packed with adoring fans.  No, they rode rickety buses and vans that any self-respecting junkyard would refuse permission to enter, sleeping on the floors of fans kind enough to take them in for the night before beginning the next day’s travel.  Their albums sold in handfuls compared to the “real” music world, their existence hand to mouth.  But they kept on playing, and preaching, and praying both with and for the faithful that would come out to see them perform anyplace that would let them play, no matter how many or few showed up on any given night.  They kept on until they could keep on no more, and then they usually laid their music aside in favor of finding something that offered the ability to regularly feed their families.  Yet through it all, through all the record company ripoffs and bad management and concert promoters lying about the evening’s take as they pocketed the lion’s share of the receipts, through all the broken promises and tough times and dark days, they kept the faith.  They keep it still.  And for this one wonderful evening, the people who loved them for what they did in the days of their youth were given the opportunity to once more share and taste how good it was then, and how sweet it is now to have kept the faith with the artists that live in their hearts.

Comparing such a powerful experience to NASCAR may seem trite, but there is a connecting thread.  Like the performers last Friday night whose names mean nothing to most yet whose sweat and blood formed the foundation of so much that now is commonplace in Christian music, it’s the oft-forgotten heroes of yesterday who gave life to today’s behemoth that is NASCAR.  Most of today’s fans know at least something of the giants of yesterday, of Richard Petty and David Pearson and Bobby Allison and many others.  However, there are so many more; names known only to the longtime faithful and patient historians willing to sift through mounds of yellowed clippings and collect the oral history of those who were there by those who were there.  They were the people who had the love, letting it shine at every race that would have never existed save for their labor.

These were the mechanics and track builders; the unknown drivers who put the wow in wild and wool in wooly from those days now forever gone.  They were the people who made NASCAR the working person’s sport, for they were working people themselves.  They were NASCAR; a living, breathing cast of characters no Hollywood scriptwriter would dare suggest for fear of being laughed out of the business due to having proposed such a preposterous cast of unbelievable souls.  Yet they were eminently believable, for they were real.  Sometimes all too real.

You see, the other thing I saw came Sunday evening on my way home while driving up the straight-edge dullness that is I-5 through the Central Valley, one almond tree grove after another on either side of the freeway occasionally interrupted by pasture or rows of grapevines doing little to break the drive’s monotony.  As I glanced out the window halfway between no place and nowhere, in the growing dusk I noticed a Highway Patrol car parked on the roadside, a lone officer walking toward a white station wagon.  But not a normal station wagon, for standing behind it were two men wearing county-issued jumpsuit uniforms taking a wrapped body off of a gurney and loading it into the back of this station wagon… that happened to be a coroner’s vehicle.

There were no obvious signs indicating from where the body might have come.  No trace of an accident could be seen.  The nearest town was miles away, so it was unlikely this was a hitchhiker.  Perhaps a farm worker, but even then one would think that someone would have been there telling the authorities what had happened.  Instead, there was just the cop, and the two men from the coroner’s office, and the body of someone being taken away.  No one else was there but me and the other cars driving past, not even slowing down to look on their hurried way home in the last few hours of the weekend.

This, too, has a thread connecting it to what once was in a day when racing was far more dangerous than it is today.  Not that it is truly safe now, but given the primitive and often ineffective safety measures of days gone by it is no great surprise that everyone left from that time can recite a lengthy roll call of those who one moment were friends and competitors, the next… gone.  The ugly truth about NASCAR is that it seldom honors its dead.  Instead, it offers a shrug of the shoulders as it says move on, for no one can effectively race today when their heart and mind are on who was lost yesterday.

This is also where the thread breaks between the concert, with what it meant, and NASCAR, with what it means.  Racing, or any sport for that matter, can be a pleasure; but it is fleeting.  Life, love, hope, faith; these transcend what is no matter how important it may seem at the time.  NASCAR can be a pleasant walk through a rose garden, albeit one where gasoline is the water and the engine’s roar serves as aural flower petals.  However, it is the way of the Rose that truly matters.

Nothing else comes close.