The Big 6-0.

Great Judas at the gerontologist's, I've hit 60 to-day.

Hell, here I thought I would finalise arrangements for a room at Blessed Reformer Nursing Home, but I can't find head nor tail of General Scuttlebutt, not even to get the hotline number to this pizza place he promised me.

Got me a great birthday present though -- a nice basic Whirlpool washing machine after my unit of 16 years blew its trannie all over hell last week and caused me to revisit the world of laundromats last week-end.

Now don't that beat all, thinking a washing machine is cool. Well, it is, a solid basic little unit with three load size settings (small, medium, large), three water temperature settings (cold, warm, hot) and three wash cycle settings (normal, delicates, permanent press) and that's bloody it.

Haven't seen anything reflect the perfection of the Trinity so well since they quit insisting on triple time and let duple time in for church music, now somebody oughta shout.

Judas H Priest, a guy who used to think a car is just transportation unless it was a rear-engined two-seater with a gearbox (had one for over twenty years too) now drives a Chrysler Town & Country and thinks it's the best thing on wheels ever Amen.

Gotta be at the office/store to let the IT person in at 0900 to finish set-up of the new computers after the file transfer going on about now, so the bleeder is up and running when the Saturday person opens at 1000.

Great digital Judas.

I remember when I was younger and my dad started getting senior discounts I thought Oh hell no, when I get there I'm gonna pay just like anyone else! Hell, now if I don't see an Old Man Discount I ask if there is one! Some places start them at 50!

It's been a hell of a life so far, hasn't turned out anything like anything I was thinking 40 or 50 years ago. But you know what, that ain't all bad -- professed confessional Lutheranism in 1996, first in WELS and 10 years later in LCMS. Whoda thunk a preconciliar altar boy thinking of being a priest who goes to university in a Benedictine hotbed of liturgical renewal and other nonsense would do that. Not me lemme tell ya.

Germans too. Even better, Bavarians, hell started out with Wittelsbach money and from Kloster Metten to boot! My first Lutheran pastor said that was God, he knew I would come to where the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered, and saw to it I learned to rant in German first. He may have been joking. Or not.

The miracle is, worse stuff has happened to me in the years since then ever did in the years before, and I have not had what some call a crisis of faith. Now that's a flat out bleeding miracle, and proof enough for me that faith is entirely the gift of the Holy Ghost and not in the least a work or merit of mine.

Before, crisis of faith was a way of life, going from the preconciliar RCC, which in preconciliar times seemed just fine to me, to Vatican II, to chucking, or rather upchucking, the whole thing and hanging out as a Righteous of the Nations around Orthodox Judaism for twenty some years.

This is the God part IMHO -- then this complete and total babe of an LCMS woman as boofed out about Lutheranism by the whole Seminex thing as I was about Catholicism by the whole Vatican II thing turns up and I'm completely and totally ausgeflipt, and we're all set to get married in a non-Jewish ceremony by an Orthodox rabbi (there is no other kind, I just threw in the adjective for clarity since some think there is).

Which rabbi gets boofed by his congregation for being a little too Orthodox (there is no such thing) and he leaves town, so this LCMS pastor we knew fills in, since that was her background and they were the only Christian church left for which I had any respect left since they had pulled back from the precipice of raging revisionism, though I have since learned not the hell far enough.

And the Lutheran saga begins, us taking adult class to resolve things, we hope, since as we were off to late start with the whole marriage and family thing we needed to have kids and soon, but didn't want to inflict our respective burn-outs on them.

Read the 1520 treatises on the side during that, and when I hit the part about the mass (as distinct from the Mass) in Babylonian Captivity, I knew this was it, I'm in. Read the BOC cover to cover -- Tappert, this was before the coming of the "McCain" BOC, which is what I now read -- in between feedings of my oldest son. His DOB (date of baptism) is 25 August 1996 and I professed 15 December 1996. Told ya we were in a hurry about kids.

She turns up pregnant again (told ya), then turns up with cancer, gives birth, dies three months later and I'm a widower with a kid at my second son's baptism a year later. Then come the corporate, economic and child-raising shake ups in the years that follow. The natural me would conclude this is a cosmic cruel joke. When they say faith is a gift they ain't kidding. I still know this is it, and I'm in, and I also know I cannot produce that in myself.

Not to mention the lunatics who would rather run after those who ran after Vatican II based "ecumenical" bullroar revisionism and create a Lutheran version thereof, not to mention the lunatics who would rather run after those who run after megachurch marketing based "evangelical" bullroar revisionism and create a Lutheran version thereof -- looking like opposites while doing exactly the same thing, trying to force a Lutheran content into a form that is as it is because it doesn't believe Lutheran content, differing only in what form they run after instead of the Confessions' zealous guarding and keeping of things like "the traditional order of lessons" and "the ceremonies previously in use" not to mention the Word rightly preached (aka doctrinal purity) and the Sacraments properly administered.

I'm in. This IS it, the Rock against which the gates of hell itself -- not to mention any collective madness at district and synodical conventions -- shall not prevail. Which promise is to the Rock, the confession, not to synods and conventions any more that to men in mitres in Rome.

And speaking of mitres, take it all around, the one thing I do find ironic about this getting older thing is that most of the people who take their confessional Lutheranism as I do are 15 or 20 or more years younger than I am, whereas my generation seems permanently stuck somewhere around 1969 or so -- I've even seen ads for retirement mutual funds with clips from Woodstock in them Gott hilf mir seitlich -- and I probably won't live long enough for these damned ageing Boomers to die off and leave the church to the next generation or two, who seem to have turned out rather well considering we were their parents and grandparents.

Well we in a collective sense. I got off to a late start like I told ya. Most guys my age have grown children, not kids in middle school or junior high or whatever they're calling it this year. Hell I ain't got time to be 60. Maybe later.

So I guess that room at Blessed Reformer Home will just have to wait. I was looking forward to stoking the General's thurible at services. Hey, I got it -- maybe since his blog is gone too, now that I'm 60 I'll shed the irenic, pacific, measured tone for which Past Elder is known throughout the Lutheran blogosphere and amp it up just a little!

Well, time to turn in, then get up, clean up, put on some clothes washed in my totally cool basic Whirlpool, drive my best thing on wheels ever Town & Country to the office and let the IT maven in at 0900 on my bleeding birthday. I ain't got time to be 60. Maybe later. But bring on those senior discounts, hell yes!