Hey, Tim Jones, here.
I had the pleasure, lately, of spending a little time with some family who came to visit us from Germany, including a young nephew. I was looking after him for a few hours, and in my increasingly desperate quest to keep his active mind occupied, I discovered that he was interested in model building.
In paroxysms of geeky rapture, I dug out from our junk room a collection of dusty model projects, in various stages of completion. I had begun them with my son, and had worked on them mostly during holiday breaks, but found that he was not such a big fan of model building… at least not the patient assembling, painting, and following directions part. His participation in the actual building process quickly settled into a routine of checking in every half-hour or so to see how things were progressing.
Because I was partly motivated by dreams of bonding with my son over the smell of model cement and enamel paint, I put the projects aside, time being at something of a premium for me.
Now, in my five-year-old nephew, I saw another potential victim model-building buddy on whom I could hang my pathetic hopes with whom I could share my enthusiasm.
In the end, he did help me glue a couple of pieces, but the most fun was just watching his obvious fascination with the idea of models, and with the finished products.
While he was here, I managed to complete one project (the X-1) and get started on another that had been in mothballs for years (the U.S. Moon Shot series). I hope to complete a model of every aircraft or spacecraft featured in the movie The Right Stuff, which is one of our family’s favorite films. Both my son and I are aviation buffs. His childhood hero was Chuck Yeager. We have a lot of happy memories tied up in these particular models.
Getting back into my model building was a great deal of fun, brought back some memories for my son and me, and made me feel like a kid again. It also got me to wondering what exactly was the appeal of spending so many precious hours, so much money and frustration on some plastic reproductions that could much more simply be bought on E-bay, or some such.
It occurred to me that in the act of building the models, one gets to know the subject much more thoroughly than before, and becomes more appreciative of the aspects of the project that the builder found attractive to begin with. It also struck me that my admiration for the people involved in the history of these machines – Chuck Yeager, Alan Shepard, John Glenn, all the the Mercury Seven and the Apollo astronauts – was analogous to the way Catholics take the saints as role models… with love and respect for the attributes that made them saints (and that helped them shape history) while remembering that they are human beings. We don’t need to approve of every aspect of a saint’s (or a hero’s) personality in order to give proper recognition to those traits that made them superlative examples from whom we can take inspiration.
Having these models around brings to mind the courage, tenacity and brilliance of the men associated with them, just as having images of the saints around helps us to remember the heroes of the faith who came before us. Of course, for Catholics, the Communion of Saints carries the additional dimension of family affection. The saints are our kin. We can call on them for prayers and help, in addition to finding inspiration from their example. Sort of a big spiritual two-fer. In addition, we will one day get to meet the saints in heaven, if we persevere.
I certainly hope to meet these astronauts and pilots in heaven, too. It would be a shame, after spending so much time exploring the heavens, for any of them to miss out on the real thing.
SDG here (not Jimmy) with a DUH-O-GRAM for Republican White House hopeful Rudy Giuliani, whose increasingly blunt dissing of pro-lifers is making it harder and harder for morally sane voters to contemplate holding their nose and focusing on the promise of originalist Supreme Court nominees over Rudy’s actual rhetoric on baby-killing. 
