Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #899

yeah I know you did not ask!

I posted a random thought yesterday that read, “Sometimes when I am listening to really good music that moves me, I think, if life has any meaning at all, it is music.”

To which one of my muchísimo subscribers responded, “For me, it’s the music of nature. Sitting on the deck this morning, no one is mowing and all I hear all the birds and the rustle of leaves.

For me the sound of suburbia has always been the drone of gas engines on lawn mowers, and the 2-cycle engines of  weed eaters and leaf blowers.  Of course, that is getting a bit better as more and more folks are adopting electric lawn mowers and other electric yard tools… at least around here.

The latest “sound of suburbia” for me is the all too many delivery trucks driving much too fast on the shady, tree lined streets of our neighborhood full of children and old folks.

During the pandemic the sound of this neighborhood actually reminded me a bit of my youth as I could hear children playing outside.  Apparently, now they have all gone back inside with their video games.  Oh well.

But when it is quiet, I love sitting on our patio listening to the chirping of the birds, watching the antics of the squirrels and chipmunks and marveling at the acrobatic aeronautics of the humming birds and bumble bees.  And let’s not forget Princess Lily keeping us safe from those same squirrels and chipmunks.  It is good to have a purpose in life.

Occasionally, life really is good.

Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #9,809

yeah I know you did not ask!

Way, way back in the day, but not quite Mr. Peabody way back, I used to have a t-shirt that had written large upon on it, “Nuke a Gay Whale for Christ.”

I loved it because it satirized multiple  tropes current at that period of time. I always wondered, though, why they did not get the ubiquitous milk of this time period in there somehow…Got Milk?

What brought this up is that I saw a bumper sticker today that I have seen a few times before.  It reads in large letters, “JESUS LOVES YOU“, and below that in a smaller font is “But I am his favorite.

I have never quite figured out if the folks displaying these bumper stickers are evangelizing, satirizing or both. Or perhaps, given the epidemic of narcissism in this country, they really believe they are the favorite of one branch of the Christian trilogy.  Going even further afield, perchance, the bumper sticker is referring to that well known playboy, the Mexican Mac Daddy, the gardener named Jesus.

On so it goes upon the highways and byways of the metropolis known as St. Louis.