Bridge Ices Before Road

I left Albuquerque around 9 am. Possibly the worst hotel bed I have ever slept in. I mean, they just threw a sheet over a collection of mattress coils. Nevertheless, we rose, packed the truck, and headed east. Now, I understand the ecological value of desert plants not blowing in the wind. How else would they stay rooted? It is less than helpful when trying to gauge the wind gusts on the highways. I stopped for gas in Tucumcari. Oh my goodness. It is the town that New Mexico forgot. The Route 66 museum looks like it is about to fall down. The townies are…interesting. I was standing behind a gentleman in the Circle K who was wearing very short cut off jean shorts and a white t-shirt desperately trying to cover his large belly. He kept bending over. Each time revealing his gentlemanly parts obscured from view by his whitey tighties. Thank the Lord.

As I entered Texas, I saw the largest cross IN THE WORLD!!! I am not really sure the point of it, but it had lots of visitors. There were a gamillion cops just chillin waiting for anyone driving 5 miles over the speed limit.

Then came Oklahoma. I did two things in Oklahoma. 1. Tried to figure out the plentiful road signs that said, “Bridge ices before road”. I eventually surmised that it means the ice starts on the road before the bridge. Or maybe after. (Maybe I didn’t figure it out.) 2. Listening to quite a bit of Christian radio. I had the choice between Country, Christian, or Latino stations. And since I am tired of driving, I went with the station that would keep me awake. I don’t really listen to Christian music. I feel it lacks poetry. It usually comes in two forms; declaration or supplication. There isn’t a whole lot more to it. But Christian talk radio…well, that makes my head explode most of the time and I just can’t resist it. I heard a pastor in San Diego talking about the voting season approaching. He told his church “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord”. He told them to vote their values. He told them that our country has been going astray for a while and about some book he read comparing us to Nazi Germany. He says that we are moving away from being a Christian nation to our own peril. I have a really hard time with this argument mostly because I can’t see when we were a Christian nation. We can’t simply claim that because the men who founded the nation were primarily Christians, that they were establishing a Christian nation. Walmart is a pretty good example of how far Christians can diverge from Kingdom values in their work. Were we a Christian nation when they wrote a constitution outlining the separation of church and state guaranteeing religious freedom to all? Were we a Christian nation when we engaged in the capture, relocation, and in many cases slaughtering of the indigenous people? Or how about when we fought a war defending our rights to enslave an entire color of people? Were we a Christian nation when we didn’t allow women to vote? Or when we relegated the hardest labor in our land to the immigrants because there was no other work we would give them. I suppose you could argue that we were once a more wholesome nation. That there was a time when a higher standard of ethics governed our conduct. But those ethics were reserved for certain people. I doubt that many black people would argue a higher ethic governed the Civil Rights movement. And I’m sure those that fought and died in Vietnam would not exactly call that a Christian war. My point is that we have never been a Christian nation. It is possible that we were a more moral nation at certain points and those morals might be derived from the Judeo Christian tradition. I think that it is like that sign I saw before every bridge on I-40. The ice is morality or Christian values. It can be the road before the bridge, on the bridge, and after the bridge. The road is the road. Just because there has been or is some ice on it, doesn’t mean the road is ice. The road is the road.