Kansas is a very, very long state, even at 75 mph steady, in a hefty crosswind. Happily, Jesus is everywhere. I missed my favorite shot of Him, plainly and exquisitely painted onto a billboard poking up out of the greening summer bounty of the earth with no verbal interpretation, just a very happy and welcoming, hippie-style Jesus holding a stalk (whatever) of wheat and smiling at me. I liked that Jesus. This more personalized Jesus, below, which I did manage to capture on pixels, runs a close second, even if the godsmack message and Photo-Shopped halo, not to mention the blood-red ray of---something?---shooting off of His---heart?---are a bit much for my tastes.
Kansan interstate landowners freely express their First Amendment rights.
Let me be clear. I am not poking fun here. Cornfield Jesuses are not my style, I grant you, nor public displays of opinion about abortion, also bountiful in Kansas, as you know from recent news. But there they were, and it is important for me to be reminded firsthand that fundamental interpretations of Christian scripture are alive and well in these United States. Stereotypes do not fall out of God's blue sky fully formed for no reason, just because I with my intellectual bent tend to seek the symbolic rather than the literal in all scripture. It takes all kinds. Or, as an apocryphal Farmer Joe responded on that question to my campaigning politician granddaddy one hot afternoon in central Mississippi, ca. 1969, "Nawsuh, it don't, we jus' GOT all kinds."
Anyway. If you think that I did not have Jesus, God Almighty, Mother Nature, Father Time, and the rest of the cosmic Gang foremost in my mind, heart, and soul when Dodger and I were trying to outrun this clabber of Wicked Witchy clouds in central Missouri just hours ago, well, bless your heart.
"Arooo?"
The Gang got us to yet another Motel 6, in St. Robert, MO, not too long after dark. (I'm pretty sure Dodger thinks it's the same motel every night, but I know it's not, and this is one of the nicest I've stayed in.)
Special thanks to Mike Warner, my Missouri-native buddy who relayed to me from Charlotte his first-hand knowledge of the Show-Me State, current weather reports, and precise map information, from his laptop via cellphone, those modern-day miracles. Lord, Lord, Lord.
For now, it's time for me to say my Missouri prayers and hit another Motel 6 pillow. Good night and God bless us every one.
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