Today in the car, we were listening to the song Ramblin' Man on one of our many train songs CDs. The CD player whined: "I luuuuuvs you babeee, but you gotta uuuunderstand, when the Loooooord made me, he made a raaaaamblin' man."
Suddenly Russell asked, "What's the Lord?"
"Well," I said, "the Lord is the same thing some people call God. Some people think there's someone or something out there that controls things or just watches over everything. I don't believe that, myself, but a lot of people do. So in this song he's saying he was just made to be a ramblin' man and doesn't have any choice."
We had a short digression to discuss the word "rambling" and what it meant. Then suddenly Russell announced, "Sometimes I've seen it, so I think it is there. I've seen a sort of a stick thing sticking out, with a dark color, and then a thing poking out that's finger colored," and some other details I missed because I was totally confused about what the heck he was talking about.
"Are you talking about a plant or something?" I asked.
"No, I'm talking about the Lord. Sometimes I've seen a hand and fingers hanging from it up in the sky, in the clouds, so I think it does exist."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes. And sometimes I've seen a shoe up in the sky, in the early morning."
"A shoe, huh?"
"And sometimes there's a sock up there. You see that around bedtime sometimes."
At this point I was having trouble answering without audibly snorting, so I just grinned to myself from the front seat and unwisely took a big swig of tea from my thermos cup.
"Once I saw a big pair of pants up there at midnight. So I do think it's real."
The pants just about undid me. I was up there in the front seat making undignified, unparental muffled whooping sounds as I desperately tried to avoid spewing tea all over the car.
Finally I managed to swallow and said, "A pair of pants! That's hilarious!"
Because that's what we liberal atheists do. We point and jeer at the religious beliefs of others because we think we're so smart that we have all the answers, and we don't understand that that pair of pants up in the sky is REAL, baby.
Thinking it over, I reconsidered and added, "Well, I guess nobody can say for certain what's up there!"
So keep an eye out, but if you see a giant pair of Tightie Whities in the sky, I don't want to hear about it.
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I'm trying to get a fellow I work with who attends the Unitarian Church to use this as a Sunday School lesson next week. There are a number of lessons to be learned here.