So I buy a truck

It's a big truck.

It's as big as my love for Valerie.

It's as big as trucks go, just as my cat YoYo was as big as cats go. (And alas, he did go).

It's as big as the view out my backyard, with its stretches of field and sky, and Cori's llamas.

Come to think of it, it's as big as Cori's truck.

It's so big, the front of the truck turns the corner 30 seconds before the back of the truck turns.

It's as big as a Toyota Tundra, because it is one.

When we first moved to these parts 12 years ago, truck ownership was a foreign language. Who me? An east-coast Philadelphia snoot? Maybe a Volvo someday.

But a truck? What do you take me for?

When we first moved to these parts, my then-young kids and I would drive around in our minivan, and we'd count the number of funny people driving trucks with nothing in the beds. Why do all these people drive around in trucks with nothing in the beds?

"Look! there goes another one!" I would huff-and-puff with feigned outrage.

"That's 32!" little Andrew would marvel, his nose twitching as only his nose can twitch, his voice scratchy as only his voice can scratch, "Thirty-two trucks with empty beds!!!"

And we'd get all worked up inside our minivan.

That was some years ago.

So the day I bought the truck I texted (not-so-little) Andrew: "Bought a big truck."

His reply text was immediate: WHAT? Whyyyyy???

Why?

Well, at some point while counting those trucks with empty beds ... a seed must have been planted into the soil of my soul ...

And now I have an ENORMOUS truck.

And there's nothing in the bed.

By the way: This blog is about aesthetics and theology -- and the whole complicated world that lies in between.

Logos2Go

Hmmmm: Mark 4.32 ... Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade."