Windy Curse of the Upper Midwest

So anyone who knows me intimately is aware that I hate three things:

1) The Devil
2) Processed Cheese
3) The greater "Chicagoland" area

I have lived in Los Angeles, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, Spokane, Lawton, Oklahoma and even Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And I have visited many cities, states and towns in this great nation. In the words of Johnny Cash, "I've been everywhere man. I've been everywhere." And I've sat in traffic, inhaled smog, had locals throw stuff at my car, eaten my fair share of colloquial slow roasted swine-based delicacies but of all the places in the contiguous US that I abhor with the utmost sincerity, it has to be Chicagoland.

Anyone who has seen the classic Steve Martin/John Candy movie Planes Trains and Automobiles has ample excuse to avoid the place. Like an obnoxious gnarled knot in your open faced fishing reel, Chicago is nothing but a big headache. I will tell one story in order to illustrate this point but I could probably start an entire blog devoted to this subject. It is one of those topics that merits lengthy discourse like if an Iphone is worth the extra phone bill of if Brett Favre is retired - annoying but a good place to warn others of potential pitfalls and letdowns.

It was an icy windswept day in early December two years ago - a Saturday (my one day off). We were overdue to see my nephews -the craziest kids on the planet. One actually growls at people. Like captive Killer Whales, they are wildly entertaining to watch but it is best keep a little distance or they'll pull you into the tank. My brother in law is one of the coolest guys around but he has one flaw I cannot overlook, he lives in Naperville, a condo-laden high-end suburb of Chicago that boasts an inordinate number of mediocre donut shops and well-groomed yet still hairy middle aged men in black leather jackets, gold chains and Mercedes SUVs. It would mean a 3 hour drive to the "Heart of Darkness." Like Kurtz in the Joseph Conrad novel of the same name, I grew more insane as I drove deeper into the suburban jungle.

Life is full of paradox and contradiction. Theologians call this mysterion. There are several great Mysterion that strike a person on the drive from Milwaukee to Chicago. For the sake of brevity, let us only address one today.

Chicago wants you to pay them to assault your family with their pock-marked excuses for highways. How can you pay a 2 dollar toll every two miles and still hit 25 potholes in between toll booths? Mystics contemplate this one. On this particular journey we hit one pothole that was so deep, it destroyed one of our front tires. About a quarter mile from the pothole was a toll booth that charged me 2 dollars for driving on the road that just cost me 150 dollars damage to my tire. The yellow sign above the toll booth proudly proclaimed "On behalf of Rod Blagojevich, Governor of Illinois, Welcome." That is a whole 'nother post. On this particular trip, I found myself changing tires on the side of the road 3 times! It got so bad, that we spent 9 hours on the road traveling a distance of 200 miles. We got within 15 minutes of my nephews condo
and we turned around and headed back because we ran out of time. My dad argues that there are certain contexts in which a God-fearing man may use words regulary reserved for the godless heathen. And this day I added Chicago to the short list that included such circumstances as smashing your finger with a wrench and being self-employed and trying to do your own taxes.

So I got to thinking about Jesus. If I hate going to Chicago so much, maybe Jesus struggled coming to earth. It must have been cumbersome to put of skin and bones and flesh. It must have been annoying to get tired, need to eat, have to go to the bathroom, etc. Many times we focus on the agony of the cross as the central sacrifice of Jesus. The Eastern Orthodox church sees the "incarnation" or Jesus becoming a person as the greatest loss for Jesus. If Jesus is willing to give up his rights as God in heaven to come to earth because he loved us, I guess I am willing to drive to Chicago for my nephews because I love them too.