Day 2
Breakfast Typique
Just a quick note: this was our first morning of bagels and whatnot as provided for us in the hotel lobby. By the end of the trip, we would all have become connoisseurs of the hotel lobby genre of food. Mm! Bagels! Pastries!
The Temple
I trust I have established by now that the wonder of temples is a major theme of this book, and also that crossing busy intersections in the rain and nice clothes isn’t anything the pioneers wouldn’t have done had that been their trial. But it wasn’t their trial, okay? It was our trial.
Since the vast majority of our group was unendowed, our plan was to perform baptisms for the dead. An appointment was made and we all had an opportunity to serve our departed brothers and sisters.
In addition to the ordinances being performed, I suppose it was only natural that I was thinking of my friend Josh’s wedding and, by projection, of my own wedding. By this time, there were fewer days between the present date and my future anniversary than between the present date and when I arrived in Nauvoo. That was certainly something to think about. But for all my sadness at the ending of my Nauvoo experience, getting back to Lynsey gave it some sweetness.
The Miracle Mile
Chicago’s famed Michigan Avenue proved to be a very dangerous place for us—at least one person suffered a startlingly painful head injury by immobile object, and I don’t even want to talk about those of our group who spent a fortune at the Rain Forest Café and then accidentally left a 120% tip.
It was rather the landmark morning for me. I entered my first Hard Rock Cafe. And, well, it was a little whoopdedooish. But what I liked best about Michigan Avenue were the matching churches, apparently built out of looted ancient Irish church ruins. (Of course, just because I say that, doesn’t mean I think it’s true. It’s just another failed attempt at humor.)
The people I was wandering about with ate lunch at an interesting little place. You walk in and are given a plastic card with a magnetic strip. Then you can visit any one of about a dozen eclectic restaurants and exotically organic vegetable stands. For everything you place on your tray, they swipe your card. When your tray is full, you eat. But in order to leave the restaurant, you must pay whatever balance you have accrued on your little plastic card. It was a little too complicated for me, but I managed. I was used to the JSA cafeteria method where you just take what you want, eat it, and then go bowling.
When we had had enough with the shopping and pricey restaurants, we met in front of the restrooms at the McDonald’s across the street from where Bev, our bus driver, was to pick us up. All accounted for, we loaded up and pulled out, and I found myself once again heading from Chicago to Indiana.
Notre Dame
The campus of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana is inarguably beautiful. Plus, they have a really lush bookstore. (That counts for a lot.) But I don’t know how a BYU student such as myself can even begin to talk about Notre Dame without recognizing the striking similarities between the two schools. Starting with surface things, both schools have beautifully kept grounds. I especially loved Notre Dame’s enormous, open, commons area. Moving onto historical similarities, both were started by religious people in the nineteenth century. Moving onto surrounding area things, both schools reside in a community of roughly a quarter million that probably would not be that big without the school’s influence. Moving onto religious things, both schools are very used to the old joke about their football stadium being the largest place of worship on campus.
Speaking of the stadium, we were able to walk through it. As we stood next to the field, I offered to run in a punt for a historic touchdown, but no game was in process and besides, I was too scrawny. Jay, always the practical one, ran out onto the field and had Greg toss him an actual football (where it came from I don’t know). How, Jay wanted to know, could he possibly stand in Notre Dame Stadium and not at least play a little catch? Our tour guide was very agreeable to the reasonableness of this.
It probably won’t surprise you, given my chat on Catholics, that my favorite part of the tour was the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. I don’t know exactly what it means for a building to be a basilica, but Pope John Paul II himself so designated the building in 1992, so I’m sure it’s something special.
Leaving behind the high church / low church debate, I just don’t see how it can be argued that proper Catholic iconography isn’t stunningly beautiful. But the relics are another story, and although I’m glad I have finally seen some relics now, I am just not so sure that they are as worth talking about as other things on campus. Like the Touchdown Jesus. Almost as fancy as the JSA’s Surfing Jesus, the Touchdown Jesus mosaic has been so called because he is visible over the stadium walls and his arms are raised as if to say, Touchdown! The real name of the mosaic, I should mention, is “Word of Life.” (It’s on the side of the library.)
I don’t know if the following fact is true of either the library or the Basilica, but every football game at Notre Dame except one, since 1966, has been empty-seatless. Which, I suppose, is a reasonable place to pick up the jokes again.
Grocery Store and Other Miscellany
Everyday on the bus, I sat next to a different person. But already, by the second day, certain Bus Buddies-if-you-know-what-I-mean-Bus Buddies had begun to appear elsewhere on the bus. Day 2 was roommate Jared’s birthday, and apparently he had been a good boy, because the girls gave him a harem. Or so I was told. Being unwilling to ask questions, I was given no answers. But the gift does reveal something of the Bus Buddy mentality that cramped quarters had started leading us into. I mean, maybe the “harem” was merely a safety precaution designed for Jared, the birthday boy’s, benefit. After all, on a bus, there are either no Dark Corners, or that’s all there is. Perhaps they were just trying to keep him out of trouble by surrounding him with massive amounts of femininity, rather than the more easily “handled” single female. Or maybe I’m just digging a pit for myself here and should talk about something else.
Needing birthday candles, or some comparable item that would prove less illegal inside a public building designated for the sleeping of weary travelers, a group of us was assigned to go to the grocery store. How precisely we were to find a grocery store was uncertain until suddenly one of the hotel employees offered to drive us. It was a very kind gesture and led to some happy laughs outside the bounds of normal JSA humor. For instance, jokes about grocery stores. When, after all, was the last time we had been to a grocery store?
There could be no doubt that our latest hotel was in a prime location for outside world-starved JSA students. Just across a small sidestreet from our temporary abode was a dollar theater. After birthdaying, we skipped over for a viewing of The Sixth Sense. It was my second time seeing it. And I still jumped like a BBed jackrabbit when the policeman lit that flare. You probably don’t remember that part, do you? I’m not surprised. I seem to be the only person to leap and scream when that flare takes fire.
An interesting thing about The Sixth Sense is how, at each viewing, it is a different movie for me. The first time, I had a purely entertaining thrillfest. The second time, it was a tender tale of married love. I would see it one more time before it left theaters, and that time it would be the touching story of a mother’s love.
I stayed up late that night discussing things upon things inspired by the movie with Heather. She saw it as analogous to the plan of salvation, which I still can’t quite see myself, but where our conversation led is the real story. Nowhere in particular is an honest answer, but the world through another’s eyes can be a very different place indeed. No less beautiful, no more wonderful, but when people can meet and bring their perspectives together, much can be learned. That’s why we need each other. That’s a primary reason for Sunday meetings. That is why the sociality of the Saints is so important. But sociality, Jared, does not include harems.
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Thanks for revisiting Nauvoo with me. I would love to hear your thoughts.