Yesterday we took a rare day-trip to Ottowa, Illinois.  Ottowa is about an hour and a half south of Batavia, where the Fox River and the Illinois River meet.  It is a once prosperous town in the middle of farming country.  We enjoyed the drive, leaving behind the last of the tony suburbs with Yorkville, and then miles of fields some freshly plowed, and the farm homes each representing a family.  Ottowa is historically notable for its role in the development of the Illinois and Michigan Canal in the 1830s.  The Lincoln Douglas debate took place in Ottowa On August 21, 1858.  Douglas accused Lincoln of conspiring with congress to abolish slavery…  An indication of Ottowa’s past importance and prosperity are the substantial church buildings, their steeples visible in a line, as one stands in the Washington Square where Lincoln and Douglas debated.  Five steeples are in view.

We had lunch at the Lone Buffalo, a craft brewery in downtown Ottowa, just a few steps from Washington Square.  The tagline for the business expresses well what the enterprise is about: The Home of Farm to Foam.  While relaxing, enjoying the atmosphere of the visually attractive, spacious dining room, it occurred to us that this was “Good Friday.”  What poignant irony that both of us, having come to adulthood from Christian fundamentalist upbringing, are here in this place on a Good Friday.  We had a brief conversation with Tenisha our waitperson, who grew up in this area.  She was a consummate professional to help us understand the menu, and to take our order.  When asked, she told us a bit about her life.  My hamburger was among the best that I’ve eaten anywhere.  I will not comment on the beer as I am no connoisseur of the brewers art.

Laura and I briefly reflected upon our past lives, which were religiously focused, — the obligatory Good Friday worship service the highlight of the day.  On the surface it appears that we have “gone over to the other side.”  And yet, and yet I am not sure that is the case.  Jesus the Palestinian working man, was a public intellectual of sorts, who advocated for the equality of everyone.  He taught openly that there ought to be no priority due to accident of birth, or political power,  for the rich and well connected to enjoy good things, such as a delicious burger, and the unfortunate who get little or none.  Jesus was no advocate for armed revolt.  Jesus promoted the radical notion, a universal principle that everyone has a human right to “enough” before anyone ought to have more-than-enough.

It is no wonder that the Roman procurator, Pilate approved his judicial murder.  Such radical thinking repudiated the heart of “Pax Romana,” and remains the counter argument to the capitalist ethos which enthralls us here in America.

So there was to be no Good Friday memorial service for us to remember the demise of Jesus.  We were satisfied to be present at the Lone Buffalo, with others like us, struggling to make sense of this life, and to form something meaningful, something beautiful of the one life that we are given.

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The old airplane wreck is positioned at the side of Rt 71 on the way to Ottowa.  We stopped so that I could take some photos.  For me, the weather beaten hulk symbolized our troubled nation, recently suffering from an attempt to overthrow a presidential election by a physical assault on the Capitol, from a pandemic that continues to tear asunder the nation, and from a sizable segment of our population that manifestly prefers a strong-man autocrat, to a democratic government.

Jesus remains on the cross, — everyday.