How far would you go for pastoral care? for liberation theology?

When I lived 90 minutes away from my parents' home in South Dakota, I made the trip about a half-dozen times per year. I remember thinking of people who commuted 45 minutes from SDSU or USD to Sioux Falls, "That's crazy! I would hate spending so much time on the road.

Now I travel 90 minutes or more twice a week just to get to class. Because the idea of hospital visits and one-on-one pastoral care frightens the be-jeebers out of me, I wanted to take a pastoral care class right away my first semester. None offered in the south side schools in our consortium fit my schedule, so I decided to take it from Garrett Evangelical, a United Methodist Seminary on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston. Each Tuesday and Thursday, I head out to the curb to catch a bus a full two hours before class is scheduled to begin. I make a trip that's the equivalent in time, if not in distance, to a ride from Sioux Falls to Watertown (SD), but this ride is chauffered by the drivers of the Chicago Transit Authority.

A trip to the Flat Top Grill is worth about an hour in the car.

Hearing the founder of liberation theology speak? That's worth about 90 minutes on the bus/train (one way).

I don't have a car here, and it has simplified my life. It's much easier to say no to shopping and other low priorities when getting there would be a hassle. I can get almost everything I need in my little neighborhood, something I think more neighborhoods should strive for, and some (like this one in Atlanta) do. Sometimes I look up from my reading on the el, see how fast we're zipping by the cars stalled on I-90/94 (a.k.a. the Dan Ryan expressway) and think, "you're wasting your life away." Life here is not faster-paced than life in my old South Dakota suburb-of-nowhere.