The email arrived this morning. The message went: “Dear Sean, nobody gives a flying [cussword] about your random, unorganized thoughts on spiritualish matters. You’re not as wise as you think you are. Go to hell.”
Well, whoever you are, thanks for the upbeat letter. You sound like someone I could be friends with. Unfortunately, as it happens, I’ve already been to Hell.
Seriously. This happened last year when I traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to make a speech at a Lutheran potluck. I had never attended a Lutheran church before, and I was a little nervous about it. But everyone told me that people in the Mitten State were so unwaveringly friendly they were often referred to as being “Michigan nice.”
When I arrived in the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, I was met by a Lutheran named—really—Prince.
Prince was a large, elderly man from Italian descent. He was built like a Whirlpool refrigerator. He spoke animatedly with his hands, and he wore more wrist-intensive jewelry than most televangelists. His mother nicknamed him “Prince”
because—in his own words—he was an incurable mama’s boy.
“Hey, Sean!” Prince cried in the airport, using a booming voice. “Get the [cussword] over here!”
Prince was not your soft-spoken, shrinking-violet Lutheran. He was the kind of Italian guy who, whenever he opened his mouth, chunks of ceiling plaster fell like flurries.
He gave me a hug, slapping my back so manfully that I coughed up particles of my own bronchial matter. Before releasing me, Prince looked me in the eyes and said, “You ever been to Hell?”
This is not a question I am often asked while being embraced in an airport by a Lutheran. I was wishing I had brought pepper spray.
But then he explained that there was actually a town named “Hell,” located a few minutes from Ann Arbor. And it was Prince’s deep belief that everyone should visit this town once.
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