We Only Want to Share the Teachings of Our Leader By Serving Good Food at Reasonable Prices.

[Before I begin, I know, I KNOW! Something is wrong with the template, forcing the blog posts to start below the sidebar. I'm still trying to figure out how to fix it.]

Forgetting that today was both Taste of Chicago AND the Pride Parade, I told Rachael I would drop off some inventory for a party she was hosting today. Once I got there, I was almost an hour late and Rachael was very irritated with me. I unloaded the thousand pound suitcase at her front door and got back in the car, not in the mood to fight anymore traffic. Rachael lives sort of near Roscoe Village, so I drove over there to go to a candy store I found near Fellger Park, Suckers, Inc. Suckers, Inc. sells homemade ice cream and a bunch of old-fashioned candy that you didn't know anybody made anymore - wax lips, Necco Wafers, MaryJanes, candy cigarette packs that look like Pall Malls, stuff like that. A couple of weeks ago, I bought my dad a pack of Sen-Sen, BlackJack chewing gum, and some violet-flavored breath mints for Father's Day (budgetary restrictions prevented me from buying him a Porsche this year). I parked across the street, but when I got out, the call of lunch grumbled louder than the call of candy, so I walked down to Roscoe and into a restaurant, called Victory, that looked like it might be sort of hippie vegan.

I don't think I talk a lot about my religious views, and I think now's a good time to start: I am not religious. I have no interest in becoming religious. I have no interest in religion. I do not want the Ten Commandments in public schools, I do not want to swear on the Bible when called to testify in a trial, I do not want to attend Mass, listen to an Imam, or know what the Buddha said. The interest? Not there.

I had a religion once, one that I was raised in. It was called "Disciples of Christ," and it favored a looser interpretation of the Bible than the evangelical churches that are in vogue today do. I went to church every Sunday until I was about 16, then had enough, so I walked away without regret or repurcussions from other church members, who still politely ask my mother about me and send their regards. This is what I like in a Church - one that doesn't lose sleep over your rejection of their religion.

While most of the time I feel this has worked out nicely, the religious doing their thing and me doing mine and us leaving each other alone about it, I also must admit that I am sometimes uncertain of when a religion has gone too far and is now vacationing at Camp Coo-coo.

When I walked into Victory restaurant, I immediately became extremely creeped out and uncomfortable, just like I did when I watched Tom Cruise go bananas on Oprah and babble forcefully on about his love of 1.)Katie Holmes and 2.)Scientology. But I thought, No, it's just me being an atheist asshole. It's just religion giving me the creeps like it always does. Everybody else is just slurping away at their soup, so it must be fine.

A woman wearing a frilly pink sari* approached me and led me to a two-seater booth with lemon yellow vinyl seats.

"Would you like some freshly squeezed orange juice?" She asked solicitously. "Chai? Bottled water?"

I ordered chai and looked over the menu. On the back of the menu, covering the bottom half, was a blurb titled, "About Us."** It read almost exactly like Wendy McClure's description of Inspiration Soup. It was at that point that I began to think, yes, creeped out is good. Creeped out is right.

"We have devoted our lives to the teachings and wisdom of Sri Chinmoy. We live our lives in accordance with his wisdom, and want only to serve you good food. In addition, we offer free meditations every night, and free lectures at our bookstore. Again, this is absolutely free, and we only do it because we want to help and give out information. That is all. We just want to give you good food, and the information is there if you want it. We even put our message on our sugar packets, that's how much we love to love. Seriously. For real. No obligation. Hey, nobody's keeping you here, you know. This is just what we do, because we want to spread teaching of love and tolerance. Tolerance, see? We are tolerant, and of course the doors aren't locked! Try them and see. You can leave any time. We want only to love. We would never keep you here, and the doors aren't locked."

I looked at the sugar packets. Printed onto individual packets of Sugar in the Raw, were quotes attributed to Sri Chinmoy:

"Friendship expands our sweet dream-horizons."

"Each heart is born to love."

"A moment's peace can and shall save the world."

"Listen to your heart-whispers."

Hmm. I think I've seen similar messages before, so I can't say the sugar packets moved me any closer to enlightenment. But I stayed, and looked over the restaurant while I waited for my vegetarian meal to arrive. On the wall opposite me was a small tv, playing in continuous loop a video showing Sri Chinmoy's power and influence - the guru shaking hands with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, the late Pope John Paul II, leading the U.N. in meditation. Photographs of Chinmoy were everywear, over the counter wearing a pale blue peasant shirt, head resting casually on his open palm, on the window ledge showing him in front of a full plate of breakfast food sitting in a booth with familiar lemon-yellow vinyl seats, in a car wearing what could only be the faded denim Levis jacket I bought in 11th grade.

Over the speakers, his music played. On the tables, the plastic insert holders usually telling of drink specials contained instead copies of his paintings, abstract art pieces which, to my untrained eye, looked like thick globs of powder blue paint covered by tangerine blobs of paint that looked like Goldfish crackers. The painting was entitled "Forgiveness" and had a loosely-drawn pen illustration of a bird next to the handwritten title.

Chinmoy, Chinmoy, Chinmoy, and the occasional frilly pink sari. Fliers in between the salt and pepper shackers announcing when the next meditation would be taking place.

If I didn't know better, (and I don't) I'd say this was a cult restaurant, the only cult restaurant I've ever seen. I looked carefully at the diners. The restaurant was crowded, and they all sat around chatting animatedly. Nobody was creeped out, so I could only conclude that either they'd all been eating too much Inspiration Soup or I'd been living in the suburbs for too long.

The veggie wrap I'd ordered was tasty, but not tasty enough to shake that weird cult vibe the place had going on. Right before the urge to flee overwhelmed me, the mood was broken by the balls to the wall shrieking of an infant. You can preach love, tolerance, and serenity all you want, but it won't mean dick to babies, who are immune to all forms of religious protelyzing, those wonderfully crabby little things. Usually the sound of raging shrieks makes my shoulders tense up, but this baby's angst was like a tarty little tang cutting through all the syrupy sweetness of enforced beatific peace.

I sailed out, buoyed on the sounds of infant outrage and stopped back by Suckers Inc. The sign on the door still read "Open," but as I pushed the door in and stepped through the archway, a hand circled my bicep and literally dragged me back outside.

I had no more time to think, "What the...," when the woman who had grabbed me pointed at the building and said, "Don't go in there, the building's on fire!"


"What?" I said, turning to the store to look for smoke, when we were descended upon by 3 firetrucks screeching up to the front door. Before the trucks had even come to a halt, axe-wielding fire fighters jumped out of the truck and unscrewed the fire hydrant, spraying huge swaths of water over me and my hero, who turned out to be the store's owner. The firefighters were swarming all over the block and I could not have been more in the way. I dashed across the now blocked-off street to the safety of the other sidewalk and immediately savored the instant celebrity from gawkers that only someone recently pulled out of a burning building can enjoy.

It was all very exciting, but did not erase completely the teachings of Sri Chinmoy from my mind. I want to learn more, I thought, before I go home and make fun of it on the internet. So I did.
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*There were three male employees, and three female employees that I could see, all white. All the female employees were wearing frilly pink saris, and none of the men were wearing any kind of uniform. This totally pissed me off, because how, as a woman employee there, can you possibly fight for equality and dignity? You already blew it when you agreed to wear such a ridiculous outfit.

**Or something like that.