I just got an email from Northwest Airlines. The good news is that they apologize for any inconvenience they've caused; the bad news is that a confirmed reservation for my wife and daughter (to attend a relative's wedding) was changed. The departure airport was changed from the metro airport ten minutes from our house to a teensy-weensie municipal airport an hour away. The flight leaves at 6:30 AM, so that means we'll have to leave the house at around 4:45. Other options would be to stay the night near the airport or use some kind of shuttle; I'm guessing the room would actually end up being cheaper (although you'd still have to factor in the cost of gas).
Pretty clever there, Northwest Airlines! Rather than retroactively raising the price of our ticket(which would probably be, you know, illegal), you're passing the cost on to us! Presumably you save money on this deal (I'm guessing by running a smaller plane out of a smaller airport, in response to reduced demand). At the same time, you've put us in a position where we're having to spend more to get to the airport. You've quite literally passed the financial burden for this flight onto almost every person who will be taking it. You're a clever bunch of heartless corporate weasels, you are.
Editor's note: "Weasels" was not the first word that came into my head, but it's far more blog-friendly than what I'm actually thinking right now.
Well, at least my daughter won't have any trouble shifting from central to pacific time on the other end...she'll be tired enough to hit the sack at her usual bedtime, local time.
This is where I'm reminded that we are encouraged to "offer up" our suffering, large and small, and unite it to the suffering of Christ:
1505 Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.".112 But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the "sin of the world,".113 of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion.
Sometimes I feel like offering up the smaller irritations of life is almost an insult to the whole idea of entering into Christ's passion; I know that when I feel that way, I'm actually looking at the whole thing backwards. The more that we actively, deliberately unite our suffering to his--from the mundane to the profound--the more our minds are on him in those moments. As we grow in holiness this should become a more frequent response, not a less frequent one. In this situation, there will be a cost in terms of inconvenience, frustration, gas, and fatigue. It's going to be a perfect opportunity.
