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By Bobby Ross Jr. | Religion Unplugged

WASHINGTON — Ordinarily, an Amtrak ride from Penn Station in Manhattan to Union Station in Washington takes about three hours.

But last week, New York-based journalist Clemente Lisi’s 225-mile rail journey to the nation’s capital proved anything but normal.

“The train left New York at 6 p.m. Thursday, and we literally went one stop to Newark, New Jersey,” said Lisi, Religion Unplugged’s executive editor. “And at 6:10, everything stopped.”

The reason for the nearly five-hour delay: Amtrak suspended service between New York and Philadelphia after a train struck and killed a father and his two adult sons in Bristol, Pennsylvania.

Some passengers decided to rent cars. Others booked flights or returned home. But not Lisi.

Eager to attend the Religion News Association’s annual conference in Arlington, Virginia — just across the Potomac River from the capital — the Godbeat pro sat tight.

Related: #RNA2025: What the nation’s top religion writers — and AI — are talking about

“The whole time, I was just like, ‘I really want to go to the conference. It’s a great event every year,’” Lisi recalled. “I had planned my whole week around it.

“I could have been annoyed, and I was a little annoyed,” he said of the delay. “But it became more like, ‘I’m sitting in an air-conditioned train. I have the internet. I have food.’ I’m like, ‘Whatever. I’ll get there when I get there.’”

Lisi’s laissez-faire attitude — and my apologies for using a French adjective to describe the son of Italian immigrants — won’t surprise anyone who knows the 49-year-old editor.

Read the full column.

This column appears in the online magazine Religion Unplugged.

Photo provided by Clemente Lisi