Minnesota Sunday
written by: Zary Fekete
@ZaryFekete
Today I went back to the first church my family attended after we returned to Minnesota from Hungary in the late 80s where my parents served as missionaries. The small chapel is over one hundred years old. It was planted before the First World War, attended primarily by Scandinavian immigrants settling across the state of Minnesota. They were drawn to Minnesota because of the similar northern climate to their homelands and the way the sky and land resemble the lands they left behind, a place of thousands of lakes reaching across the land, reflecting the sky in their blue waters.
What was it like for those immigrants to arrive to Minnesota, and what propelled their need for a church in this part of the State? The pastor spoke from the book of I Corinthians, reading the passage where certain activities are sanctioned by God such as the eating of particular foods that were formerly said to be off-limits. He bridged the passage to the reality of the political world in America today. He said he could imagine it would be difficult for some in one party to accept the fact that there might be Christians in the other party. Likewise, it might be hard for one group to admit certain ideas for healthy families might be true in spite of coming from the other group.
This pastor has had an interesting life. He came from a blue-collar background when he was originally hired by the church in the 1980s. Usually, a church requires that a pastor have some kind of ministry background before they are hired. This man had no ministry background, but had an extensive life as an electrician. The idea was presented to the elders that rather than requiring that this man go off to seminary, perhaps the church could use as qualification his existing experience as an electrician, realizing this work gave him meaningful experience relating to people in their home lives as he traveled from job to job. This was the first time I remember hearing about that kind of agreement being reached between a congregation and a prospective pastor. I remembered Jonathan Edwards, a New England pastor in the 18th century, someone who also came from a background in menial labor before joining the church in the Puritan Era.
After church, I took a walk down country roads surrounding our home. The hills in this part of the state are marvelous in how they reveal green valleys among groves of forests and low-lying wetlands. I took many pictures as I walked, but it was impossible to capture the true grandeur of the world around me. I looked into the sky and saw birds circling above. The cornfields had temporary pools of water among the stalks of corn due to the great rainfall of the past several weeks. There were two swans circling each other in the water of one field. Two sandhill cranes, birds walked together along the muddy shore. They turned and contemplated me silently with their strange eyes before retreating into the long grasses beyond the field. A few minutes later they flew off, filling the sky with their eerie, trilling cries.
I spent the last hours of the day on the back porch, surveying the hills in the distance and hearing the lowing of the cows from the neighboring farm. The grasses around the yard are filled with purple flowers that give off a sublime sweetness and are filled with the buzzing of bees. It reminded me of Yeats’s poem about his “bee-loud” glade. As I sat on the porch I deliberately did not listen to any podcasts or music but instead allowed the sounds of the outside world to fill my senses and to overwhelm my being. I can learn so much about myself in those quiet moments alone. I can look into my heart and marvel at what is there and what is not there yet. I can sit back and allow myself to be loved by God for the simple person I am.
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