Hello, Minnesota!
Love, love, sweet love. This state has been such a delight; a beauty to behold and nothing short of refreshing and inspiring. :) I’m currently melting in appreciation of the diversity of Minneapolis, especially after spending the past week at L’Abri in Rochester - the sweetest of honey to my lips.
I first heard of L’Abri when I was working at the Shelter in Amsterdam. It seemed everyone had some connection to this mysterious land of community and growth, especially the European staffers. This makes sense, given that many people who come to the Shelter are driven by a craving to be part of a Christian community and L’Abri exists as a place where questions can be explored, relationships deepened, and growth capitalised. Although I haven’t heard much about L’Abri since, it crosses my mind every year or so as something I’d be interested in being part of. As I looked for more reasons to justify my four-day gig in Minneapolis (it’s cool to work in a new city and all, but when it takes 8 hours to get there and you have to pay for food/housing, it’s not exactly lucrative), I suddenly remembered that L’Abri had a few U.S. branches and decided to see if any of them happened to be nearby. I was thrilled to see that there was a Rochester location which was actually on my way to Minneapolis.
I arrived late on Sunday, and the creepiness of the drive wasn’t lessened by the creaky, eerie old house that would be my home for the week, nor the tall, serious looking girl who greeted me in the darkness outside of the home. Of course, the girl/woman ended up being nothing but kind, gentle, and resourceful and the house was much less creepy in the daylight. There were only five of us - two workers, one volunteer, the director and myself - when I arrived, which made for a very intimate experience. All meals were made and shared together and the days themselves were split up into times of reading and studying or working around the property. I loved working with my hands, the cooler weather, the deer, and just being so engaged in the beautiful nature around me. Studying seemed like a lot at times, but raised some good questions within me. Something that really struck me while I was there was the tension between regression and progression.
There are so many things that I learned when I was young that I have since distanced myself from, generally conservative thoughts that I now find to be backwards and against the love of Christ I have learned from reading the Bible. L’Abri, though promising to be a place where thoughts are openly explored and you can grow closer to truth, God, and others, features many of the conservative authors and lecturists that were praised by my very biased, one-sided teachers in Highschool. I know that a lot of truth was taught to me when I was younger, but I also know that a lot of it was kiiiiiind of crazy and just legalistic, American conservative culture being preached as biblical. Things against society helping the poor (that’s strictly the churches role), multiculturalism (wrong because that blending will surely lure Christians away from the truth), going to college (a place that Marxists had overtaken), and anything outside of a six day creation (because how else could the rest of the Bible possibly be true, if the creation story was, well, just a story or metaphor?). Being at L’Abri, a place I respected but was also a bit wary of (due to the semi conservative nature), emphasized my desire to find a peace and a balance in that tension of what I learned growing up vs what I’ve seen since highschool. Would some of the content be things that I WOULD agree with, should I take a deeper look at it?
...Okay, I need to head to work, but I will hopefully continue this later. Other key points: Minneapolis is beautifully diverse and a mecca of NGO’s and hipster cafes.
At: Spyhouse Coffee
Drinking: Ethiopian Pour Over
Listening to: Bloc Party
