Twin Cities Musings

One of my favorite churches to go to is the Unitarian Universalist church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota - on the East shores of White Bear Lake.

Every service begins with the following greeting:

Come into this place which we make holy by our presence. Come in with all of your vulnerabilities and strengths, fears and anxieties, loves and hopes. For here you need not hide, nor pretend, nor be anything other than who you are and who you are called to be.

Come into this place where we can touch and be touched, heal and be healed, forgive and be forgiven. Come into this place where the ordinary is sanctified, the human is celebrated, the compassionate is expected.Come into this place, together we make it a holy place.
-Rebecca Edmiston-Lange

I love the sermons, the focus on peace and service, the openness to all religions. Here is an excerpt from the sermon on one of the Sundays I was able to attend:

“[There] is a hard truth about forgiveness. It must often begin in anger and sadness,
because it begins with the discovery that some fundamental human trust has been betrayed.
The heart naturally recoils at this discovery, and is flooded with dark emotions. Yet it must overcome these emotions, and rise toward the light. If, in its desire to avoid these emotions, it turns away from the events that cause them, it is not acting with forgiveness; it is acting with denial…
“…What the forgiving heart must do is wade into the darkness, knowing that
against the light of goodness, darkness cannot stand. It must recognize the darkness, but act toward the light.
“This, it seems to me, is the key to forgiveness. When our actions are based in love
and a belief in the sanctity of all life, they are actions of forgiveness.”
— Kent Nerburn, Calm Surrender: Walking the Path of Forgiveness

Forgiveness. So difficult. But so very very necessary. To forgive: to cease to feel a resentment towards (an offender). Whether or not that person has apologized. Whether or not the person has stopped doing whatever it was that created the need for forgiveness. Seventy time seven are the requirements in the Bible for forgiving someone who keeps on offending. Wow. Want a challenge in life? There aren't many bigger ones than that. Here is a link to some of the sermons: http://www.whitebearunitarian.org/html/sermons.html



The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul Minnesota have some lovely spots, which I was delighted to be able to visit again during my time in the US:

The sidewalk outside the Loring Pasta Bar, moved from Loring Park a few years ago to its new home in Dinkytown, by the University of Minnesota































Inside the bar/restaurant it is very very unique.



It reminds me of Antoni Gaudi's architecture in Barcelona, Spain.


On this visit I noticed some new things:
Beautiful bicycle racks by Milwaukee Avenue


















Interesting lawn signs supporting walking and bicycling



















A lovely statue of a girl reading a book - in the front yard of Mollie Hoben, a co-founder of the Minnesota Women's Press, a free distribution newspaper I was fortunate to help get started back in 1984.












These trees growing out of stumps remind me of the ever present opportunity we all have to re-create our lives anew.