In the late eighties, somewhere between Iran-contra, Exxon Valdez, and a World Series earthquake, I was handcuffed and driven from the Dade juvenile detention center to Miami International Airport. I had the dubious honor of being the first Florida juvenile delinquent to be sent to an out-of-state program. A place called Sherbourne House in frigid Saint Paul, Minnesota.
I remember the double takes and raised eyebrows when I stepped off the plane in shorts, a t-shirt, and a mullet, with only a rumpled brown lunch bag as my luggage. It was December in the Twin Cities. Everyone else was dressed for the occasion. The van driver had no problem picking me out of the crowd.
As we drove down the snowy streets to the former rectory that would be my residence for the foreseeable future, I had no idea I was heading into some of the best days of my troubled youth. Ice fishing, Twins games, sledding, skiing, snowball fights… Definitely a different experience for a Florida kid.
But the memory that stands out the most about Minneapolis-Saint Paul is the same takeaway most visitors to the area have: The people are so nice.
In Miami it was nothing to see grown men come to blows in a traffic jam on the Palmetto. Or cars speeding by a stranded, broken down family in the hazard lane. That would never happen in Minnesota. The low income neighborhood where Sherbourne House was located was home to people of Nordic descent, plus Vietnamese, Somalians, and every gradation of black and white on the color spectrum. They all waved and smiled when the van drove by. Every time. But they wave and smile in the south, too. Itโs not just that. Minnesotans cared for each other. Like โcaredโ as an active verb… Checked on each other during brutal winters, shoveled snow from neighborsโ driveways, looked out for the elderly among them. In short, they were a community.
I think this is why itโs so difficult reconciling the Minnesota in my head with the one Iโve been seeing on TV. Where police kneel on the necks of unarmed citizens while the life drains out of them, like big game hunters posing over a trophy kill. Where molotovs fly and struggling small business owners weep and precincts burn.
This is not the Minnesota I remember. But then America as a whole is pretty unrecognizable right now.
Malcolm Ivey / Author 
That’s where the headquarters of the company I used to work with is located, and has been, for more than 125 years, Ameriprise Financial. In fact, the tallest building used to be its headquarters, when it was known as IDS (for “Investors Diversified Services”). The name of the building is still the ‘IDS Tower,’ and the whole complex of 5 parts or connected buildings ‘IDS Center.’ I spent half-a-dozen times in Minneapolis, including in the company’s state of the art training center in Chaska, MN, right outside Minneapolis. I used to say that for a city, I considered Minneapolis to be a most livable city, other than its location in the frozen tundra of the upper northern Midwest statesโand I had had my fill of frozen living while going to college in central New England.
Indeed like you, I had a difficult time matching my perception of Minneapolis and its twin, St Paul, with the turmoil racing across various news sites I’ve come to trust over the last 50 years or so. On the other hand, I no longer am surprised by the ongoing horrid, brutal manner in which Blacks are terrorized and killed in a cold, detached manner by a White establishment which has never renounced its racist dominance, ever since White Europeans left the Old Country for its Promised Land in the New World. Unfortunately they didn’t leave Europe’s colonialism attitudes behind. And for those escaping religious persecution, they neglected to pay attention that abused children often become abusers as adults.
That we descendentes still maintain these attributes after 400 to 500 years should be a sobering reminder that carrying the ‘Christian’ moniker with us does a horrible disservice to the mild and meek Jesus Christ whose name we carry. And does us no good, and only pain to those we look down on. Only when we gain a sober assessment of the evil, sinfulness within us, and only through a thorough allowing of the Light that is Jesus to shine fully that we may appreciate that wicked sin that so easily trips us up. And then in light of that thorough assessment, bow down in complete surrender. Knowing that this work must be a done by the Holy Spirit, to convict us, and then to bring the fullness of the healing divine touch to lift us up. To gain forgiveness AND cleansing. And then like Paul, not trusting self to remain true, humble, giving, putting others ahead of ourselves. And daily dying to self and sin, focusing our eyes upon Jesus, to be transformed into his likeness on a continuing daily basis. That by beholding Jesus, we become more and more like him. That’s our only hope. Start your work in me, Lord. For I and this world sorely needs your transforming power!
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