I’ve volunteered a lot of time to my graying church (that I haven’t been a member of for the last 45 years) this summer. We started looking for an agreeable church about the time we started thinking about having children. We were visiting the local Unitarian Church the day they invited Glen Avon’s minister to lead them in worship. We really liked David Caldwell. I still remember the elderly Unitarian Woman who was suspicious of the much larger trinitarian universe. She asked Rev. Caldwell what churches like his were like in much the same way as today a member of one of the faltering mainline Churches might ask what’s going on in the Evangelical churches whose pastors are endorsing the South Park Satan’s latest bed mate. See this post if you dare although there is no explanation…..only a visual hint. NOTE – this is a very long post and the clue is at the very bottom of a long chain of text messages.
Among my work I’ve painted fresh stripes on the parking lot. I’ve moved forty years worth of donated material from the kitchen so that it can be brought up to modern specs. I have also organized 750ish folders of sheet music sung by the choir since sheet music was 12-cents-each to make life easier for our new choir director.
Our magnificent bluestone church had a more humble beginning. The many Scottish heritage Presbyterians of the Hunter’s Park neighborhood were tired of taking the trolley down Woodland Avenue to their old First Presbyterian Church so they built themselves a cute little church next to the Trolley Station. But folks kept moving up over the hill and the church wasn’t big enough. But these were prudent and penny pinching Presbyterians. They weren’t about to destroy their precious little church. Instead they offered it to Presbyterrians in the mining town to the North Gilbert, Minnesota.
I’ve heard the old church was put on a wagon drawn by a huge team of horses. I’ve also heard it was hauled up by train. Going to visit it has crossed my mind for the past couple decades but it took a trip to International falls last week to put Gilbert in my view. The I Falls trip was one of a dozen Claudia said I could choose for a Father’s Day Gift. I got to thinking I hadn’t been to I Falls for a long time. Perhaps the last time was the Ross Perot Campaign back in 1992 although I might have made it again in 2006 during another of my lost cause campaigns for Congress.
I suggested it was a two day trip rather than a day trip so we stayed in I Falls over night drove to Lake of the Woods the next day and drove home on a slightly more westerly drive which took us through Grand Rapids. On the spur of the moment I suggested it was time for a Wizard of Oz lover like me to visit the Judy Garland museum and that is how we finished our trip. Between the biggest Smokey the Bear statue, lunch in Canada, the Bronko Nagurski Museum and the old house that didn’t land on the wicked witch it was a lovely trip. On the way I looked up info on the Vermillion Gold Rush and the Vermillion Trail. That trail is the one that like the Kansas Tornado the old Glen Avon Church followed to its new home….with no witches under its foundation.
While we traveled Claudia found a detective story about conspiracies against the Anishinaabe that lead to the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area) We still had three hours of story left so I suggested we travel to the old Glen Avon in Gilbert yesterday to attend church. Its now a Methodist Church. So that’s just what we did. A little better than a dozen lovely people welcomed us and invited us to have a brunch with them after their service. The pastor enjoyed having a bellowing bass sing out all the familiar hymns. The congregation was pleased to have some Glen Avonites in attendance. They pointed to their basement wall and a full page of the Duluth News Paper from 1945 that described the 50th Anniversary of the Glen Avon congregation. I snapped a picture of the paper with some annoying glare from basement lights.

And here’s the Gilbert Presb. Church in 1920…

and here it is last Sunday as a Methodist Church….

and one more from inside…..

And a final note that stuck with me. We were about 30 minutes early when just outside of Gilbert I was a sign pointing to the Wellstone Memorial. Paul Wellstone, who I admired as our state’ US Senator died in 2002 along with his wife and daughter in a plane crash days before the election which he almost certainly would have won. This is a death, that had it not happened I can imagine might through the butterfly effect have avoided the Donald Trump contamination which followed.

So, from the Wellstone memorial to a lovely church, provided by penny pinching Scotch Presbyterians, to a sign at the Laurencian Divide reminding us that “disappearing” our nation’s uninvited guests is a particularly vile unchristian thing to be doing I discovered today someone in league with South Park’s Satan took my sign against brutalizing the undocumented down. I put it back up and in coming days I may have a story to tell about one of the people with Trump’s target on his back.
