Chapter 37
The minister at the Mindekirken, Jon Erland, greets me in the lobby connecting the church to the offices.
When I called him before my departure from Norway and told him about the book I was writing he said he hadn’t actually known my cousin, only my uncle, and that I should really try some other source.
But once he became aware of my theological background, and I had hinted that it was memories of the Mindekirken when I was a child that had inspired me, he agreed to meet me anyway.
Jon Erland looks to be in his seventies and speaks with the same Norwegian dialect as I do, not so surprising since the Norwegian Bible Belt is in the south of the country, like it is in the USA.
But he uses words that became obsolete back home in Norway many years ago.
He is professionally friendly and open—an American openness that seems to have worn off some of that traditional Scandinavian reserve.
He shows me around. The Mindekirken is mostly still as I recall it.
Large but austere, as Lutheran churches should be.
As far as I can see the only thing that’s new is the air-conditioning.
He suggests we talk in his office. On our way there we pass a Norwegian flag and photographs of the Norwegian king and queen, flatteringly young.
Along with the gifts from earlier visitors from Norway it gives the church a strangely museum-like atmosphere, at once calming and a little disturbing.
In his office Jon Erland tells me that he only met my relatives at church services, which are still held twice a day every Sunday, one in Norwegian at nine o’clock, which usually attracts a congregation of about forty or fifty, and the second in English at eleven o’clock, at which a congregation of between fifteen and twenty is about all they can expect.
He tells me that my uncle is buried in the family grave at the Lakewood Cemetery, as I already knew.
“What do people say about my cousin, after what happened?” I ask.
“You mean his posthumous reputation, his legacy?”
“I mean, do people regard him as a hero?”
Jon Erland raises an eyebrow, clearly surprised. “Why? The whole thing ended in the most appalling tragedy. The best thing one could say about your cousin is that he was a poor, misguided soul.”
“That’s one way of looking at it—” I start to say.
“No!” says Jon Erland. “It is the truth. And as we all know, there is only one truth.”
I look at him. “Only one truth,” I echo. And in that same instant, remember why it was I could never have been a priest.