So what’s it like living in the Dakotas?

*by Rev. Eric Van Meter

I get this question a lot when I talk to my friends and family from Arkansas, where we lived until July, 2014. I’m never quite sure how to answer it, and so I did what any good campus minister would do. I asked one of my students what she thought.

Photo:  Front row Jonathan and Zachary Van Meter. Back row Denise and Eric Van Meter.  The Van Meter in the snow on the campus at Dakota Wesleyan University (DWU) in Mitchell, SD.  Eric serves as the campus pastor at Dakota Wesleyan University.  They made the move to the Dakotas from Arkansas.  Photo courtesy of the Van Meters.

“Wow,” she said.

At that point I knew I was in trouble. Hannah is a standout, even among the exceptional students at Dakota Wesleyan. She was bright, articulate—and thoroughly stumped by my question. But at last she recovered, and she came up with what seemed to me a perfect answer.

“About the only general statement you can make about the Dakotas is that it’s cold everywhere this time of year.”

I laughed. We have so many different worlds within the same borders. The Dakotas are home to some of the fastest growing wealth in the nation, as well as some of the most desperate poverty. We have rich cultural traditions, yet marked differences in personality among regions—and sometimes even among neighboring towns.

Hannah’s insight reminds me to consider carefully exactly where I live. I don’t live in all the Dakotas. I have one zip code: Mitchell, a thriving small town. I work at one place: Dakota Wesleyan, a university whose spiritual and academic vibrancy continues to amaze me. I live in one house—the one, in fact, where George and Eleanor McGovern lived after their retirement. If it sounds like a great life, that’s because it truly is!

More importantly, I have discovered that my new hometown is full of people who still care about their neighbors as more than transactions, more than economic or social units. In my limited experience, that’s true in much of the Midwest. Perhaps it is because the Dakotas are still small, from a population standpoint. We can’t afford to treat our neighbors poorly. We need each other.

So what’s it like to live in the Dakotas? It’s different, for sure. And as Hannah implied, I am learning an entirely new definition of “cold” and “winter.” But that’s okay. I’ll complain about the weather here, the way I complained about the Arkansas heat. People do that everywhere.

But where I live now, the weather doesn’t matter to me so much. I am surrounded by good people who work hard and care for one another, who genuinely love God and neighbor. I hope it is and will be so with United Methodists all over the Dakotas. I hope it will someday be so across the world.

The kingdom of God, after all, can have any address.

*Rev. Eric Van Meter is a United Methodist pastor serving at Dakota Wesleyan University.