3/17/2017

Sheer Perfection

If I want to sum up or describe the last three days, only one image comes to my mind. It’s an odd one but it has to do. I picture Mary Berry tasting one of the Bake Off delicacies and saying emphatically, This is sheer perfection.

These days have been sheer perfection.

We picked up Dr G. P. from Tallinn airport on Tuesday afternoon. He is a wonderful and an equally strange man. He doesn’t like small talk, he doesn’t care about sightseeing, he seems to be not very interested about what’s going on around him, and at moments I feel very awkward around him. But it takes him less than two minutes on our way from the airport to downtown or from the hotel to the Seminary to start explaining the details of Christ’s redeeming ministry, past, present, and future to me. It’s as if he breathes Biblical theology, it’s as if this was the only thing that ultimately mattered to him. His daily bread. I’ve sat next to him in the class room for solid three days now, interpreting until half unconscious, and I see how excited he gets and how deeply these topics move him. I don’t think the students noticed but I have seen tears in his eyes more than just a couple of times over these days. It’s so touching and so beautiful it gives me goosebumps. And the good old Newbold feeling has come back to me, those moments when I would go to the Leading Motifs class and would sit on the edge of my chair and would look at the lecturer with my eyes wide open, and would think, My goodness, the Adventist theology must be the most beautiful thing in this world.

So half of these days I’ve spent in the Seminary with our students and some pastors from Estonia and also from Latvia. It has been a terrific course. But the rest of the time has been equally good. And I don’t know if it’s an objective reality and all the good things have just happened to happen to me for some inexplicable reason, or if this is purely subjective and I’ve finally reached the point in life when small things can bring great joy. Or if it’s a combination of both. In any case, the sheer perfection has also continued outside the classroom.

We came to Tartu on Tuesday evening and I landed at my cousin’s place again. As his family is on a longer vacation, I have their lovely apartment all to myself again. This place has grown to be such an important place for me, I caught myself calling it ’my home’ yesterday. It really has turned to be my home in a sense. It’s become my hiding place, a place that lets me breathe and lets me rest and lets me forget about my troubles. There are only a handful of places that can do this, and this is one of them. Every time I have my early morning cup of tea in this kitcen and see the bell tower of the nearby church, I feel a wave of happiness wash over me. I can’t quite explain it.

But I haven’t been hiding myself here, although I could have done it had I wanted. Instead I’ve been out having a late birthday dinner with my dad, I’ve been to the local gym sweating out the interpreting stress, I’ve taken a long evening walk near the place we once used to live in Tartu, I’ve been to a wonderful jazz concert with the Seminary’s principal and her husband. I also met up with a friend yesterday afternoon – it was sort of a coincidental meeting, not anything planned – and we ended up having a long and honest and good conversation. I hadn’t spoken to him properly for some time now and that ’let’s sit and talk’ thing really did good to my soul. Two hours passed like minutes. And when he had walked me home (see?!) and I got upstairs, I could hear the downstairs neighbor – who just happens to be one of the best jazz guitarists in Estonia – play his guitar. I would just listen, completely still, not wanting to make any noise or miss any note reaching me quietly through the floor, and would think, Sheer perfection, sheer perfection.

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