I went to a camp meeting last weekend to help out. The conference has asked all the pastors to attend at least one summer camp in order to help and support the organisers so I chose this one - a weekend for girls aged 8-11. A peculiar age it is, to say the least... I was dead tired after three days.

When I arrived I realised the main reason I wanted to go there wasn't so much the camp itself but rather the place (embarrassing, I know). The camp meeting took place in Rakvere, a town where I spent most of my teenage years so it was a lot like a home-coming. What I didn't anticipate but what happened was that I drowned in the sea of melancholy as soon as I got there. So every time the girls were busy with something and my assistance wasn't required, I sneaked out and walked down the memory lane. I wandered in the park I used to walk my dog all the time. I walked down the streets where we took our evening strolls with mom. I sat in the cemetery where my grandparents are resting. I sat on the stairs of my old home. I missed seeing my grandpa sitting in the pew he always used to sit in the church. I missed the time when the world was still a safe place. And I couldn't decide whether I should be happy for having had these times and these people (and one dog) in my life or whether I should be devastated because of having lost it all. I still can't decide. And maybe it doesn't matter. Because my heart aches either way.

When I sat in the cemetery talking to, uhmmm, my grandparents tomb stones, I thought about what William Faulkner said in his Absalom, Absalom! which I had just finished. It fit perfectly with my melancholy.

You make so little impression, you see. You get born and you try this and you don't know why only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way like five or six people all trying to make a rug on the same loom only each one wants to weave his own pattern into the rug; and it can't matter, you know that, or the Ones that set up the loom would have arranged things a little better, and yet it must matter because you keep on trying and then all of a sudden it's all over and all you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it provided there was someone to remember to have the marble scratched and set up or had time to, and it rains on it and then sun shines on it and after a while they don't even remember the name and what the scratches were trying to tell, and it doesn't matter.

Life and death. And it doesn't matter.

I'm listening to songs which go well with such an emotional state. I'm not sure it's helping but I've clicked on this song more than just once these days - James Bay's Hold Back The River.

Not much is happening. I'm trying to take it easy because in less than a month's time I'll be off to Amsterdam and I'll add the stress of studying to that of working. Another busy year is knocking on the door. So I try to do everything now I won't have enough time for during the school year. Which really only means reading and gymming and seeing my family.

I spent a heavenly weekend at my cousin's summer house (I only get one weekend off in three months so it's actually a big deal for me). It's a place where I can't draw a line between reality and dream - it all seems too good to be true. Of all the people I know my cousin really is the one who knows how to enjoy life. And not in a big or fanciful way but in a very simple and down to earth way. We went swimming so many times I stopped counting, we ate pancakes on the porch on Saturday morning, we heated the sauna and spent two hours sweating and dipping in the lake, we read books and took naps, we sunbathed and ate fresh honey, we played football with kids and made apricot jam. Heavenly. Absolutely heavenly. When I had to leave the place I've come to love so deeply, I left with an invitation to go back, and not just for a weekend. My cousin said that if I ever needed a place to hide and do my homework or just relax, I could stay there by myself for a whole week. I promised to keep that invitation in the back of my head. And now I'm thinking - October. I so need to take a week off and go there in October and hide from the business of my life!

My reading business has been upgraded to a new level recently. I already took reading advice from Dr A. N. earlier but now she has come up with a whole new thing she calls The World Literature Course. She's the lecturer, I'm the student, obviously. It means that she has given me a personal reading list of 50 books, containing classical novels, travel books, biographies, a big section of African literature (which, I have to admit, I know absolutely nothing about), etc. I took a tour in my local library last week after I had received the book list and I realised how poorly equipped it was. So she promised to help me out as much as possible and supply me with books I can't get my hands on here when she comes to Estonia in October. This is some serious business! I feel like I almost have an obligation to read now. But I don't mind, I love it. At the moment I'm finishing my 25th book this year - William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, a frustratingly beautiful and painful book about the history and tragedy of American South and slaves and slave masters.

My gymming has a big impact on the music I listen to. I've picked up Body Balance classes again and who ever is choosing music for their routines is doing a brilliant job. My two favorite songs at the moment must be George Ezra's Budapest and Tom Odell's Heal. It's a pure pleasure to listen to these songs while sweating in the gym.

No. I take back my words. There's something I want to add to my last post about women's ordination. [And here I apologise to all my non-Adventist and non-Christian friends for this ranting but it's just too difficult to summarise the meaning and importance of the topic of women's ordination in the Adventist church at the moment.]

One of my Facebook acquaintances said last week that he was "confident that the Lord was going to deliver us from the WO on Wednesday." When you sit and read and realise that your pastoral ministry is something the Adventist church needs to be delivered from, it shakes you to the very core of your being. Because it makes you question your calling and your sanity, it makes you question your denominational identity and at the darkest of hours, it also makes you question God.

It is a situation for many godly people where they face some of the hardest questions of life and where they have to decide whether they stay true to their faith and calling and church and God, or not.

And this, by definition, is the shaking.

We're so eagerly waiting for the day when we can't pay for groceries because we don't keep the Sunday and we're waiting for evil papal minions to pull out our fingernails in dark cellars of Vatican but maybe, just maybe the true testing of our faith is happening much closer to home.

We all go through those dark times of testing. Not because of some sick pleasure of Jesus or because He doesn't know the quality of our faith but because we ourselves need to know the answers to these tough questions. And right now many people in our church are going through the painful process of finding answers and finding the depth of their faith. May God be close to us. May joy come in the morning.

And may God have mercy on this church.

The light of last weekend will shine bright for a long time.

It was the weekend of Christian song festival in Tartu. It was about 1,5 years ago when the organising committee (from the Lutheran church) had made the final selection of songs and to our great delight it was announced that one of my dad's song would be on the program. And then about a year ago came the detailed program which said that my dad's song The Lord Is Great in Zion would be the very last, the closing song of the whole song festival. Which, of course, would be a great honor to any composer.

So we were all in Tartu this past weekend, braving the heat wave and singing our hearts out and being so very glad for my dad. There were around 2800 singers in the main choir, it was a pleasure to be part of it and as much as I've heard, it was also lovely to listen to. And it's difficult to explain to someone who's never seen a song festival what it's really like but towards the end of it mass psychosis (or something very similar) starts taking over the singers. Like, you've waited for the festival for so long, you've rehearsed the songs, you've put up with hours of rehearsals on the song festival grounds, suffering from sun burn and dehydration, it's been much hard work and a long journey to the actual song festival concert so when you realise it's almost over, you'd do almost anything to prolong the bliss of singing together with so many people. And it's not only singing, it's like breathing together, for a moment you cease to exist as an individual and you become one with this massive crowd. So it was also on Saturday. And the only thing you can possibly prolong this experience with is having some songs repeated by popular demand...

 It was when all the prayers and benedictions were said and most of the audience was standing when we sang my dad's song. And oh, I have never sung a song like I sang this one! And when it ended, the choir started chanting "Au-thor, au-thor" and dad came running to the conductor's stand and waved to the singers and he got a bouquet of flowers and a massive applause and it was all rather like a dream. And when I thought everything was over, I suddenly heard some chanting from the men's section: "Repeat! Repeat!" And then I was almost crying when I saw the conductor come back and give us a sign to repeat the last song. My dad stood there with his flowers, watching the massive choir and orchestra and he cried happy tears...

Some moments stay with you. This one will - one of the proudest moment of my entire life.

A fraction of the choir. I'm somewhere there.

--

I'm only going to say this about the GC and WO. It was around 3am that the result of the voting came last night and when it did, I sat on my bed and wept like a little child.

In the beginning of the week I was like, I should make Thursday my visitation day this week. So I looked at the members list and called a whole bunch of people. And except for one lady who was out of town with her grandchildren, no-one answered my call. And I thought it really funny, wanting to suspect a conspiracy. But now I know it wasn't a conspiracy, it was mere mercy. I'm not in a condition of sitting on anyone's couch and asking about their lives today. In fact, I would appreciate a pastoral visit myself.

But on a brighter note, the uplifting messages and phone calls from good friends have been appreciated beyond words. It's encouraging to know I'm not facing this tragedy alone. Actually, my conference secretary just called, checking on me. That's the Kingdom I believe in!

On Monday afternoon I received an acceptance letter from Amsterdam, they have accepted my PhD proposal and have offered me a place in Research Degree Studies program so from August onward I can call myself a student again. Two days later I'm still trying to get my head around it. :)

The uni is called International Baptist Theological Study Centre and the simplest way to describe it is to say that what Newbold is for Adventist church in Europe, IBTSC is for Baptist church in Europe. That's the place where their pastors and academics come from and where the spirit of historical Baptism is kept alive and thriving. I kinda like it. When I thought about getting started with my studies again and when I talked about it with my senior pastor, we both agreed the mentality and the spirit of the place is important. Spirituality. Because it's not only about academic standards or the quality of supervision I'm after, I want to be among people who believe in what they say and teach. So when I received the preliminary information about courses and costs and credits on Monday, it said somewhere in that letter that all the students are expected to attend daily worship services. And I was like, yup, I like this place already!

Obviously, the question will remain - if it took me so little time and relatively little effort on my proposal to get accepted in an average university, does it mean that with more time and effort I could have fought my way into and could have been accepted in some posh age-old English university? I guess I'll never know. Some questions ought to remain without an answer.

I get all excited and a little nervous when I think about having to take two intensive courses in the end of August. Oh, student life! Libraries and essays and endless intensives... And the other side of student life as well - new places and new friends and new professors. And plane tickets and airports. Wow.

Amsterdam, baby!

I finished teaching about half an hour ago. It was the last intensive and the last class of this academic year. My name was written all over the students time table this time - I had almost a full day of SDA theology yesterday and today we finished up with a day long homiletics marathon. I'm dead tired and happy. Very happy indeed. Tomorrow they'll write me an exam in theology and will preach their sermons. My work is done.

It was on Tuesday evening when I did my last preparations and was packing for my trip to Tartu that I suddenly realised the importance of it all - I don't think I had felt it so clearly before. So I just kept walking back and forth between my bedroom and living room with newly found mountain of responsibility. This is so important, vitally important for me to be able to articulate some things clearly and correctly, I thought. And so it was that yesterday we took a whole 1,5 hours to go through Andreasen's theology so I sat on the edge of the lecturer's desk and just talked - it wasn't even teaching, much more like talking - to them about eschatology and sinlessness and last generation and perfect love and Jesus. And I think I almost pleaded with them to go and teach good and balanced and Christ-centred theology to their (future) church members, for their own sake and for their church members sake and for the sake of this sorry world.

There's one thing I read from G. Knight's book last week as I prepared for these classes that keeps ringing in my head. He talks about influential theologians and he says somewhere that the most influential people in our church over the past 100 years have been university lecturers and not so much powerful preachers or great writers. It got stuck in my head and is probably one of the reasons which has made me take this lecturing session so seriously. Not that I consider myself to be very influential or anything but it just reminded me the importance of lecturing and of the quality of my words as I teach future pastors and through them in some invisible way also their church members. Such serious stuff. My shoulders really aren't strong enough for such responsibility but the Almighty has seen fit to place me here so I do what I can.

But to balance the intensity and seriousness of the lecturing the Almighty has also seen fit to give me an amazing family - yesterday I finished the day with a fierce pillow fight with my cousin's little sons. Needless to say, I lost the fight. :)

It was about a month ago when I told you about going to a book heaven and having a substantial theological library in my attic - 50 boxes full of books. The story has a sequence.

It's actually a sad story. Because this old man who long ago used to be a pastor is sick and it seems like his health is deteriorating rather fast. Which has resulted in his plan to give us even more books - there are about 75 boxes of them in the attic at the moment. In any case, it was a bit more than a week ago when I. and J. (church's president and secretary) appeared on my office door, telling me they needed help with forming a sentence to engrave on a nice plate they wanted to give this man on behalf of the conference for his massive donation. Sure, I said. So the three of us put our heads together and came up with the sentence and the conference ordered the plate and it arrived in the end of last week.

So on Friday we (I. and me and A. - my new colleague in Tallinn) bought a cake and took our thank you plate and headed to this old pastor's place. I've only been there for a couple of times and I've only talked to the guy a little bit but very quickly I've become fond of both. I like his place. And I really like him. He talks to me in a bit of a fatherly voice but I can tell he's taking me seriously so he always asks about my reading list and Greek teaching plans so we can endlessly discuss books we've read and church history and lecturing (I love-love-love doing such things). We did all that on Friday too. We sat in his living room, surrounded by thousands of books, drinking tea and eating cake and discussing theology. And then suddenly he started talking about music.

He said we all have different means and methods when it comes to keeping our spirituality and our prayer life alive. And listing names in a prayer just doesn't do any more so he has embraced a new way of praying for important people. He does that through songs. He picks songs from our SDA Hymnal and connects each song with a person and each time he plays the piano he thinks of someone and prays for them while playing. "I've had to add a couple of songs to my pray-list in recent months - you've got your own song now, Mervi"...

I just sat there and stared at him, feeling both very small and very important at the same time. For some inexplicable reason I had made it to his play-list!

So now I walk around, being a lot wealthier than I was last week. I have my own song in the hymnbook. Someone has written my name all over it and sings it while thinking of me.

You can guess whether I opened my Hymnal this morning and sang that song or not...