War and Peace

On Wednesday evening, I was flying to Stockholm for a long weekend and knowing there would be quite a few hours of useless time in different airports (Sweden was just the first leg of the journey), I took two books with me. One of them was Frederick Buechner's The Alphabet of Grace. It has become a habit of mine to read this book at least once a year. It's an odd one - the first time I read it I barely understood anything. It's so slow and complicated. But there is magic in this book that keeps pulling me back to it, so it has become my annual companion. And some words I found there comforted me in a special way as I was flying out on the last evening before the war broke out. Buechner asks, "What's to be done? And the answer that life gives is: live in the needs of the day. What's to be done? Do what you need most to do this day and what is most needed of you." I have come back to these words again and again over these days. Because the war news can become so depressing and overwhelming that you don't know any more if there is anything that can be done. The whole thing seems nightmarish and paralyzing. But his words have reminded me - do what you can. Live intentionally in this complicated and heart-breaking reality that wants to suck all joy and peace out of you. What you can't do, leave to the mercy of God, but what you can do, do.

I have tried to follow the advice. I have donated more money over these few days than I had done for a long time. I have tried to share information about the possibilities of helping out. I have kept pleading with God to protect the innocent and to make possible what seems humanly impossible. But I have also found that to live in the needs of the day means finding joy in and expressing gratitude for all the good things I have. This is also my obligation. I have to add joy to the sorrow, I have to learn to live in a place where these two intersect. As the terrible and sensless war began, as the Ukrainian people were forced to sleep in shelters, cellars and metro stations, I could wake up in a comfortable bed to clear blue skies in a place where there was no real fear or threat, in a place where bombs were not falling. With my heart aching for these people, I was grateful for what I had. We went out for a walk in nature on Friday afternoon and I couldn't help myself, I kept thinking of all these young women who have had to send their sweethearts to war and who do not know if they will ever meet them again. It somehow made my own luck and the fact that my sweetheart was with me more special than ever. Going to a church on Saturday morning that bombs had not damaged was a blessing I could count. Going to a grocery store laden with all things good was something I saw with different eyes. Warm home and hot water. Medical help. Peace. Do what you can, be grateful whenever possible, live in the needs of the day. 

And now I am in Vejlefjord, Denmark, getting ready for a long week of preaching to highschool kids. On one hand, I want to throw up my hands in despair and throw away all my "pre-war" sermons because I feel so inadequate and I don't really know what to say in these crazy times to the youngsters who will inherit this sick and broken world from us. But on the other hand, I keep reading this quote by Buechner over and over again and I keep reminding myself that even here I need to live in the needs of the day. I will try and share with teenagers the words I have prepared and although I wish so badly I had better and more powerful words to speak, I will speak my small words in my own small way. And if they get anything out of my sermons, it will be by pure grace of God.

And if any of you asks the same question - What's to be done? What's to be done? - maybe you, too, can find some guidance in Buechner's words.  

All Is Well

It's five days since the first symptoms and one day since the first positive test (I wasted a good number of speed tests and one PCR test before that). Being fairly sure it was Covid from the beginning, it was with a great relief that I saw two red lines on my test yesterday.

It may sound weird but that's how it was. Because being lucky enough to have mild symptoms (sore throat, an occasional headache, some bad coughing, a small temperature one evening), what this "extra" red line meant for me was the end of that nerve-racking and never-ending (or so it seemed to me) waiting. So far, every day and every contact meant a potential threat, and even if this thought was buried deep beneath all the other thoughts and cares, it still wore me out in the end. I got so tired of waiting and worrying and counting and imagining - especially in the context of my Swedish trips and my week of preaching in the beginning of March in Vejlefjord, Denmark. Now the famous guest is here. Phew. Let's deal with it. And then, hopefully, I can go back to the world without this burden of nagging fear.

According to the Estonian law, my isolation will not end before another 5 days. But it has barely felt like an isolation. I have been able to have one literature class on Zoom, taking CPR tests means I have a reason to go out and breath some fresh air, I'm constantly keeping in touch with my family members (nothing entertains me quite as much as discussing dress styles with my five year old niece - E. is very worried about what to wear in my wedding in the summer:), my auntie brought me some warm food yesterday. I can clean and cook. And although, as we joke with S., I mostly go from bed to sofa and from sofa to bed, that's alright, too. It's a break from the constant hurrying and working. And while I lie in bed or on my sofa, I put to good use my rocket-science-awesome-brilliant headphones S. got me for Christmas. They are these big and fancy noise cancelling headphones with - really! - a brilliant sound quality so I am constantly listening to something. Some lecture from an Estonian audio lecture program called Night University, or some audio book (it was a Hercule Poirot story yesterday), or my much beloved audio Bible (I literally stopped reading the Bible some three years ago when I discovered audio Bible - soon it will be the third time for me to get through the Bible by listening to it).

And as I had almost stopped coughing by this morning, I decided it was time to get back to my usual 'ice-cold morning shower' routine today. It felt good!

So with humble gratitude and with my heart aching for all these friends and acquaintances who have not had it so easy, I can say - all is well with me.

Eyes to See

Sometimes we need help noticing things. At least I do. Because I live so much of my life on autopilot, always walking the same streets, always thinking the same thoughts and worrying about the same worries, always living either in the past or future in my head, so much so that I barely notice what is right in front of me. Psychologists would probably be worried if they knew how many imaginary conversations I have had in my mind while taking my evening walks. And I don't notice much, living like this.

But I feel things have begun to change of late. I have probably explored more of Estonia (and Tallinn in particular) with S. over the past six months than over the five years combined. But it's not only about seeing and visiting physical places, it's so much more than that. I feel as if by being with someone who sees these things for the first time - and who actually notices - I have gotten a new pair of eyes myself. Eyes that see again. Mind that notices again. There is something wondrous about having the endless and monotonous circle of my routines interrupted. The world is a little newer and richer in detail than it used to be.

We visited the ruins of Pirita convent this past Saturday before the blizzard hit Tallinn. Pirita gets its name from that convent - already in the beginning of the 15th century the order of St Birgitta of Sweden made its way to Tallinn. The ruins are on the seaside some distance from the city center and I had passed them a hundred times - and that's exactly that. I had only passed them by, I had never taken time to go see them. Because, honestly, who has time to visit some 500 year old ruins? One is always so busy. One has always important thoughts in the head.

S., of course, thought he needed to climb every flight of broken and icy stairs and jump into every hole in the ruins. As if he had to. I tried to explain to him that he actually didn't have an obligation to climb and jump and explore every last corner of the place and that it would be perfectly fine just to look at some things and walk past them. But he wouldn't have any of it. We had a good laugh about it but the truth be told, there is also something serious hidden in there. There is something about the precious ability to remain curious and be present that I find really refreshing.  

Some say that when you become a parent you learn to see the old world in a new way. You will once again discover that every puddle and chestnut and yellow maple leave has a potential of being a joy. I wonder if it's really true. 

Just the other week I talked about Astrid Lindgren in my literature class and shared someone's memory about her. Someone has said that when all the other mothers went to park, they sat on a bench and watched their children play. But when Astrid Lindgren took either one of her kids to park, she climbed the trees with them. You can sense this in her books, this ability to push back the dreadful boredom of adulthood that most of us drown in, never to return.

I still remain cautious about broken staircases and thin ice and other such things but I hope that some of this freshness of life I've found will remain a long time. I hope my eyesight will remain sharp, not in a sense of "can you read these letters on a chart" but in a sense of "can you actually notice the life around you".

Chaos

It's chaos and mayhem at school. But, on a positive note, it is already the third week of chaos so everyone has gotten used to it and no-one makes a big deal of it any more.

The wave of omicron has swept over us. Last week the school was really quiet - most classes were sent home to isolate since they had confirmed Covid cases among the pupils. For some unfathomable reason, my classes were one of the few ones who were at school so I continued working as usual. The corridors were very quiet and I only saw a couple of colleagues in the teachers' room. Every time I saw another teacher, there was a moment of mutual surprise - oh, hello, so I'm not the only one here! Last Wednesday in the middle of my lit class for the fifth graders (introduction to the life and work of Astrid Lindgren!) someone started playing the piano downstairs in the assembly hall. The girls concluded that it must have been a ghost - since the building was virtually empty - and they found it very funny. 

Some classes come back after a few days of isolating and testing, others go into isolation. Teachers get sick and get well again. Everyone who is well is trying to cover for their sick colleagues. The principal was hit the hardest and is only now, after two weeks, slowly emerging from her Covid cave. Things change so fast I can barely keep up. And honestly, it is NOT quality teaching that is happening at school these days. Too many elements are changing, too many essential people are missing for any normal school life to be able to take place. But I always think - we have been interrupted for two years now. But just think about the World War II - millions were displaced, the whole continent was at war for years on end, schools were closed and books were burned, and yet a perfectly normal generation grew up after the war. I have my doubts about this generation, though. The will to learn, the capacity to discipline oneself, the desire to move forward and make the best out of this sorry situation seems to be missing in so many cases. I don't know what these teenagers will grow up to be.   

But then there are these other moments, too. Moments that bring pure joy. It was just last Friday when I asked one of my fifth graders to copy a poem she had recently written in the lit class on a decent paper so that I could send it to some competition or other. And she took out of her school bag a perfectly old-school pot of ink and pen and wrote the poem, dipping the pen into the ink after every three words. I couldn't help staring at her - and grinning from ear to ear. Not all is lost!

The only thing that I can't figure out is why I haven't caught the virus yet. I no longer count the close contacts, there are too many of them, and my peace of mind is more important than the everlasting counting. I don't think I will be able to dodge it for long, though. From a human perspective, it doesn't seem possible - and maybe not necessary either. What has to happen, happens. But until that I try to live as normally as possible. Even if "normally" means walking around eerily empty school buildings. 

Comparing (or not)

When the New Year comes, all of us look back and look ahead. And so often we find ourselves weighing and comparing, contrasting and summarising. What was the last year like? How much sorrow did we have, and how much joy? How did that year compare to all the previous ones? How much did we lose and how much did we win? And as it often happens, we take a sneak peak into others people's lives, too, and wonder about them. Whether they had it better or worse than us, whether they gained or lost more than we did. 

It's totally human, this comparing thing. And also rather pointless.

The truth is, you can't put your experiences and your life events on a weighing scale. It just doesn't work like this. Let's take 2021, for example. All that grief and sorrow which I experienced in the first half of that year, saying goodbye to my closest friend of 15 years, does not cancel all that joy I found in the second part of the year. Neither does the joy take away any of my grief. They stand next to each other, back to back, and there is no way to compare them. Both of them are just there - the largest of human experiences, the deepest of all emotions. 

I still remember those terrible days in mid April when A. stopped replying to my messages. For a couple of long days I didn't even know whether she was still alive. And later, when she was gone, I remember walking mindlessly around the city, trying to walk off some of that terrible burden. Nothing and no-one will ever replace her. She will miss my wedding, dammit. And I will always miss everything that could have happened in her life.

And yet that did / does not lessen in any way the surprise and pure joy of finding a person who has brought color and future to my life, who has completely changed the direction of my path. Who has made me - ok, he hasn't, that I've done out of my free will - study Swedish words every day. All that joy is undiluted. 

I also have a temptation to compare all the recent Christmases. But I want to resist that temptation. All these Christmases over the past 8 years have been spent in the valley of the shadow of death. Mom died on December 23 and it's amazing how long a shadow one death can cast. There were Christmases when we couldn't find aything to be joyful about. But I don't want to "cancel" these Christmases in any way. Let them be there, let them have their rightful place in my life and in my memory. And also let this past Christmas stand by itself, without a comparison. A fairy tale Christmas, as if something straight out of Astrid Lindgren's book. A Christmas filled to the brim with family and love and sunshine and good friends and good food and much needed break from the never ending work. 

We are celebrating our six month anniversary with S. today. Well, 'celebrating' is maybe not the right word because S. is doing 12 hour shifts at work and I am battling with the last school tests and Christmas sermons (too many!), we haven't seen each other for almost 1,5 months and we are beyond the normal limits of tiredness. But even in our crazy rush hour before Christmas it is still so very sweet to look back and look ahead and to come to a conclusion - all is well. So today is a day of counting the blessings and a day of thanking the Almighty and a day of putting my favourite memories together like pearls on a string. 

The funny thing with memories is that when we live through moments we can never tell which ones will stay bright in our mind and which ones will slowly fade and disappear. There is necessarily no correlation between the 'importance' of moments and their vividness in one's memory. And often the ones that seemed the most ordinary are the ones that stay with us the longest.

For example, I remember so clearly a lazy Sunday afternoon at home when I needed to mark some tests and S. was here and he was simply taking a nap on my sofa. There was something about doing the most mundane of tasks (I always find the marking such a tedious work), knowing that even such a small thing I didn't have to do alone. Just hearing his breathing somewhere behind my back made all the difference in the world for me. 

Or sitting in a car on a Friday evening, driving to S.'s parents near Ekebyholm, talking about whatever, and just being so happy that for that one time we didn't have to use phones on that journey. Every Friday since this summer - except a few ones - we have always spoken on the phone when he's going home for the weekend on Friday night. Sitting next to him and having a face-to-face conversation in a car felt like a sweet revenge for all the other Friday evenings when I've had to be at home and on the phone. The curse of distance was broken for one short week. And it was enough for me to remember that moment still. 

Or walking out in nature late in autumn, somewhere on the coast, getting stuck in the mud and getting our feet a little wet and laughing about the whole thing and getting warm again in the car. Tired. Happy. Lungs full of fresh sea air.

Or "parking" our kayak on a tiny rock of an island somewhere on the edge of the world, no-one else in sight, no sound around us but that of waves and seagulls, no care in the world either. And we would eat the sandwiches we had made in the morning and we would go swimming in the sea and we would lay in the sun until getting a little sunburnt. Such a simple memory. And yet so extraordinary. 

What bigger moments could one ask for?

So with gratitude I look back and with hope I look ahead. There's a brand new wedding dress hanging in my closet, waiting for its time, and there's love in my heart. I am a very very blessed girl indeed. 

Happy anniversary, my love!

Slowly but surely time is edging towards Christmas. 

The past couple of months have been very stressful. On one hand, there's the school. Everyone is tired and irritable, both teachers and pupils (which, I think, is normal in pitch-black and muddy November), plus at some point we held the embarrassing No 1 place of Covid infections' rate (if not in the world then definitely in Europe). The state schools in Tallinn closed their doors for a couple of weeks but as we are a private school, the leadership could make their own decisions and they decided to keep the school open. Evey time I heard about someone getting sick with whom I had been in close contact at school, I counted the days in my head - and sighed a sigh of relief when it became evident that I had managed not to catch the virus. Now things seem to be calming down - the infection rate is down, I've gotten my third jab, and we are being speed-tested 2-3 times a week. I am under no illusion about dodging the virus forever but right now my goal is to stay healthy until Christmas. Whatever happens after the New Year will happen after the New Year. 

In November, we had a couple of weeks when the sixth- and fifth-graders had to work on a big project. What was supposed to be fun and more fun turned into a real drama. Emotions ran wild, some of them spilled over to parents, and I got caught in the middle of it all. I understand (even if only theoretically) that an occasional angry email from a parent is a normal part of a teacher's job but it still gets under my skin. So when the project had its grand finale last Monday, I was so relieved it felt like I was walking above the ground. The first snow that was falling when I left the school looked like a personal gift from above and a burden was lifted from my shoulders. One big thing down, a few others to go.

The main reason why it is so important for me to stay healthy these days is that I have finally started my practical doctoral project which the last two chapters of my dissertation will be based on. As homiletics is my field of study and of interest, my project is a preaching series. So I am preaching in my home church for five consecutive Saturdays, collecting written feedback from the congregation each time. Two sermons down, three more to go! Yesterday afternoon when I walked back from the church, I felt for the first time that I might actually survive the whole thing. Before that it had seemed like a terribly high mountain, impossible to climb. It takes a lot more energy and effort to prepare for these sermons than the regular ones but the vibe is really good and if it didn't send some Covid police officers spying on our church, I would even let you in on a secret about the church being packed these last two Sabbaths. On top of friends from other Adventist churches and our own members who do not come that often, I have seen at least five or six people whom I have never seen in church before. And for a church of 30 members, that's really something!

I survived mom's birthday on Friday. 

Now it's three more sermons for the series. And one more for the National TV's Christmas service (sometimes beautiful opportunities arise). Some 30 or so irritable early teens to handle. One evil virus to dodge. And then it is Christmas and holidays and Sweden and all the other good things in the world. :)