Esta was here

Yesterday we had the pleasure of hosting a crowd of family members at our home. Everyone wanted to meet Esta in person. Especially because none of our youngest generation has ever met her before. It's a long time since 1975 when she was in Finland for a year as a 10-year-old schoolgirl.

Anna-Liisa retold the story of how Esta became her child. Esta's mother had been killed in an accident and her father needed desperately some help with the baby. He brought Esta to these two Finnish missionary ladies. They agreed to take the baby until he could remarry and take the baby back home. When Esta was three she was returned to her father but she had already taken Anna-Liisa as her mother. She refused to eat and was unhappy. Later when Anna-Liisa went there to meet the family Esta started to clap her hands and shout happily "Kotiin, kotiin!" There was no other way than to go to the social workers and sign the official documents. Esta was never adopted but it was agreed that she will stay with Anna-Liisa for upbringing.

It was nice to find some photos from 1987 when Tiina and I visited Tarime in Tanzania, where Anna-Liisa and Esta where living then. Esta was already married and their first son Edvin was a toddler. Our Siiri was born a year later.

Looking at the photos I must admit to some mixed feelings of nostalgia and amusement. I appear as a serious young man with a lot of good will but no sense of direction. There is a strange incompatibility between what I must have been thinking and how it appears. And the same phenomenon is and must be true even now. We tend to be blind to the things that are most obvious about us to others. And usually nobody wants to tell you what it is. Except children maybe. And so we are able to parade through our lives without ever discovering who we really are. This is a tragedy and it makes us humans pitiful and often ridiculous. But I think it also makes us lovable in God's eyes as he says: "I will not lay it to their charge for they know not what they are doing".

Dear me

I really feel like writing to myself residing in another time and place. So, wherever you are and whatever you do, Artie, just remember that this blog will always be there for you... :-)

This coming week will give me a chance to cool down and relax. Hopefully. Just last August I spent a similar week in Järvenpää for another course in my pastoral curriculum. This time the subject matter deals with the parish as a working environment. The days will be full but the evenings will be spent in relative silence, or reading. I really need that now. Of course, Wednesday will make an exception. I will drive to Helsinki for the second night in the discussion series on Elements of a Growing Church. Something new is brewing here in Helsinki in this respect and I'd like to be a part of it.

Day Three

It is Day Three on the Prayer Week for Christian Unity. In two hours from now, we will gather for a Prayer Procession starting at the Adventist Church, visiting the Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity and ending with an Ecumenical Prayer Service at the Huopalahti Church (Lutheran). My day will end with the Thomas Mass in Agricola Church where I will have the opportunity to welcome some friends from South Africa.

The prayer week started here in Helsinki on Friday with a vesper at St. Henrik's Cathedral (Catholic). Later on Friday evening there was an International Prayer Night in the Old Church (Lutheran). Yesterday, on Saturday, we celebrated a morning service in the Adventist Church and a moment of Psalm and Prayer Songs in the Uspenski Cathedral (Orthodox).

The weather has been appalling and not many people dared to show up in Uspenski. The biggest challenge for ecumenical relations in Helsinki is, however, the relative lack of enthusiasm on the Lutheran side. And it is hard to be enthusiastic about anything when administration swallows up vision. But generally, we can and should be proud of the long-standing and warm ecumenical relations we have between all Christian churches in Finland.

Yea? And who cares?

My first ever blog post started in English way back almost two years ago in March 2006. I really don't know why. I guess it felt the right thing to do, to use the lingua franca of the internet. Since then, I've come to realise I don't have many friends and relatives that can't read Finnish. I suppose I have never written another post in English since then.

So. The starting of this English language sidekick blog opens a new era. It promises to take up another chunk of my limited time and to waste it on evaporating presence in the cyberspace. But seriously, my encouragement comes from a thought pointed out to me by a friend on the website Church Marketing Sucks:

"Don't start or continue a blog because you want a bunch of people to read your thoughts. No one cares more about what you have to think or say than you do. Now that you know that, the only reason you should be blogging is because you just have to get your thoughts out of your head and into some sort of online journal format. The ironic thing is that the more you blog from your head/heart, the more people will actually start tuning in because they see how important this stuff is to you."

This sounds good enough. All I need now is a a good heart and a big head. (Strong buttocks and some extra time will help.)