Eleven Finns

Blog 3073, 21 August 2023, Monday                        

Dear friend,

It’s a well-known fact I like church. Our church has services from 10 to 11 on Sunday mornings. Yesterday I arrived just after 9 a.m. and stayed until 3 in the afternoon. Here’s why.

As Jean and I, after pre-service coffee with the early arrivers and a post-service coffee with the late to go home members, at about noon, started our walk home. We are the only members who arrive at church by stepping out of the woods that border the property, we also leave by entering the woods, sort of the image that forest people might have. I like the image, everyone else drives away in their cars and Jean and I enter that surrounding treed pathway. But as we were leaving the church, we saw a man standing in the columbarium, that set of marbled boxes where the cremated remains of beloved people are placed, no longer buried in cemeteries. The image he cast was of a bereaved widower. We stopped by to see if he was OK. He certainly was. He was a Finn. Like me. He was waiting for church.

It turns out, and I’d heard about them meeting at our church, that the Seattle Finnish Lutheran Church met in our church monthly. I always thought I should attend someday but I was never sure of the day or time and always racing home to eat some protein to counter the doughnuts that I’d eaten at church, but today the man I met was setting up the Finnish program. In a two-minute dialogue, I learned that his mother had recently died (he was grieving; she’d have been 100 on Christmas Day this year) and he’d love to have me attend. Despite the Mariner’s ballgame, I raced home, saw we’d almost blown a seven-run lead, grabbed a sandwich and walked the mile back to church. I arrived one minute late, two minutes before Pastor Nina Tetri-Mustonen opened the service. For the next forty-five minutes we skated between two languages, Finnish and English. I do OK in English but perform less than 1% in Finnish. Their little program was dual-language. The crowd numbered eleven, six women, five men, and we all looked Finnish. Three of us were first-timers, a young couple had biked in from Kirkland, one drove down from Camino Island, four of us lived in the area, and the rest were from the Ballard area. After service, I went into the same room off the kitchen where I’d already consumed two rounds of coffee and cookies, both before and after the first service, and so for the third time that day I ate there. This time it was Finnish food: a cheese and cucumber open-faced sandwich with more coffee. I was reminded again why there are no Finnish restaurants. I told them I’ll be back, but next month I’ll be in Minnesota with Jean’s family. Family is an OK thing. Love,

Jeannmarv

Written and Posted: 5 a.m., Monday

P.S. I was pleased to read the Russian moon probe is now described as having “crashed on the moon” instead of “collided with the moon.” It “impacted” the moon, but “crashed” is OK.