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    Bad Floors in Lappeenranta

    Filed Under away from home, sadness, uu culture 

    I’m in Finland, but yesterday I didn’t go out much. I left the hotel for a few hours to have tea in a coffee shop, visit a bookstore, and meander.

    Unlike the day before, it was quite cloudy. It wasn’t too cold - the weather was very much like Portland in the winter: misty drizzle, ten degrees above freezing, and days that never quite open their eyes.

    Earlier in the day I’d read Rev. Clyde’s latest blog entry and learned a little more about his wife’s situation. She is not doing well. I feel love for Rev. Marjorie even though I’ve never met her. And I am sorry for Rev. Clyde, who I am so fond of. I told my DH the news right away; expressing frustration that this could be happening. He said, “Well, you know, God’s a jerk.”

    This didn’t make me feel any better. Not like when I was a kid and, if one of the little ones fell down and started crying, my mother would hold them and say, “Bad floor!” and slap the floor. Little kids loved this. They would stop crying and copy her, “Bad floor. Bad floor!” They would smack the floor a few times, laugh, and go back to playing.

    During my afternoon walk I found the Sankarihautausmaa, or Soldier’s Cemetery, in the center of town. There are two thousand dead soldiers buried there, from the Winter and Continuation Wars. As a kid I loved visiting cemeteries, looking at the tombs and making up lives for the names etched in stone. Yesterday, however, was a wholly different experience. There was nothing whimsical or imaginary about death. After reading some dozen markers and seeing that all of the men were between 22 and 35 years old, I started crying. Isn’t it enough that illness and accidents strike - we have to resort to killing each other, too? What is this? The Finns lost nearly 30,000 soldiers trying to fend off the Russians. Finland today is a country of only five million people. The Russian dead from this four month war was between 300 and 400 thousand soldiers. All sacrificed for greed and someone else’s quest for power. We all have to die, but who would volunteer to do so for these reasons?

    It was a little bit melancholy for me, yesterday afternoon. Somewhere in the middle of it, it became apparent that I needed to do something. Once, in the company of friends, the DH asked us, “Do you believe you can change the world?” The question deeply flustered me. My answer was somewhere along the lines of, “Well, sure … in some small way.” His next question was, “If you knew you could change the world, would you do it?” Our unanimous answer was, “Of course!” Then he told us that Ghandi knew he could change the world, and “I believe this is why he lived as he did.”

    (photo by HSA: Top half of Lappee Church in Lappeenranta, Finland. 2006)

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    One Response to “Bad Floors in Lappeenranta”

    1. PeaceBang on December 5th, 2006 8:04 pm

      What the heck are you doing in FINLAND!!??

      Marjorie is a wonderful woman. I’m so sorry you’ve never met her, as I am sure you two would enjoy each other a lot. Thank you for sending me over to Clyde’s blog. This news is truly heart-breaking.

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