Light, Let There Be

The illuminated House of Blackheads with the stunning Peterbaznicas (St. Peters Cathedral) in the background. Not far from here is the site of the first ever decorated Christmas tree in recorded world history (circa 1510). The tree wasn't necessarily connected with Christmas, though, rather the Pagan traditional commemoration of the Winter Solstice.

Dear Friends,

On a Sunday morning, the city of Riga is an 800 year old ghost town, a vacant stage set of swinging doors and idle windows minus the characters from Saturday night's performance. Sunday morning Riga is as desolate and intriguing as three empty bottles of vodka haphazardly catching sunlight somewhere along Terbatas iela, the street I walk to church.

Not long ago on my solitary Sunday morning stroll through the somnolent city, I was startled by the rushing sound of a car whizzing past me -- excessive speed and cobble stone roads do not make for an inconspicuous escape -- followed by the siren wail and rushing zoom of a police car close behind whose driver proceeded to pull over the driver of the speeding car. Statistically, Latvia's roads are the second most dangerous in Europe after neighboring Lithuania's, so my first churchy reaction was one of gladness: One more speeder caught. One more standing pedestrian. Justice served!

As I continued my pious forward march, I watched the two men exit their cars, the cop wordlessly reaching into his coat pocket for a small black book which he opened and began to write in. The speeder stood motionless, leaning against his car like James Dean, until the cop did something unprecedented. Pausing from his writing for a moment, he pulled from his pants pocket two cigarettes, handed one to his prey, and set the other one in his own mouth. With his lighter, the policeman lit both cigarettes, first Andretti's, then his own, and silently, by rote, turned back to the business of issuing a ticket.

As the sole onlooker, I was touched by what appeared to be a random act of kindness. (Maybe I'm wrong and the two men actually roomed together at summer camp in Sigulda in 1987.) Good thing the first driver was a smoker, otherwise the surprise planting of a cigarette between his lips would not have been such a pleasant one after all. And while the gift of a stick of gum, or carrot, let's say, would have made for a much healthier treat, who am I to upset the smoke coming from a gift horse's mouth?

One minute you're being issued a ticket. Next minute you're puffing carelessly away on a cigarette, and, yes sir, there's still that darn ticket hanging over your head like a cloud, but maybe the world isn't so dark after all. Strange how light is handed out in the darkness when we least expect it.

As young brothers, one of the best ways Andrew and I could seek vengeance on the other was switching off the basement lights when the other had gone down to fetch something. Funny. Like most siblings, I imagine, we taunted and teased and hit and bullied each other, but what really scared us the most I think, what cut to the soul like no whop to the arm could do, was to summon darkness on the other brother in the infernal regions of our finished, otherwise quite pleasant basement.

"I'm going down to get my tennis shoes."

"All right... let's hope the lights stay on this time."

"Don't you dare, you piece of..."

And that's how it would begin. But, you know, we were both really scared of the dark. Maybe our mocking was a juvenile stab at demystifying the darkness below. And when we both went downstairs together, the darkness wasn't dark at all.

My friend Peter is an investment banker at Hansa Bank, Riga's sole skyscraper just across the Daugava River. He's not a regular church attender but finds himself in the sanctuary most often in the winter. "I need to get some light somehow," he told me.

I remember once being utterly floored by an adolescent girl's simple yet profound observation at a Presbyterian youth group meeting. We had been talking about Jesus being the light of the world. If you have light, you can give it to someone else at no cost to your own. Sharing light doesn't diminish your light at all. Brilliant. Just ask the cop.

In October, a couple friends sent me Yann Martel's exquisite novel, Life of Pi. I read it start to finish in the dim light of the tour bus en route to and from Slovakia. It's the story of an incredible, improbable journey one young man makes alone -- with a Bengal tiger -- in a small boat across the Pacific Ocean. When he's finally safe and recovering on dry land, two inquisitors come to him seeking to get to the bottom of his unbelievable story of survival.

"I'm sorry to say it so bluntly, we don't mean to hurt your feelings, but you don't really expect us to believe you, do you? Carnivorous trees? A fish-eating algae that produces fresh water? Tree-dwelling aquatic rodents? These things don't exist."

"Only because you've never seen them."

"That's right. We believe what we see."

"So did Columbus. What do you do when you're in the dark?"

What do you do when you're in the dark?

Last night was Christmas Eve and again the streets of Riga were shrouded in Dickensian duskiness and perceived emptiness. There was hardly anyone around, most everyone off somewhere with their families, I presumed. But the strobe lights at the entrance of Kalku iela were spasmodically blinking as on any other night. A girl was dancing on the bar inside of one of the clubs, and two times I was propositioned by a dark-headed barker, "Come in! Dancing girls! It's Christmas!" We're all looking for a little light.

In the darkened, candlelit sanctuary of St. Saviours the vicar read to us from the book of John. Those of us in the congregation, taught to be critical thinkers, accustomed to being incredulous believers, no longer so afraid of the dark, listened. Or tried to.

"In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."

Yours,

Tim

Candles on the water: Floating flames drift down the Pilsetas kanals on Independence Day, November 18. The canal is directly across from my school and serves as a sort of divide between Old Riga and the City Center.

Not So Impossible After All

Gertrudes iela, not far from where I live, in Riga's City Center

"One could get a creche on New York"

Garrison Keillor
Chicago Tribune
December 5, 2007

I got to teach Episcopal Sunday school last week, a rare privilege, and it was in a New York church so the kids had plenty to say. Teenagers, and if you expect them to sit in rapt silence as you tick off points of theology, you're in the wrong place. They made plenty of noise, and not much of it about religion. Some of them seemed to be on a faith journey that was heading away from the Nicene Creed toward something cooler and jokier, some form of animism perhaps, the worship of cougars and badgers.

I like teenage noise. They let me say my piece -- God prefers honest doubt to false piety -- and then they said their pieces, and what shone through was a sensible anxiety about the future and the fact that they care a lot about each other. You could imagine a confirmed agnostic hanging out here just for the warmth and conversation.

We sat in a sort of triangle, two couches at a right angle, a line of chairs, a window looking out at the snow on Amsterdam Avenue, and talked about the rather improbable notion that God impregnated a virgin who, along with her confused fiance, journeyed to Bethlehem where no rooms were available at the inn (it was the holidays, after all), and so God's son was born in a stable, wrapped in rags and laid in a feed trough and worshipped by shepherds summoned by angels and by Eastern dignitaries who had followed a star.

This magical story is a cornerstone of the Christian faith and I am sorry if it's a big hurdle for the skeptical young. It is to the church what his Kryptonian heritage was to Clark Kent -- it enables us to stop speeding locomotives and leap tall buildings at a single bound, and also to love our neighbors as ourselves. Without the Nativity, we become a sort of lecture series and coffee club, with not very good coffee and sort of aimless lectures.

On Christmas Eve, the snow on the ground, the stars in the sky, the spruce tree glittering with beloved ornaments, we stand in the dimness and sing about the silent, holy night and tears come to our eyes and the vast invisible forces of Christmas stir in the world. Skeptics, stand back. Hush. Hark. There is much in this world that doubt cannot explain.

(I might have told the kids that when you use the word "awesome" to describe everything above mediocre, you're missing a word for Christmas Eve, but I'm not their editor either.)

New York is very gaudy at Christmas, and the Santa Clauses on 5th Avenue swing their bells with style, and the store windows glimmer and the city at dusk is ever magical, but all New Yorkers know that loneliness is a part of life and can't be extinguished, not by entertainment or pharmaceuticals.

I walked around the city that Sunday night -- two homeless people were camped on the steps of a Lutheran church on 65th, in the midst of grand old apartment buildings, and the opera crowd was wending toward Picholine and the Cafe des Artistes for the lobster bisque, and on the uptown subway we all sat and did not stare at the crazy old man boogeying in his sleeveless T-shirt and singing incoherently and watching his own reflection in the glass -- and how 17-year-old kids should mesh New York with the Nativity, I was not able to tell them. God prefers admitted incompetence to fake authority.

But explaining the universe to them was not my job, only to love them, which I do, utterly. They are brave and loyal and funny, heading out into a world that is not forgiving of mistakes, that will try to pummel them into submission, that is capable of awesome cruelty and deceit, but here they are. Emily Dickinson said, "To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else," and if she, who spent most of her adult life in her bedroom, could feel that way, then think how it must be for the rest of us.

A day in New York can show you such startling sights, including a band of doubting teenagers clustered in church on a snowy morning, that the birth of the child in the hay seems not so impossible after all, even appropriate, even necessary.

Thanks for the clipping, Addie.

La Bohème: A sparkling night with Joy and Whit.

Whit, from Baltimore, is here on a Fulbright scholarship and landed in Inga's house.

He lives on the sixth-floor in a "period"... uh, "rustic" flat,

coined by Inga and now affectionately referred to as The Penthouse.

Hunger

Dear Friends,

Hunger is one of my closest traveling companions. I'm often hungry. It's not that food is hard to come by or funds run too quickly dry. Nor is my hunger Riga specific by any means, as my appetite was alive and active even in Illinois, the heart of America's bread basket. I like to eat and so I do. I'm fortunate that I can. At age 28, I wonder how much longer I can fall back on the exhausted excuse, "I'm a growing boy" or respond politely to the observation that I must have a hollow leg to fill. Maybe I do.

This past week I've been honored to welcome three friends to my Rigan table: Joy, from Illinois, and her friends, Preeta and Anna, from London. The trio taught together last year in Madrid. Showing them around the city has woken this sleepy man from his slumber. Nothing like seeing a place through the willing, expectant eyes of guests. We covered the highlights and a few hidden gems of Riga, mostly on foot, but the real jubilation of their visit manifested itself when we sat down to eat. For me, a pork chop and mashed potatoes usually qualify as suitable dinnertime company but breaking bread in the presence of friends makes the food that much tastier.

That's why I was doubly excited to dine at Vincents, arguably Riga's finest and best-known restaurant, named after Van Gogh. My thoughtful brother and sister-in-law presented me with a gift certificate to Vincents as a token of their thanks for serving as best man in their wedding. It was an arduous job but someone had to do it. Since receiving their gift the end of July, I'd been anticipating using it. Going, then, to Vincents on Friday night with Joy, who had been my date to the wedding, seemed like the perfect time to celebrate the close of her stay in Riga while remembering Andrew and Alicia's kindness and generosity.

Prior to our 7:00 reservation, Joy and I prepared for our evening with formidable intentionality. After bathing, grooming, and dressing, Joy emerged an ethereal sight in her new black and white dress. I can't claim to have come close to matching her radiance -- a careless bout with the razor left my neck slightly sliced and a precarious pimple remained conspicuous even after being touched up with a tiny drop of Mary Kay foundation (make-up is a sign of virility, gentlemen) -- but, exterior primping aside, my enthusiasm came to a head as we walked in the unpretentious lower-level entrance of Vincents off of Elizabetes iela in the famed Art Nouveau section of Riga.

"You must be Timothy Chipman," one of the hosts said as we walked in. Cool, they were actually waiting for us!

"That's Mister Timothy Chipman to you," I thought, with a smug cackle.

The place was posh. White walls and beige carpets were augmented by minimalist artwork (yes, we concluded, the sketched horses were indeed mating in the framed piece behind us) and natural decor -- dark, wintry flowers strategically dangling from the ceiling, a shelf full of zen rocks and small votives, orange fruit and simple floating red candles on each table. Ella Fitzgerald crooned Christmas songs through the small speakers. The place oozed charm and Fung shui. It smelled of money.

After pushing in Joy's chair, our conciliatory server asked us about aperitifs.

Joy and I glanced at each other. A pair of what?

Whatever we said must have been right because a couple minutes later, the cart of pre-dinner wines and champagnes had been pulled up next to our table. Feigning certainty, we tentatively made our selections and were pleased with the results.

After agreeing that this was the fanciest restaurant either of us had ever been to, I had an epiphany. "Joy," I said, "This is an experience to be remembered. We need to own this place... embrace it!"

Which was all well and good until the menu came. It read like a fairy tale but was anything but embraceable. The server shared with us the specials and proceeded to give us his recommendations. I felt like I had been given the charge of selecting a new car. For 70 Lats per person, Joy and I could have partaken in the "Christmas Tasting Menu," a full-blown five-course extravaganza fit for King Ahaz, but we declined. In the words of Steve Martin as father of the bride, we opted, let's say, for the "chepper chicken." We were not disappointed. My grilled wild boar with chestnuts, a traditional Latvian dish, was a colorful parade on a plate, and Joy claimed satisfaction with her Irish dish of grilled noisettes of lamb with pearl-barley and mushrooms. I'm still looking into what "noisettes" are precisely.

An empty dish with the slightest remaining traces of crème brûlée, my melting bowl of ice cream (yes, the bowl itself was made of raspberry ice), and two and a half hours later, Joy and I toddled our way past Elton John, George W. Bush, Madeline Albright, B. B. King and other dignitaries framed posing with the chef on the wall to fetch our coats. The meal -- the entire experience -- was sensational.

I was hardly hungry for breakfast Saturday morning. Somehow my Special K didn't seem so special. With Joy already in the air, I rolled out of bed for the second time that morning, picked up yesterday's jeans and sweatshirt off my make-shift dresser, put on my glasses and stocking cap and made my way through Old Riga to St. Saviours. I've been helping with the church's Saturday soup kitchen off and on since my arrival four months ago. I was told the soup kitchen was originally conceived by two teenage girls who organized the weekly event. Eventually, a troupe of boy scouts provided the tables and chairs in the church's undercroft calling to mind the unforgettable words, And a child shall lead them. These days the soup kitchen feeds approximately fifty homeless or near-homeless people a week, but yesterday's numbers were in the seventies.

The soup kitchen is primarily run now by Rihards, a well-intentioned young man who works for the church and actually stays in a small room off of the balcony, and Alita, a temperamental older gal with hair fire-engine red. While the church facilities are adequate, neither Rihards nor Alita seem to stand by the old adage of cleanliness being next to Godliness. I always struggle to decipher the clean towels from the used ones among the pastiche of items in the small kitchen.

Unlike those who patronize Vincents, which prides itself on being a trademarked "Slow Food" establishment, the men and women who come to St. Saviours for soup and sardines and brown bread, when it's available, on Saturday mornings have little time to spare and little tolerance for slow food. Collectively, they are a mangy crew, wearing over-sized coats, carrying a variety of bags, mostly plastic. Bedraggled and forlorn, they aren't much to look at, and Lord knows they aren't pleasing to the nostrils. "Be sure the fans are on," I was advised early in my days of volunteering.

Occasionally I play the old piano while the people eat and Saturday seemed like a good day for Christmas carols. I always play quietly, as if I'm afraid to wake the neighbors, and I am never certain if the diners like my music or not. Some of them exchange smiles with me. Mostly, I'm an obstacle to surpass on the way to the station of seconds. I am always surprised when I make it through my playing without noodles or warm broth on the back of my neck. With so many people in a space too small, the odor was particularly loathsome this week. Even the heavy aroma of the soup on the stove in the kitchenette across the hall couldn't disguise the inextricable blend of unwashed, unfiltered humanity. For the first time in my piano-playing life, I concentrated on "smelling the music" to keep my gag-reflex under control.

After about twenty minutes or so, most of the people have gone and I move into the kitchen to wash dishes. There are always a few men who stay behind to help clean-up. This is where notions of the stinky greater mass of a puzzle fall apart into tiny pieces of unique personalities. I don't know his name, but one man, for instance, is quite the raconteur. A hardy laugh follows all of his stories, and though it would be very plausible, I've never detected a drop of alcohol on his breath. He's just happy.

Another old fellow offers a courteous, nearly inaudible "excuse me" each time he has to come past me to fill up his bucket with water... a gift to the English speaker standing at the sink.

I'd like to say that my time at the soup kitchen was more fulfilling or more rewarding than the evening before at Vincents. In spite of the fact that both food venues provided this writer with multi-sensory experiences, I can't say it's so. Just like you, I guess, when given the choice, I'd rather be seated on the receiving end of the table.

Into this world of contrasts, as vast as the discrepancies and complexities of one human mind, a world of fine china and plastic bags, of reservations for some and starvation for others, comes Immanuel whose humble entrance among us, a rather deplorable, hopeless dramatis personae, still ought to stir up something sacred within. I think it starts with an invitation: come, the table has been prepared.

This Christmas, bring your appetite.

Yours,

Tim

Sly Bells and Silent Slovakian Nights

Dear Friends,

A week ago, I set out on a melodiously grand adventure: a choir trip to Bratislava, Slovakia with my school's Jaunais Rīgas Vīru Koris, or New Riga Men's Choir.

I almost didn't go. Let's just say the reason could be classified as intestinal/gastronomic. Tuesday I was chained to the bathroom.

"Teem, I heard you were sick with the diarrheas. So, I bring you medicines."

That, from Dr. Inga, officially known as The Best Landlady in the Baltic Lands. Inga made her house call as promised with the following instructions: "You mix this powder with half cup of water, but the taste" -- she grimaced here -- "is ogly. It's terrible. But, it vill stop your diarrheas and vomits."

Love her.

"You vill ride on bus for thirty some hours with the high school boys?? Geezus. I wish you luck. But with this medicines, it is good."

And good it was. With a bulging suitcase and stable bowels (ha, or was it the other way around!) I boarded the grand charter Wednesday morning. I didn't want to miss this trip. One Wednesday afternoon in September, at the urging of a student, I attended a choir practice in my school's aula or grand hall. The directors welcomed me with opened, conductorial arms. Iveta, the head director, speaks no English, but we are able to communicate on a base level in German. I should say she puts up with my fragmented Germanish, like a patient Angela Merkel speaking with Mork. On the eve of my very first rehearsal, she invited me to come to Bratislava in December. I voraciously agreed.

Since then, my Wednesday afternoons have been filled with choral music. Now, the choir is composed mainly of students from my school -- but there are students from other schools as well, and a handful of alumni return. The choir literature claims that "friends" of the school sing in the ensemble as well. That would be me -- the oldest young "friend" of the bunch. Still, at the age of 28, I blend in well enough. When I told one of the singers that I was teaching for the year at the school, he looked at me, unable to conceal his surprise, and said in perfect Lat-British English, "You're a teach-uh?!"

My first rehearsal I introduced myself to the other second tenors in the back row.

"Labdien. I'm Tim," I said, shaking hands.

"Janis."

"Hi, Tim."

"Sveiki, Janis."

"Tim."

"Janis."

Popular name among second tenors.

The Janises and the other guys in the group are great; many of them are my students. I believe every teacher should put himself in a situation like this from time to time, where the usual teacher-student roles are flip-flopped like the notes in a capriccio. Knowing that I don't speak the language, many of the guys are eager to point me to the proper measure or page or glance over their shoulders to make sure this American interloper isn't completely bumbling and lost. They look after me. The guys take their music seriously, and I smile sometimes as I watch them singing so intentionally yet so youthfully, some of them straining to hit the higher notes like baby birds with a slight case of lock-jaw reaching for food.

I remember those days when it was possible to wake-up a first alto in the morning and go to sleep a tenor. And there's no camaraderie like that found in a choir to see you through the pubescent changes or otherwise. I discovered I'd missed the sensation. Over six years since my days with the Illinois College Concert Choir and even longer since high school chorus, both integral phases of my formative years. Joining this chorus has plopped this fish back into the stream.

Familiar as the old choral waters may be, there have been plenty of surprises along the way. Like two weeks ago, when Iveta called me down to sing the English verse of Agnestig's "Stilla natt" ("Silent Night") as a solo. My palms were sweaty, smiling though I was, but with the chorus backing me, I sang with pride. What a rush! The director only smiled when I botched some of the English words. Eh, dees langueege is new to me, what can I say.

I recalled this pleasant memory as our big bus rolled through eastern Europe. Our first stop on Wednesday was in Lithuania (new country No. 1). Through squinted, sleepy eyes, out of the bus windows I saw Warsaw, Poland (new country No. 2). And finally, Thursday morning we arrived in Slovakia (new country No. 3).

The city of Bratislava is terrific. The terrain is hilly and perched at the highest zenith of them all is the old castle and fortress walls that stand over the old city. Watching the congeries of spirited humanity moving among the Christmas market while enjoying a lunch of halusky, Slovakia's traditional food of dumplings and sheep cheese, I knew in my heart (as I've stated before) that I could fall in love with this city.

Friday morning, as a competing choir in the 2. Medzinárodný festival adventnej a vianočnej hudby or 2nd International Festival of Advent and Christmas Music, we performed our five piece repertoire in the exquisite Hall of Mirrors inside of the Primates Palace. Later that evening, we performed again in a concert inside the St. Jesuits Cathedral. We opened with pieces by Latvian composers, Andrejs Jurjanu's powerful "Gods Dievam angstiba" and Raimonds Pauls' demure "Mate Saule". Franz Biebl's "Ave Maria (Angelus Domini)" moved us to the finale of "Silent Night." The other two soloists and I moved to the front of the cathedral, while the chorus and director remained in the balcony. The first soloist sang in Latvian, then I, in English, and finally, with the chorus moving pianissimo on an a capella hum, the final soloist -- a sixth grader -- sang his verse in Slovakian, his soprano tones cascading clearly and sweetly enough to melt your heart.

Of course, many of the highlights of the Slovakian excursion occurred away from the risers. These guys like to sing -- that's why they're in choir -- and they will sing anywhere. Walking down the street. On the trolley bus. And among the host of Latvian folk songs, I found "White Christmas" to be among their favorites. Their spontaneous renditions were quite good, but I nearly laughed each time I heard them sing "to hear sleigh -- pronounced sly -- bells in the snow." Oh, I didn't have the heart to correct them. In addition to the beautiful music, I was completely regaled by the idea of animated, wily bells moving furtively over heaps of snow. Anyway, those dern "ei" / "ie" combinations drive all of us English speakers batty.

A special surprise came Saturday morning when Antons, a first tenor and one of my students, said, "Hey Tim, you going to Vienna with us today?" A day trip to Vienna was scheduled for Sunday; perhaps I'd missed the announcement of the change in plans. Travelling as a non-speaker with native speakers one becomes accustomed to surprises rather like an unsuspecting child whose parent announces one morning, "Today I'm taking you to the zoo." The parent could have been planning this for days or minutes, but to the child, who had no thought of tomorrow yesterday, the idea seems splendid and outrageously surprising.

"Of course I'm going to Vienna!" I replied. I like this childlike aspect of travel: I've come to expect nothing and anticipate anything. Like diarrhea, which happens. But usually the surprises come in the form of priceless rewards, like revisiting one of the greatest cities on earth on a sunny Saturday afternoon with your students who call you "Teacher Timmy" and translate for you and ask you to pose with them in pictures and give you pocket-sized Latvian lessons, small enough to fit into a stanza of "Silent Night."

Yours,

Tim

Outside of the Vienna Opera House

Speaking of the M-Word

Dear Friends,

My fellow English teacher and table-mate periodically leaves me articles, stories, and comic strips she uses in her conversational English classes. Today I found this gem by Ann Landers on the topic of marriage. I figured her advice is worth sharing again. This one goes out to the many couples I know who live these words. Enjoy.

How to Make an Intelligent Decision

The more you have in common with the one you choose, the better your chances for a successful marriage. This means religious training, cultural, social and financial background. The old saying "opposites attract" may be true in the field of electromagnetics, but it seldom works out in choosing a lifetime partner.

Don't marry on the spur of the moment. If love is real, it will last. The tired line "marry in haste, repent in leisure" may be a cliche, but it still makes good sense.

Don't marry a person whose chief attraction is sexual. A marriage based on sex will fall apart when the passions cool, and they'll cool a whole lot faster than you thought.

Don't marry with the intention of changing your beloved to meet your specifications. It won't work. If during courtship a person is unfaithful, a heavy drinker, a gambler or abusive, marriage will not provide the magic cure. In fact, he'll undoubtedly get worse as time goes on.

Choose someone who wants the same things from life that you want. Discuss in detail your aims, goals and objectives. Marriage should mean companionship and building a life together.

Approach marriage as a permanent relationship and not as an experiment which can be tossed aside if it doesn't work. Remember, a good marriage is not a gift -- it's an achievement. It takes working at. You must repeatedly compromise. Forgive and forget. And then be smart enough to forget what you forgave. Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one is leaving four or five things a day -- unsaid.

Til' Death Do Us Part,

Tim

Come Helsinki or High Water

Dear Friends,

A trip to Helsinki the first weekend of December properly ushered in the Christmas spirit -- a broad phrase that covers a host of elusive feelings and wishes and emotions. Where did the spirit come from? It had something to do with location -- Finland, after all, holds bragging rights on being the official home of Santa Claus. Something to do the with climate -- there was snow on the ground. Good, thick snow. Made for packing. The kind that crunches under your feet. There was good company -- Ali and I again met up with Laurie, another Fulbright teacher from San Diego living this year in Vantaa, just outside of Helsinki proper, who treated us as kin. (Laurie spent a weekend with me in Riga in early November.) And there was nature. Not ten steps from Laurie's back deck lies a beautiful, unblemished forest of tall pines and twisting dirt paths.

On Suomenlinna Island, after walking among the ramparts, we warmed ourselves with cups of gloggi as we witnessed "King Gustav" of Sweeden declare the official opening of the Christmas season, complete with cannon blasts and fanfare. The next day we saw the Jolly Old Elfiss himselfiss parade in a horse-drawn chariot down a street adorned with candles and greenery and carolers. This was followed by a luscious lunch of reindeer quiche. (Don't tell Mr. Claus.) The city was cast in the colors of Christmas, from the crimson Uspenski Orthodox Cathedral looming in the distance to the alabaster Tuomiokirkko Lutheran Cathedral regally residing in the middle of Senate Square.

Given time, I told myself, I could easily fall in love with Helsinki.

Saturday evening, Laurie prepared makkara, a traditional Finnish dish of smoked sausage complemented by a dry Merlot. After dinner came time for a round in the sauna, pronounced suh-oo-nah if you're Finnish, located off of Laurie's upstairs bathroom. Warm and relaxed, the evening's night cap was enjoyed under bundled blankets in front of the TV where we gleefully stumbled upon the last twenty-five minutes of White Christmas. Oh, the insouciant glories of a warm home on a cold snowy night!

In spite of the warm glow brought about from the sauna and the wine and the blankets, I sensed a slight draft: my toes, though properly covered in socks, were cold. During a commercial break, I glanced down (as if looking at them would warm them). At first, I saw my socks were brownish along the toe lines, probably from the wear and tear of breaking in my new brown snow boots. But, as I looked closer, I saw that in fact my socks were themselves wearing away. The fabric was thinning.

I know what you're thinking: Boy, Tim, it's been two weeks or so since you've blogged. We were hoping for something a little more... I don't know, spectacular, a little more Euro than this. Not that we don't care about your socks and other routine podiatric concerns, but come on!

The plot thickens, dear reader, when I mention this: the socks under present scrutiny are exactly seven years old. Once darker green, they have warmed and comforted my feet quite adequately all this time. But I'll tell you how I remember their age: they were a present, the last present, in fact, from the girl who was once slated to be my wife.

I can't say the diamond ring was exactly returned in the socks, but it was returned with the socks.

My college sweetheart and I promised our love and life devotion to each other sometime in June 2000. By December of that same year, the ice that had begun to form over waters once tepid and flowing was beginning to crack. I was twenty years old.

Children, let this be a lesson to you: don't consider m-m-marriage at such a young age. Beware even mentioning the word. Go back to your play pens! Go back to your pull-up pants and dolls!

Her silence was the first indication of her desire to throw in the towel. I was taking a break from writing my senior seminar paper comparing the literary works and respective religious conversions of G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis when over the phone I said to this girl, with a quavering voice, You don't want to end things... forever... do you?

She didn't respond. This was a turning point. Up until this time I had only suspected dark clouds and wind. She was calling for a hurricane. Here we shared a moment of private conversion.

That's when it began to snow outside.

In addition to a senior paper to write, I also had a Christmas show to do with my fellow musicians and best friends who comprised our a capella quintet. On stage, I sang and played "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" Inside, I wondered what I was doing with the rest of my life.

After the concert, the guys came back to my apartment and that's when I really opened up about what was happening to me, with me. They stayed and talked with me nearly all night. "I can see this calls for a lot of conversation and a twelve-pack," I remember one of them saying, walking out the door to do some quick shopping.

The girl was living in Chicago; we were almost four hours apart. Over the phone, she suggested we meet half-way in Bloomington, at the Cracker Barrel, to... disengage. I don't like Cracker Barrel on a good day, and somehow, with the rage and chasmic despair moving inside me, I couldn't envision the two of us rocking amiably on the wicker chairs like old timers, reminiscing about the good days gone by as the winter sun set before us. I told her she'd need to come see me.

And she did. Carrying a heavy heart, a diamond ring, and three pairs of the best damn socks I've ever had in my life.

My heart was utterly broken, but my feet were dancing.

She hadn't wrapped the socks. We'd picked them out somewhere together months before, trying to get an early start on the Christmas shopping.

After I walked her to her brother's car in the falling snow, I went to see my parents. Through my tears, I told them the news, but feeling the bulge in my coat pocket, I laughed as I pulled out the socks and exclaimed, "But, hey, look what I got out of it!" They hugged me and we cried like mourners believing the cosmos were running accordingly and in order even still.

I've always believed travel has less to do with sight-seeing than self-seeing. Travel is the purest form of character study. For as much soul-searching as I've done abroad, it didn't take Latvia for me to see that this particular relationship that ended ended providentially.

I have been thinking a bit more critically about holes, however. Holes form when something that was is no longer. What once was fullness becomes space. Holes are the result of occupancy transforming into vacancy.

Holes are empty. Holes are tears in fabric. Holes make your toes tingle with coldness.

But holes are opportunities. Holes let in the light. Didn't Joana Macy say it perfectly when she wrote "The heart that breaks open can contain the universe"?

One other notable landmark in Helsinki is the Temppeliaukio Church, hewn completely in solid rock. Thirty some years ago, two brothers had the idea and the dynamite to create a church out of one enormous granite depository of the many that line and compose Helsinki's battered coast.

I went inside this church building. Heard a men's choir sing there. The acoustics were as live and vibrant and ready-made for sound as any I've ever heard. Though the walls are solid rock, it's the people inside that produce the heavenly sounds. The rocks themselves, as far as anyone knows, have yet to cry out.

Church out of rock. Something out of nothing. Pulse within stone.

Flippantly, upon exiting the church, I picked up three printed cards on a table in the lobby. Each contains a quote, and my favorite one simply says this: "How God will transform my troubles I know not, but that he will transform them I know for sure."

When it comes to holes, experience has proven God to be a masterful seamstress. Not to mention a professional stocking stuffer.

Yours,

Tim