Where does God´s Home End?

"World never comes to an end - if it comes, it will end on the very point where God´s home starts, just exactly at the fence."

World has not come to an end. In the forests blue flowers (hepatica triloba) came out first, after them the white ones (wood sorrel, oxalis acetocella and may lily, mianthemum bifolium) and then the yellow ones (buttercup, ranunculaceae). They went quickly by, as they usually do. If you do not go into forests a couple of times weekly, the next opportunity to see them will be next year.

I told my daughter that the apple trees will soon have blossomed. "Why didn´t you tell me before. I would have liked to see them."

The Finnish spring-summer goes rushing by. To me it is the most enjoyable time of the year. You know that every tomorrow will be longer than today - until Midsummer.

Days, nights, apple trees and Midsummer roses have followed their yearly routines. Bees haven´t. It was strange not to hear them humming in the blossoming apple trees. It was cold, but the Midsummer roses which come out a couple of weeks later were equally quiet. I thought it was warm enough for bees to be seen and heard then. I was worried.

Being in a hurry it is easy to forget that Nature is not just stimuli to our eyes. It is something that smells, tastes, bites, tickles and makes noises. If any one of those chracteristics is missing, we need to stop to think. Somebody has said that if bees disappear, human beings will follow in four years´time.

Bees have built a hive somewhere inside the wall above my front door. Going out I stop listening if they send any messages. Today nothing was to be heard. It is evening, about nine o´clock. My kitchen faces to the north. Just now it is sunlit, which only happens around Midsummer. Bees are still working busily in the garden. It is their normal life at this time of the year.

Swedish historian Peter Englund has written essays The History of Silence (original title Tystnadens historia och andra assäer, Finnish translation Hiljaisuuden historia, ISBN: 951-0-29417-9). I wish I could more often find books like that.

I remembered the book while mowing the lawn and taking up the wildest weeds. Some time ago I heard that the gardens around the typical Finnish 1950´s-houses need not be overly decorated. That was not done in the fifties. The after-war generation worked hard to get the country properly going on. They had no extra time to spend in the garden. Neither could they afford buying all possible plants that we now get from Holland and elsewhere. Apples, currants, raspberies and gooseberrie grew in their gardens without needing any special attention. Potatoes, carrots, dill and radish were grown and they had to be properly taken care of.

Now people can choose between ambitious gardening or just having a lawn. My choice is just the lawn - and I know the British would not call it any proper lawn. It is just a wild, green collection of grass, clover and dandelions.

Rain was starting to fall. First came the individual drops. I could hear how they met the foliage of the old apple trees. It was as if they had been whispering some secrets to them.

Peter Englund starts his book: "I have heard it snowing." "Olen kuullut lumen satavan."

I heard one rain drop, then another one, and that one followed by a couple of more...

Peter Englund reminds us that in the old days wind, rain and birds singing were not just insignificant background noises. They carried messages that needed interpretation. Southern winds brought illness; northern winds intensified depression and made people feel hungry; heavy, icy winds after the 6th of December promised good harvest; if the heavy, icy winds started blowing on a Christmas Eve, the king was going to die.

In those days wind was not listened to because of the noise it made. It was listened to because it had something to say. The same applies to the bees and Midsummer roses today. If you do not hear bees and other insects in and among their flowers, the silence has something to say.

I have been writing about expertise, knowledge and power lately. The topic needs to be crumbled. Otherwise it is too heavy. It needs to be decorated with stories and anecdotes. Often the stories about power are stories about force and cruelty. I have read some history.

Jaan Kross a remarkable Estonian writer. He writes about Estonia during and after the second world war, as well as about his own experiences in the Russian concentration camps in Siberia. The texts have been published between 1984 - 1998. If you ever get hold of them, you have seen a jaguar in the jungle. In other words, having read them your world will have changed. The name of the Finnish collection is Halleluja (ISBN: 951-0-25615-3). I sincerely hope that the collection has been translated into English as well.

Sometimes we go on asking though the answers have already been given. Guido Knopp has written a book called Hitlers Kinder (Hitlerin lapset ISBN: 951-20-7013-8). We often emphasize that everyone has a choice. Having read Hitlers Kinder you might feel tempted to reconsider what you think of the choices in Germany in the 1930´s.

One more deep dive into the history has been King Leopold´s Ghost by Adam Hochschildt (Kuningas Leopoldin haamu, ISBN: 951-31-2850-4). Visiting the Heart of Darkness is more than unpleasant. The only thing giving us some hope is that among us there are always one or two individuals who are brave enough to find out what is really taking place. In the very beginning there may be only one person who is ready to fight to find out the truth.

Peter Englund writes about heroism. Real heroes face death and they risk their own life for others. However, our willingness to find heroes makes the majority of us blind and lazy. History proves that many heroes have been authentic rascals and evildoers.

Why do we learn that just afterwards? It is because of power. Real power is the power to define where God´s home is and what its fence is made of.

Post script If you have read The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, you know what ´the fence´ refers to. The reference to the end of the world and God´s home I owe to seven-year-old Rasmus.