She was a slight, attractive and smartly dressed young woman who had come to speak in our local church. She had come to talk to us about the huge debt that we owed the Russians after the war, about the need to house and clothe our refugees from Karelia, about the pressing need to liberate ourselves from humiliation, the threat of poverty and moral decay. The world must know that David could conquer Goliath, that it was possible for each and every one of us to restore freedom and dignity. She said that we must never be led to believe that we had been trapped in a fissure between communism and facism. She told us that we could pool our resources, each and every one of us to the best of our ability, and thus contribute to the freedom of our people.
This was the bull-dog spirit, the Finnish
sisu that this woman challenged us to incarnate.
I thought that she was very beautiful, this peasant baroness. Her lips were swollen and colorful. Her shiny dark hair was parted in the middle and braided in a knot that crowned the nape of her neck.
She continued to speak slowly, suggesting that we remove the wedding rings from our fingers and chains from our necks. Anything and everything of gold, mere tokens of our past, would help. Could we not make concrete use of these totems, by contributing them to a solid commitment to our collective future?
And so we did. We gave everything of apparent value that we had and dropped it into her gunny sack.
Suddenly, in the spirit of service, a handsome young man appeared before her. He offered to help carry the heavy sack to the bank. Slight and overwhelmed by the unexpected weight of her mission, the young woman fumbled with the strings of the sack, looked awkwardly up at the young man and said: “Yes, of course, please, and thank you.”
April 8, 1949
Lapinlahti Finland
