This week I’ve circled back around to my first language love, Finnish. Kaamos is, literally, ‘darkness’, but it actually refers to polar night in the north, when you don’t see the sun for months on end, and encompasses in many ways the depression that can and often does result from that lack of light. 

Earlier this week several of us from church attended a training offered by Officers Heath and Specht from the Chicago Police Department Place of Worship Safety Advisory Team (POWSAT). The program consisted of Greeter protocols as well as Active Threat information and situational awareness. Those who attended agreed that the information we received was very helpful.

This week I've wandered a little further south, to Greece. The word filotimo (or philotimo, depending on how you transliterate it from the Greek alphabet) can be literally translated as 'friend/lover of honor' but it's a little more involved than that. Like sisu and hiraeth, it is a fairly engrained concept in the language and culture.