Finlandia, and the Way Love of Home Grows Up
- Andrea Fiondo
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
There’s a kind of music that doesn’t ask your opinion. It enters the room like weather.
Sibelius’s Finlandia is that kind of piece. Even if you don’t know the history—Finland under pressure, a people trying to keep their spine—you can hear it. There are no words in this first iteration. It’s instrumental. First the dark weight, the grinding insistence, the sense of something being pushed down. And then, almost against logic, the lift. The opening of the chest. A melody that feels like a hand finding your hand in a crowded place.
Later, people put words to that melody—hymn-like lyrics that speak of a country, a homeland, and a love that’s both fierce and clean. Not the loud love. Not the costume. The kind that sounds like: We belong to something. We are responsible for it. We will not abandon each other.
Antero Koskenniemi (1940) wrote Finnish patriotic lyrics. There are international hymns for singing in church, or civic ceremonies as well. The version I’m writing about today is often referred to as, “This Is My Song,” written by Lloyd Stone in 1934. It’s widely sung in churches.
And the Indigo Girls rendition—the one I offer as the doorway into this song—is especially powerful. The harmonies are heartbreakingly beautiful. There are tensions around the voices. The careful way each person keeps their part in the live recordings. The way they’re dedicated… studious about not stepping on each other’s sound. It’s not dramatic in the performative sense; it’s dramatic in the ethical sense. Three, sometimes more, people holding a shared line with discipline and tenderness, letting the music evolve without the desire to center the spotlight.
That measured, careful unfolding feels like a perfect metaphor for how patriotism can evolve.
Because most of us feel pride in our home. We feel tenderness toward the place that raised us, shaped us, fed us—whether it did a good job or a messy job or both. We tell stories about our streets, our weather, our people. We get a little protective. We get sentimental. We call it loyalty. We call it patriotism. We identify. We become our nation.
And: so does everybody else.
That simple fact is a moral doorway.
Ethical adulthood requires we see that we are not the center of the universe. We are our center. We can only live from where we live—inside this one body, this one history, this one set of losses and devotions. But that center is not alone. Our viewpoint is not the viewpoint. Our homeland is not the only homeland. Our grief is not the only grief. Our pride is not the only pride.
Every person on earth is standing in the middle of their own “Finlandia” moment—some melody of belonging that makes them straighten their spine and whisper, This matters to me.
This doesn’t mean all loyalties are equally wise. It doesn’t mean every flag deserves devotion. It doesn’t mean we stop discerning. It means we stop acting like our devotion is the only devotion in the room. Because when we insist our love of home is the most important love in the room, we become dangerous without noticing. We start confusing pride with perfection. We start confusing loyalty with silence. We start treating other people’s homes like background noise.
But Finlandia—and especially that Indigo Girls rendering of it—doesn’t do that. It doesn’t bulldoze. It doesn’t grandstand. It holds its line. It leaves space. It honors structure. It refuses to turn devotion into domination.
One of the reasons this piece is so moving is that it doesn’t pretend loyalty and love aren’t there. It doesn’t skip to equanimty and shame the feelings of devotion and pride present in us all. It moves honestly through the smaller-aperature viewpoint in the opening, then rises into our shared reality. Which is exactly what grown-up devotion does: remains loyal without becoming delusional.
So this is how patriotism grows up.
Not by disappearing. Not by becoming a hardened cynic. But by widening—by letting our love of home mature into responsibility, humility, and capacity. We can love where we’re from without making it the sun. We can belong with our eyes open. We can protect what we love and tell the truth about it. We can keep our own part—clearly, bravely—without stepping on anyone else’s voice.
Home is not a weapon. It’s a vow.
May our love be brave enough to stay honest about our shared reality.
Hope to see you soon,
Andrea
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