Last week, my dear friend from near Freiburg came to visit me in Estonia. Decades ago, when I was a student, I worked as an au pair for her family in Germany for a year. She had four children, a warm heart, ability to notice, and a quiet strength that shaped me more than she’ll ever know.

About half a year ago, she wrote me she had made a list of things she still wanted to do. After 35 years devoted to children, home, and care giving, she was ready to start to do the things from the list. And visiting Estonia — and me — was right at the top.

Though we’d only stayed in touch a few times a year, nothing between us had faded.

As I introduced her to Tallinn, I also introduced her to the music of Arvo Pärt — Estonia’s most renowned living composer. He left the Soviet Union in 1980, first moving to Austria and then settling in West Berlin. His music speaks not only to Estonia and Germany, but to the world — universal in its simplicity, sacredness, and silence. For years now, Pärt has been among the most performed living classical composers globally.

As Pärt himself once said:
“The silence must be longer. This music is about the silence. The sounds are there to surround it.”

Later, in a tourist info center, my friend spotted a poster and asked, “Isn’t this the composer you were just talking about?” The next evening, in the candlelit beauty of Niguliste Church, we heard Tabula Rasa performed live.

The concert was unforgettable. The VHK orchestra — made up of high school students — played with deep emotion. The violin soloists, father and son Harry and Robert Traksmann, from Germany, making the moment feel like a full-circle meeting of our two homelands. And in the stillness of that sacred space, the music spoke volumes.

Afterward, my friend whispered, “We need this kind of beauty.” I couldn’t agree more.

Two quiet miracles met that evening — a friend from my past, and music that makes space for the soul to breathe. She’s returned home now, but I’m still full of pure joy.