The Unacknowledged Acknowledged.
(In memory of Pastor Aida Prēdele)
There are people who cannot remain unnoticed in this life. They may go unmentioned out of lack of time, out of unwillingness, or simply because others are far more important. Although their deeds have been great, one may forget to honor them only because they themselves do not draw attention to themselves. We may forget to give thanks for all the good they have done while they were still alive, because often our own deeds seem more important. We may even deliberately ignore them for some reason that has perhaps been purely mercenary and personal, or because to someone the ignoring seemed ideologically justified. They may go unmentioned, but they cannot go unnoticed. Often the moment of death is the one in which we once again catch sight of these fellow human beings of ours as tarnished gemstones that have sunk in the sea of our cares and indifference. Such a person was Pastor Aida Prēdele.
There are many possible reasons why Aida was forgotten in the last years of her life. Perhaps it was illness that kept her from going out in public in her later years. Perhaps throughout her service in the church she did not receive the attention she deserved, which in turn, during her illness, when her own strength had considerably waned, hurt most deeply.
She experienced the rejection of herself as a woman pastor to the bitter end for almost the whole of her time in service. Soon after Aida’s ordination to the office of pastor, the ordination of women was prohibited, and women pastors received treatment in full measure to match from the opponents of women’s ordination. And if, in the year of the Church’s 90th anniversary, they forgot to mention, or deliberately did not include, the first ordination of women as an important event in the chronological list of events, then within this matrix of attitudes the assertion fits well that Aida too was, in her own way, forgotten. But credit where credit is due: although Archbishop J. Vanags refuses to ordain women as pastors, he does not refuse to lead women pastors on their final journey. And evidently this kind of attitude also fits the present situation, when in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia the service of women in the office of pastor is still sharply rejected on the grounds that the ordination of women supposedly undermines the foundations of the Bible’s authority.
Aida in her time was most likely inconvenient to the regime of the day, when in the eighties, as a well-known journalist, she resigned from the Communist Party. Aida was possibly, in her own way, inconvenient also as a woman pastor, who was ordained to the office on March 17, 1991, and from 1993 until the last day of her life lived under the sign of the rejection of women’s ordination.
Aida Prēdele was a strong personality, a talented journalist, a good pastor and a charismatic preacher. The theologian Indra Skuja Grīslis recalls: “I served together with Aida leading services at the Luther congregation when I had just enrolled in the theology faculty. Aida often preached from memory, with inspiration.”
Beginning with the time of the Third Awakening, when Aida Prēdele entered the public sphere, she was loved for her courage and prophetic word. She was among those who, on March 26, 1989, issued the first restored issue of “Svētdienas Rīts” as the Christian-democratic supplement to “Atmoda”, the informational bulletin of the Popular Front of Latvia. The Member of the Saeima and journalist Ilmārs Latkovskis, recalling that time in an interview in the March 2012 issue of the newspaper “Svētdienas Rīts”, says:
“The main ideological inspirer for the restoration of “Svētdienas Rīts” was Juris Rubenis, Aida Prēdele was the main doer, and I was there in a kind of surge, both emotional and formal.”
After its restoration, Aida became the first editor of the newspaper “Svētdienas Rīts”.
During the time of Aida’s active service, the deeds she did were too powerful for the harsh denial of women’s ordination to render them in any way unimportant. Many were inspired by her service as a pastor. She proclaimed the truth both as a journalist and as a pastor. The deeds of Aida Prēdele in no way testified that her service as a pastor undermined the authority of the Bible. Quite the contrary. The fact that her deeds were consistent with her words was the reason why a large part of the Latvian people trusted her and chose her as a deputy of the 5th, 6th and 7th convocations of the Latvian Saeima. And we must acknowledge that her – a woman pastor’s – conscientious service raised the authority of the church in society as a whole at that time. The name of Aida Prēdele is set like a stone into the wall of the living Church. We may avoid mentioning it, but we cannot fail to acknowledge that one of the historical pillars of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia, through her service, has been Pastor Aida Prēdele.
In these days, each of us in our thoughts quietly bids farewell to our beloved sister, and soon, on July 28, we will come together in person or in spirit to express our undivided respect to Aida Prēdele. For all of us, both the ordained and the unordained “de facto pastors”, Aida will remain in our hearts as a woman who was able to inspire with her faith and deeds. Illness destroyed her body, but not her faith.
For many, the farewell to Aida is a painful moment, although we believe that she – happy – is with her Lord. The most agonizing parting from Aida as a mother and grandmother is for her dearest, her closest ones – her son Kristaps and his family. Once Aida sent the website sieviesuordinacija.lv a Christmas sermon in which the following words were written:
“There are, of course, also ideal mothers, who devote their whole lives to their child, who wind and tangle all their daily cares around the child alone. I envy such women, because I myself do not manage to be one. And yet – we too, those of us who run and stumble and want everything, who patch up the world’s worn-through elbows while the wind whistles through our own threadbare coats of happiness – we too devote our lives to our child. For our child grows not only from what we say to them, but more from how we live before them. And there is no scrape on our shoulders that our child has not also tasted. There is no harsh word that we received that they would not have felt…” [1]
In my view, Aida Prēdele belongs to that circle of men and women of faith who truly begin to shine after passing into eternity. More time will pass before we see and appreciate, in the full spectrum of the rainbow, her deeds and her personality, which during her life sometimes shone so brightly that many were dazzled, but in her later years was like a candle flame trembling in the wind, gently sheltered by the hand of God Himself.
Rudīte Losāne
Chairwoman of the LLSTA
ELCL evangelist, chaplain
[1] read the full sermon at: http://www.sieviesuordinacija.lv/docs/1092/Predele_A_raksts20redC4A3C493tais.pdf