In the circle of life

Papis, Gunilla and Peter on the go.

It is the third and final seminary on our walk on the theme of ”Existence” at Mundekulla retreatcentre. We sit in a
circle under the trees in the meadow and listen and talk. The first day it was
Sadhu from India and Papis from Senegal who spoke about their life-journeys starting
from the religious contexts they grew up in. Sadhu’s grandfather was a Brahmin
(a Hindi priest) and as a child he followed him to the temple to pray four
times a day. And Papis who comes from a Muslim family grew up with five prayer
times in the mosque each day. Despite the fact that they have lived on two
different continents with two different religions you are struck by the
similarity of their stories. They are deeply rooted in their traditions and
carry them still with gratitude and pride. But they have both gone further,
seeking their own road away from a world dominated by religious conformity and
sometimes bigotry. They have walked a path towards their own truth, which also
seems to be a truth others can relate to.
The peculiar thing is not so much that their stories run parallel but that we
all in the circle recognized ourselves in so much of their stories.
 
The 12 spokes of the Mundekulla Window

In the Swedish summer-pastures we meet in
the circle and the Wagonwheel-window on the Mundekulla haybarn behind us is
given a renewed relevance. We all come from different directions but seek a
unified centre. “From faith and love till we find our place on the path
unwinding.” We smile when we recognize each other and hear the stories from the
other side of the circle.
In the singing and the dancing we find each
other without any kind of problems. There are no hindrances, only curiosity.
Words can be harder, they can be misunderstood. Sadhu explains, for us Northerners
odd concepts, of Hinduism; he talks of transformation of energies and chakras,
he talks about yoga and tantra. Despite a big willingness to understand and a
very keen listening some of the words fall on stony ground for some of us who
are listening.


Smiling Sadhu


In the evening we walk together from
Mundekulla to Långasjö to give a concert. When we walk side by side, the words
are no stumbling blocks, only confirmations that we are on the right road.
Sadhu walks at my side and we talk about our respective stories as children in
a long succession of priests.  I
recognize myself in a funny way in his stories. As if that bond brings us
closer to each other than we are with others whom we seem to have a lot more in
common with. And at the same time our obvious differences give us ample of
opportunities to learn from each other.
The concert in Långasjö becomes a blissful
yet peculiar concert. We sing down by a water-lily lake for a gathering of
people who have come out in the soft summer-evening. The sun gilds the
velvet-soft surface of the lake. The sky is painted in daring pastel. It is so
still, so perfect, so divine.
But for an ambitious choir-leader the
set-up is far from ideal. We are going to have a concert with a group of
nervous amateur-singers the first evening we meet without having had an
opportunity to check the material before. I have tried to handle my own demons
through stating that it is not a concert, but rather a sing-along, but a
concert it is nevertheless. We get a chance to run through the songs a little
in the day and Sadhu is there. He has never sung before in his life, he
confides, and when I hear his attempts to follow in the African songs I
understand he is speaking the truth. Not to mention the Swedish folksongs! But
put any average-Swede in a concert with traditional Indian Ragas the first
night he is in India and… yeah you get it… And then add a fussy audience of connoisseurs
and you have a recipe for real good comedy. Only with the little reservation
that we were not supposed to do a comedy…
But early in the concert when we sing
“There will be no heaven until everyone is there” on the old traditional melody
from Rättvik something wonderful happens. The choir sounds surprisingly well!
Above all there is a feeling of love streaming forth, overshadowing and
forgiving other possible musical defects and making the audience lapping up the
good vibrations with the last rays of the sun. What’s happening?
Then my eye catches Sadhu standing with
eyes closed and the most blissful smile I think I ever seen on human lips. He
is swaying back and forth in the music with his hands over the chest in some
kind of yoga-position. ”I just concentrated to transform the energy”, he says
afterwards. ”And it worked!” I could add. Don’t ask me how – but worked it did!
How many times have I not told my
choristers that the most important thing in the music is the beautiful thought
behind? If we sing a song of grace ungracefully, we should rather keep quiet.
But if we stand in the flow of it we need not even sing – we will still express
what the song wants to convey! Everybody will feel it. Intuitively and
warmheartedly! And there, in the middle of the most Swedish choral idyll, is
Sadhu showing us all, me included, what I meant! There will be no heaven until
we all are there.
We laughed warmly and well after the
concert as we walked home through Småland’s cow-pastures in the last dying rays
of the sun. Even the cows and the cats came running up to us and wanted to be
close to us. We did not even have to sing for them; they felt the graceful,
benign energy radiating from us, with Sadhu in our middle, as we walked home
happily with the music and fellowship still in our hearts.
The day after it was Ulla, priest in the
Swedish Church and Luigi, Maya-Indian, who was going to talk about their faith
and tradition, and the paths they have walked to get where they are now.  
I have to admit that of all stories in the
circle I had the least expectations on Ulla’s. I thought I knew that tradition
well already. So I sat behind Sadhu and interpreted in his ear and in that way
I got Ulla’s life-story from his perspective with his comments and
interjections added. And after a number of “Wonderfuls” and “Amazings” from
Sadhu at Ulla’s story even I started to feel that this is a fantastic story.
Sadhu, with generations of Brahmins in his
ancestry, said afterwards with glittering eyes and absolute sincerity: ”I think
the Jesus-energy is what has been the most important influence in my life.”
And I, from an almost similarily long row
of Lutheran priests answered that this thing of Hinduism is really something
exciting.
I felt – absolutely sincerily – how my
chakras spun around affirmingly, rejoicing in pure bliss.

The road to love

 

I have landed in Mundekulla. Another circle is coming to its completion. Here the
idea of The Path started, a walk through summer-Sweden in search of…
Happiness?
No, not that I haven’t been filled at times during the walk of bliss, absolutely,
but was that what we were looking for when we left?
Health?
As well, I have not felt this healthy in a long while, but surely that was not the
reason for the walk…
Enlightenment?
OK, I hope I have come to some better understanding of who I am, but there are
still quite a few rooms that are waiting to be illuminated…
Love?


A red rose, the rose of love, is carefully opening its petals, innocently,
unaware of its own beauty.
Its bloodred colour is the colour of life. Its striving for the ultimate beauty holds
all of Creations will for perfection, to complete the journey from Eden’s
lustfilled garden through the scorged landscape of the desert to the eternal land
beyond all dried rosepetals, seasons and sunrises where the face of God’s
beauty can be seen without end.
Love is the way.
Love is the goal.
Love is the source.
Love is the driving force.
Nothing else could make the rosebud open up to the light. Nothing else could make the
hardest of stone-hearts open to receive the divine warmth that can transform everything.
You
do not learn love. Every weft in the tapestry of the Master, however small and
insignificant, however grey, hard or seemingly lifeless, is created of a divine
love that human measurements cannot fathom or conceive. Every weft in the
tapestry is in its essence love, regardless of place, form or function in the
weave.
Love you do not learn. Love you do not earn. Love is what you are and there never
was a time you did not feel your innermost origin if only as the faintest
rose-scent hardly noticeable and yet so easily identifyable when you only took
time to rest by the side of the hard road.
Love
is the colour of life itself – the deep red, the colour of your heart.
You are a lovechild held in the loving arms of your Creator, raised up towards the
eternal sky – elevated above all other created: Behold, the only thing greater
than yourself – that encompasses you on all sides – is the love that carries
you and follows you in the depths as well as into farthermost space, that which
is your life’s blood and fills every cell in your body with nourishment.
Love never perishes.
Love is the isness.
Love is
Love.
The lust of life.
Love is life’s lustfilled play.
The starwind’s caress against your forehead.
The springflowers scentwaves against your nose.
The ocean’s glittering swell against your retina.
The sweetness of the grape in your mouth and the jubilation, the everpresent, never
subsiding jubilation which like love itself sings in the smallest particle if we only could hear it.
Love weaves its weave, prepares its path, builds its bridges, connects everything
and everyone because love is the common denominator of all things; the biggest
in the smallest.
Name everything by its proper name and you will find your kinship with everything
created as well as with the Creator herself, because the name of everything is
LOVE.


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