The Path

A million moments

Anders — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 08:49:02 +0000

Sorry, this entry is only available in Svenska.

Mundekulla music festival

Anders — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 09:38:07 +0000

We are here in the embrace of Mundekulla, the course centre in the middle of the woods. Every morning kicks-off with a circle-dance on the lawn. What a wonderful way to start the day!

The first morning we sang a new song of Anne Elmberg:

I am beautiful

just the way I am.

You are beautiful

just the way you are.

Shining like a star,

we are here to be

who we truly are.

We are beautiful

just the way we are.

And we danced and saw our beauty. Just as we are.

It is wonderful for a walker from the long, straight roads to rest in a circle-dance. That is a home-coming of sorts.

The meeting is the reward of the walker, the fellowship his goal and the trust his staff.

The festival ended with us all summing it all up by creating and singing a new song with Sadhu the dancing dervish in the middle.

Download the full score from here!

The lyrics were born out of the moment:

(in a not-so-poetic English translation;) “The time of trust is now. What a wonderful atmosphere! We always want to live like this.”

But depart we had to. Our beautiful pianist Rickard Åström’s taxi arrived while we were singing and Rickard packed up his piano as the song swirled and rose with renewed trust against the Mundekulla sky. Everyone rejoiced and spun like stars in the galaxy.

Don’t ask me how the song went. It was there and then and then gone again. But wonderful it was.

Today is a new day, a day of walk.

Me and Peter will put on our walking shoes and keep on walking, but with our hearts full of lovely memories and meetings.

Not far to go now. And at the same time we are already home. In the coming together we have arrived.

I often get the question how far or for how long I have walked. I look more and more like a question-mark.

- I have walked this far [measure with the fingers] and it has taken this long time [snap them].

Kilometers and hours feel very relative, not to say totally uninteresting.

But the presence in the pace on the path means everything. There you meet the reality. That which cannot be encompassed in kilometers and hours. But lasting longer than any road or summer.

Neither can it be formulated in words. Despite our constant attempts.

But we can walk it. We can sing it, as we did in the circle in Mundekulla where the words and the dance landed.

The child and the horse

Anders — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 09:32:05 +0000

I love this statue. You’ll find it at the Archeological Museum in Athens. I got very moved by it when I saw it there in my youth and decades later I got this text very spontaneously and only now do I connect the two.

Maybe there is also a connection between the statue and the text and the question I get very often: What is the purpose of the walk? Every time there is a new answer. Maybe this story is one possible answer.

There are many others.

Greek bronzestatue from 150 B.C. that was salvaged from the sea and is now exhibited at the National Archeological Museum of Athens.

Grekisk bronssstaty från ca 150 f Kr som bärgades ur havet och nu står på arkeologiska national-muséet i Aten.

A horse comes galloping: goppeti, goppeti, gop!

A small child sits on its back. The wind and the sun plays in the child’s blond locks, goppeti, goppeti, gop!

Such a big horse! And such a small child!

But the horse is comfortable with the light burden on his back and the child is comfortable with the big, strong legs underneath him. Goppeti, goppeti, gop!

Where are they heading? They are not heading anywhere. They are riding for the sake of the ride, for the joy of feeling the power of the legs against the dust of the road and the play of the wind in the mane and the hair.

The child who plays like this is harnessing a big strength, the child who lives and plays in the wind of the now doubles his legs numbers and multiples their strength. Goppeti, goppeti, gop!

But shouldn’t the child have a goal, a meaning with his course, a home to return to?

The road is the goal, the ride is the purpose and the mild rays of the sun is the child’s home. Goppeti, goppeti, gop!

Ride like so, you child, through life! Your faithful steed will always show his willingness to take you where you want although you did not know whereto when the ride started. Goppeti, goppeti, gop!

And all of a sudden your stallion unfolds his wings and lifts you high over the dust of the road and the limitations of the road-net.

In the world of the true child you will find the reality, because there you will find no limitations.

In the world of the true child horses do fly!

Goppeti, goppeti, hop!

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

In the circle of life

Anders — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 09:29:27 +0000

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

Anders — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 09:17:45 +0000

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.

In the blue berry-mountains

Anders — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 08:19:00 +0000

The staff walks on. It has travelled in my friends Anders Claesson’s and Peter Elmberg’s confident hands, along lake Vättern and via Jönköping up into the Southern Swedish Highlands. The rain – and indeed the “Class 1 – warnings” from the meteorologists – have kept on showering this summer, but the reports from the walkers have been sunny and warm.

Maybe it is one of the big paradoxes for us walkers to meditate on: when you are in the flow on the path, in the proximity of Nature – or maybe even better in communion with nature – you are able to receive a rainfall as a blessing rather than as the curse we often perceive when we sit indoors in our safety looking out.

I have travelled up to Dala-Floda to give attention to house and family. But I have to admit that the walk is nothing you leave behind as you would a wet raincoat. I am still very much in that energy, and the desperate cries from the garden to be seen and attended to, calls I any other summer would find hard to ignore, I now give a cold shoulder rather unfazed.

I surely wouldn’t feel totally free to invite friends and neighbours to a garden party, let alone a magazine to do a ”home and garden-feature”, but so far I have succeeded pretty well to shrug off the loving remarks from the other family members for this summer’s lack of gardening initiatives. I have instead spent a few days at the family’s ”fäbod”, the little traditional hut in the forest where our ancestors would go over the summers in
the semi-nomadic lifestyle of yesteryears. That feels OK for now. The soul is not yet ready to settle. I have to stay in quarantine on the ”fäbod” still a while…

The blue mountains serve as a temporary screen, embracing and defining, providing temporary safety. But their blue veils are at the same time urging me to seek what lies behind.

On my way home through the forest after a sharp bend on the small gravel road I all of a sudden see three cars on the wayside. They stand so close I first think it is an accident and I stop, pull down the side-window and ask the group of people moving around the cars if I can offer some help. Three kind, but a bit lost and bewildered faces look in through the window. None speaks Swedish or English but I reckon they understand my good intentions cause they respond eagerly with similarily positive bodylaguage and gestures.

But yes, they know one Swedish word:

”Blåbär!” [Blueberry!]

They look inquisitively at me. I open my empty hands and shrug. It is no year for blueberries this year it seems, and they respond to my gesture with a similar motion. I try to explain that it probably is still to early for blueberries, but I am not sure I am understood.

It is peculiar with human communication. You can read out a lot from so little. And so fast. With or without words. But most important is the will to understand. You always will see what you want to. The manuscript of the so called reality that is played out on your retina is written before the film is rolling. We are the scriptwriters of our own lives. That is exciting and challenging. And really leaves no room at all for blaming somebody else. No one else has access to the writing of the script. We can always change the script. And we do all the time. As long as we live we develop and all the time we change the script. But we are all the time responsible for how we choose to see the world and it is that will that creates the world we perceive. The light is not going outside in, it is projected inside out, not only on the screen on the local cinema but also on the cinema of life.

Already the way they parked their cars and the way they press their heads through the side-window tell of a culture where the private sphere is a lot smaller than we are used to. Translated into Swedish body-language it is very easy to misread. There was no ”car-accident”. As little as their attitude is ”pushy”, ”invasive” or ”offensive”. We see what we choose to see. That sets up and creates the whole story.

”Where do you come from?” I ask. No one understands. But after a bit of sign language they get it.

”Bulgaria!”

”Hmm!”

I think of Wille Thoors, the fiddler, wizard, and fellow Malung-musician, one of the true originals that I have had the pleasure to meet. He glady and often spoke about his travels through Europe with Romani orchestras. If I only had had a fiddle and could have played some gypsy melodies, the fellowship would have been total. If Wille’s stories were anything to go by I would be invited for food and lodging and they would have offered me to their daughters…

The most important thing is how you choose to see. But thereafter it is important to have an instrument to play on. It could be the language, but not necessarily. It could be really anything and if the will is there the instrument will appear in your hand pretty immediately. Of course I know of no better instrument than the music itself and maybe it is the image of the ultimate means of communication; the preferred means of expression for angels and spheres alike. For us to practice on down here in the valleys of death. Irrespectively of what instrument we try to play.

I get at flash-back from my time in South-Africa during the eighties. The country was virtually totally segregated between black and white and the all-inclusive racial war was imminent, yes had already started in
certain areas. But in this polarised environment the music gave me a passport to the townships, a protection of sorts in all the vulnerability and a language that allowed me to share everything essential with those whom I did not share a common spoken language. It was a language that gave me a feeling of significantly
greater fellowship and communication with those I did not share a spoken language with, than with those I did.

They look a bit pleadingly in to the car. They are at the mercy of wind and weather in a world they do not know, a world they have no experience of, where they try to survive. They have been enticed to come to the other corner of Europe, to a far, foreign forest. Not unlikely is the stomach, as well as the petrol tank and the wallet, starting to run on empty. And no blueberries in sight despite of the promises. And now they stand here and gaze
into my car.

I quickly call to mind other groups who have travelled hungry through this forest, the ”finnforest” which already in the 16th century was populated by hungry immigrants. I think about those who are here now and those who are about to come. Down in the valley I saw the first Somali immigrants ever. They will by all likelihood become more numerous. Sweden has previously not accepted passports from relatives to Somali immigrants as the land has ”collapsed” and their passports are not deemed valid by our authorities. But now they have opened the door to allow DNA-testing as a way of proving ties with already immigrated Somalis.Outside the Swedish embassies of Kenya and Ethiopia and other countries where refugees are gathering the queues to the DNA-tests are long.

I think about the connection with The Path’s two first themes: Environment and Integration. Somalia is topping the list of ”Failed states index”, a classification of the collapsed or collapsing states of the world. Not surprising the list is topped by 5 countries in or around the Sahel-region; Somalia, Congo D.R., Sudan, South-Sudan and Chad. A spreading desert in combination with growing populations can not lead to anything but a political collapse. Also the piracy outside of Somalia’s coast has an environmental cause. The local fishermen who previously were enjoying fishing in one of the world’s richest maritime havens have been pushed aside by big international fishing-fleets who vacuumed the seas and seabeds of its marine resources. In the wake of a collapsed state and with no more fish to catch the small local fishingboats are left with with few other options to make a living than to try to catch the big ships instead.

Maybe not totally illogical, if even immoral.

I am thinking about how to end this blog-post. By writing that I close my car window and go down to the village to buy cheap immigrant-food to still my own hunger?

Or by telling about the farewell from my new Romani friends in the forest, the joy of our tête-à-tête and the feeling of a common path and purpose despite it all?

It feels like the end of the story can not be told because it has yet to be written. The manuscript is still under construction. We all choose the ending. And – there is only one who can write the script of your life – you! And at the same time, it is the only script existing and the only script that ever existed.

We can decide if there will be a happy ending here and
now. We have that possibility – yes indeed, we have no other choice.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

The Om-Mountain

Anders — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 08:12:14 +0000

All mountains are special. They stick out.

I am fascinated by mountains, I have grown up surrounded by them, my name contains it, but now I have passed a mountain on my walk that sticks out more than most:

The Om-Mountain.

Omberg from the plains

Like the human who is defined by his relationships; ”Umntu gumntu ngabantu” as we say in South Africa – ”A man is a man in relationship to others”, so is the mountain defined by its surrounds. It is perceived in relationship with the valleys and plains around it. Omberg is, and is exciting because of the plains on the one side and the lake Vättern on the other giving this mountain its special profile. Placed somewhere else Omberg would probably feel quite insignificant.

Omberg from the water

You have the nature; apart from the plain, the woods and southern Sweden’s deepest lake you also have one of the most shallow; Tåkern, maybe the finest of the countries bird lakes.

You have the history with the ancient hill forts, the Rök runestone and the house of Bjelbo. And you have the spirituality with Alvastra, Vadstena and Birgitta.

You have the three themes of “The Path”; Nature, Culture and Spitituality in one go in an extraordinary mix that is hard to match anywhere else along the way.

The different parts of the mix have created a fantastic sum, but it is also easy to see how inherent conflicts in the parts have developed into a fruitful synthesis.

The gargantuan geological “conflict” between the ice sheet – the heavenly reservoir – and the earth is what provided the physical conditions. A land was born out of agony when a stubborn ice finally was loosing its grip in a last and drawn-out sigh. In the historical perspective it is not so long ago and all the tracks are there to see for those who can read the geological imprints. A virgin wetland, soon teeming with life was delivered and populated by the animals followed by man.

Around 5-6000 years ago the first farmer appeared, walking in from the south and encountering the hunter. These two ways of life according to recent published DNA-findings have lived parallel and the nomad has never been sufficiently impressed by farm-life in order to adopt it. Instead he has retreated back to diminishing biomes as the farmer has extended his stakes.

Similar patterns have appeared all over the world where “civilisation” has encountered the “savage”. A low-intensive warfare has ensued with devastating long-term effects for the mobile hunter when the heavier artillery has pulled in and claimed the land. In the end some kind of synthesis seem to have been reached where DNA and cultures mix and out of the shambles and conflicts something new appear.

Omberg’s three hill forts speaks perfervidly if yet not so articulately. Even if these forts are from the Migration Period (around 500 B.C.) it gives food for the fantasy to imagine an older frontline between the people of the mountain and the people of the plain, between hunter and farmer at the time of their meeting. Omberg in the past as a last resort for the hunter-gatherer? And Omberg today as a last resort of biological diversity worth protecting for the alienated and time-occupied man of today!

One of the forts on Omberg is Queen Ommas Fort. There is no historical evidence to explain the origins of the name but there are the more legends still alive in the folklore of the area. The whole Omberg-area is still imbued with female stories and female perspectives.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, certainly one of the most remarkable women to live in the vicinity of the Om-mountian, led a life in conflict between worldly and spiritual power. The power of the world, with the need to legitimise itself with spiritual insignia at the same time as it does not want to be the servant of the spiritual world. And the spiritual power’s need of protection from the worldly power while it does not want to live of the world. She knew both places, talked both languages. Took the fights and built a bridge between her visions and their manifestations that is still standing.

The work of Bridget also encompasses a gender perspective, as her monastery was the first one to contain both monks and nuns and be ruled by a Mother Superior. She took on the right and role of women in the “spiritual regiment”, a battle that is still not over.

After the seminary in Vadstena on Integration lead by three women under the aegis of Bridget, “The Path” has marched on from Vadstena via Alvastra to Heda and the big craft and art-fair there. We rendered a committed concert in a packed church, a manifestation of meetings and new fellowship in the shadow of age-old conflicts. We were the pilgrims walking in from the forest to the settlers of the plains with a message of fellowship, reconciliation and integration between peoples, times and gender.

The Heda fair is in the firm but artistic hands of another colourful lady based in the vicinity of Omberg; Vivianne Mansfield. The whole walk ended in her garden with her fantastic art on show in her house.

Painting by Vivanne Mansfield

When I and Peter Elmberg were visiting Omberg a year ago to plan the Path we were shown the surrounds by two knowledgeable guides, storytellers and visual artists: Vivianne Mansfield and Ana Danielsson.

We checked out Heda Church. When we walked through the door (which is placed right along the altar) we to our surprise ended up in the midst of a wedding, just next to the wedding-couple!

We retreated a bit apologetically and walked around the church. There was another exit that the couple chose to leave the church through in order to get the first married minute of their life all by themselves. Apart from the company of me and Peter of course, who walked right in to the intimacy. Then we took the car and drove up to Omberg on the beautiful road on the slopes of the mountain facing the lake. But after a short while a big old American car caught up with us. Spoon down, I thought at first, but decided to slow down instead to let the car, a big cabriolet with the happy couple making out in the backseat, pass us. Finally we reached Queen Omma’s fort and as we leave our car we hear a toast and a hurray for the newlyweds from the hostel in the vicinity!

It was like the image of the wedding-couple, of the holy meeting and union of the opposites, did not want to let go of us.

Maybe that is what the Om-mountain and Queen Omma is all about….

That is why we from “The Path” say thank you very much for this time. We will meet again.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Back to Ängsbacka

Anders — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 08:05:43 +0000

I leave the path once more to backtrack to another festival; Ängsbacka in
Värmland.

A first visit for me at a festival that holds an unchallenged place as the number

one alternative festival on the market in Sweden. A mixed assortment in the
colours of the rainbow; from tarot to tantra, from maya to mantra.

It is open, it is curious and let me say it from the start: I like it.

You buy in to it even if there’s sometimes techniqal problems, the schedule is
constantly stretched and the organisation is showing all the problems a flat
organisational structure with lots of cooks can display. But you buy in to it
because of the athmosphere where all the senses are made wide open for all possibilities,
creating exciting meetings and miraculous magic.

It is a sheer pleasure to work in such an environment and most of the artists
appear for free. You can go safe to your workshop knowing that once it starts
you can hand over to the sovereign direction of the now. In this spirit of
participation and creativity all pieces of the puzzle fall in place without
preparation. New nuances and refined forms take shape in this celebration of
life in all its manyfacetted manifestations.

And as a ”customer” – as a consumer of conserts and workshop-shopper you have plenty of opportunities for growth
and widened views. But of course there are pearls in the presentation that
glitters more than others when you summarize your impressions. I meet Irene
from Italy, living in India who dances and sings her way through the global
festival-calender. A bit tired from a week of input from this diversified and
somtimes glossy carnival she says that at last she has heard something that
made her heart wide open. She picks out two artists that stand out and I cannot
agree more. And it comes with a bit of pride as they both stand close to me and
are gracing the program of ”The Path” summer long.

Zifa and Jennifer Ferguson.

Both have found their artistic selves in the meeting between Africa and Sweden. Zifa
has moved from Sweden to Africa and totally convincingly landed the best
afro-fusion band in the country in a hot mix allowing him to be both Zifa from
his childhood village Semendoa in Congo and Mikael Eriksson from the Stockholm
suburb. He is whole and totally convincing in both roles. At the same time. New
music is being born out of this. A hot and lovely catharsis. We dance along and
feel understood and understanding at the same time.

And then Jennifer who has moved from Africa to Sweden and found the acoustic room
her big voice deserves. An acoustic that reverberates from echoes of Swedish
pastoral calling and Hildegard von Bingen. Mix that with some South-african
township and agitprop and you have also something totally new and healing.

And both of them have that which great artists own: a letting go to the now that
takes care of the timing. A presence – a gift – allowing all of us for a moment
to be present on stage where it is happening. The sharing of the secret of the
graal – the mystery of the holy communion; the gestation of the unity of all.

The purpose of the stage is really but one: to have something to step down from. To
remove all illusions of hierarchies and distances. That is what good artists
are good at. Unconver reality as it is. That we all are one.

The audience and not leasts the media will do anything to make artists forget their
role and the only role of the stage by lifting them up and then dragging them
down.

May these two continue to grow in their understanding of their task. As priest and
priestess of the liturgy of the now and the here.

A house built on sand

Anders — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 07:59:24 +0000

I could not have gotten a better illustration. Not that I wanted it, but we have called it forth…

About a month ago I walked together with Per Skoog, a recently pensioned forester, through his own private forest-property close to his home in Nyhammar, Sweden.

It was a beautiful day for a walk, with a pristine nature and a knowledgeable guide taking me through lands he knew as his own pocket and loved as his own home.

We walked through Malingarna, a gorgeous ridge meandering through a lake and carried on along its outlet, the Norrbo-stream. We passed Mångdala, an old wooden house now used by the scouts, beautifully built and set next to the stream.

But through our talks there was a sense of urgency; a feeling that time is short for our attempts to protect the vulnerable nature and the culture it supports. It is in a delicate balance.

We need to act – but what should we do? What do we need to do first in order to secure what we still have?

Today this image appears in the media. Mångdala scout-house on its way down the Norrbostream after an exceptional torrential downpour. And the path we walked on is no longer there.

It feels almost over-stated. Thanks a lot. We get it.

Or do we???

It is time to realize that the house we have built – our whole culture – is built on loose sand!

It is built on premises that aren’t sustainable: it is built on the thought that we are above nature and can exploit it for our own gain. It is built on the premise that if we only dump our inconveniences far away enough we are not being disturbed by it. It is built on the premise that we can live well on the capital of our children and let them pay the bill in the end. It is built on an economy that lost its contact with reality a long time ago.

We need pictures like this to wake us up.

The situation is precarious. It is up to you or me what way it will go. It depends on what side of the house we are in. Are we on the side that tilts it towards the abyss or are we on the side that makes it more stable?

My walk has opened my eyes for my own responsibility in this. It does matter what I do and where I am. Maybe it is precisely I and where I place myself that makes the difference if the house will tip over or not!

We walk the Path, through the torrential downpours, with an even greater dedication.

On what side are you? Join us now!

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

The great white flock

Anders — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 07:52:41 +0000

Our seminary leaders Caroline Kyhlbäck, Ifrah Hassan och Anna Lundstedt walks through the gate to the Vadstena Abbey Cemetary. /

We
have arrived at the monastery in Vadstena. We walk with happy feet through the
gates of tradition following in the steps of radical feminism. 700 years later,
Saint Bridget still stands out among radicals in this country. Such courage,
such perseverance, such visions! Visions, like aspiring gothic vaults, that
still hold the strength and viability to lift a big cathedral. Vadstena church is
not a ruin like many other in the vicinity but a living organism.

The
seminary on the theme ”Integeration” was led by three other young, radical and
gifted ladies: one newly ordained priest, one Muslim pedagogue with roots in
Somalia and one ethnologist. It was fun, thought-provoking and transcending.
Like when Ifrah talked about how she as a Muslim applied for the Swedish Church
”parish-pedagogue” education. And would not be accepted despite the fact that
she had two parishes that would gladly accept her services. Or when we do a
”Priviledge walk”, an exercise that shows with painful clarity how our
different backgrounds as Swedes give us different possibilities to be seen and
heard in the society. Dependent on if we are Swedes by birth or by immigration,
woman or man, high or low, we will score very differently in a country that
maybe does not fall very short of the medieval society when it comes to social
stratification. Or when we listen to Peter Elmberg’s ”Roads to Peace” in the
abbey, a composition of prayers from 12 different world religions, compiled into
a whole by the initiative of pope John Paul II.

But
the images of the norm are never far away – on the contrary – but they can
sometimes be hard to detect just because they are so common.

The great white flock.

In
the hall of a Swedish Covenant Church that has kindly been offered us as our
lecture-room a picture is hanging on the wall; ”The great white flock” showing
the great white flock of people who according to the beloved hymn with the same
name are waiting to be taken to heaven. If you look closely you’ll find that
all of course are Caucasian. The big majority seem to be men and middle aged.
Probably hetero. You may ask how we have ended up there, trying as we are to
follow the lead of one who all the time showed the people of the margin to be
the examples of his Kingdom? In this heaven it would probably be hard to find
Jesus himself as ”Jesus is not white in any sense of the word”, as one American
black theologian put it.

But is this an image that we can laugh at as being old fashioned and naive? Or is
not the norm in our church and society still today the white and male, to an extent
that we who belong to that category still are not willing to admit?

Another
example from Vadstena of the diehard lingering of old prejudice; a few years
back I was here at the ”folkhighschool” to sing and talk about South-Africa. I
spent an afternoon in the school’s reference-library and looked up the word ”Neger” [”Negro”] in the old encyclopedia from
early 20th century that still was in use.

I
was not especially surprised to read this:

”In psychological terms the negro can be said to generally stand on the
level of the child with usually poor intellect and lively fantasy. He is happy
and unconcerned, albeit sometimes ostensibly serious; he lacks power and
perseverance, indulges in impulses of the now and quickly changing moods and
is very sensitive with a marked sense of humour. He is also enjoying a rich
inner life, can sometimes show signs of pronounced friendliness but appear
usually timid, distrustful and lacking of every trace of clemency and
compassion.”

And so on, and so on.

But I will have to confess that I jerked a little when I got to the part
about the anatomy of the negro which declared with the same kind of conviction
that ”certain negroes have big toes that
resembles thumbs”. In other words they share that anatomical detail with
the primates who like them easily can climb the trees.

This you can still learn in the school of today.

We have a long way to walk. And it is unfortunately not hard to see that
it in many aspects have gone in the wrong direction lately and will probably
continue to do so still a while. At the time of writing a racist party is the
third biggest party in Sweden according to the polls and holds a potentially
decisive role. Everyone in the corridors of power seem to mutter about it, but no one
seem to want to do something about it.

Maybe the worst is the ”disguised” segregation that prevents us more and
more to meet and socialise across the social boundaries. At the same time as
our society cries for places where we can meet across borders in peacemaking
and conciliatory meetings there are empty churches in almost every village in
our land. This is the big challenge for the churches in the future. It is time
to take down the old images from the walls and put up new ones. Images that
allows the people of the margins and therefore also the Lord of the Church to find his way back to his Church again. The Church needs to die from its own
definition of itself in order to survive.

Not a fellowship in heaven for the great white flock.

A fellowship on earth for the the great wide flock.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°