Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

A Thin Place - God's Precence

There are thin places. Places where the film between earth and heaven is worn thin of prayers prayed through generations, through centuries. Places where the precence of The Almighty is close.

I believe that there are thin times also. Times when we are especially close to the Creator.

New Years Eve is a thin time. A time when prayers have been prayed, when prayers are prayed.

We will be with good friends tonight. In their cabin. Far out in the countryside. We will spend the night eating, talking, laughing, playing.......and through it all my mind will be filled with prayers.

Photos: from Lindisfarne, a thin place on earth.

My first diary.

The old year is coming to an end. The new year is impatiently waiting to lay its paths open to the world.

It is time for prayers, reflections, endings and beginnings.

It is time to turn pages in the diary, to start new.

I got my first diary when I was six and I kept it for several years. Looking through it I can still feel the coloured pencils between my fingers creating words, writing down lived life, the joy of being able to express myself.

Written on New Year's Eve when I was nine:

.....Today Vix and Arvid have been with us, and I am writing a book, it is my first book I am writing....we have fireworks for tonight, they are Yellow - blue - green.....

40 years later I sit with My Book between my hands, filling an angel's basket with prayers of thanks.

I have kept a diary ever since. I will not start a new one for 2008 but turn a couple of pages in the old. We are going to the cabin of good friends to welcome the new year, so today is the day to open the diary to say goodbye to old 2007 and welcome the first ray of lights from 2008.

Photos: pages from my first diary ( I spent yesterday working on my new book, and when I looked through a book cabinet searching for a book about St.Francis I found the pink diary)

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There are many ways to keep a diary - writing, drawing, photographing, scrapbooking, quilting, dancing, dreaming.........What does your diary look like? 

The 12 Days of Christmas

Several of you have asked about the Norwegian traditional Christmas. Many of you have now finished Christmas and are back to everyday life, while we have only just started our celebrations.

Christmas starts on "lille julaften" (the day before Christmas Eve). For a week the farmers have been selling Christmas trees, and ours has been patiently waiting outside the garage to be carried into the warm livingroom.

On lille julaften the house is tidied and cleaned, and only then is the tree allowed indoors. From old traditions the parents decorated the tree after the children had gone to bed, but here in The House in the Woods we have always done the tree together. We have boxes of different homemade ornaments, but as you already know, this year my girls accused me to be so old fashioned that I could have been born before God, and they wanted a more stylish decor. I was allowed to use a few old memories, and we all hung almost 50 of these red baubles. We love the tree. Deep into the tree, hidden, is a glass pickle ornament, a tradition adapted from American friends. The first child to find the pickle on Christmas Eve morning will get a small gift (somehow Marta is always this child).

Christmas Eve is our main celebration, and it is the start of our celebrations which goes on till "trettende dag jul" (13th day of Christmas). Trettende dag jul is Epiphany and the day when the tree is undecorated, the gingerbread house is eaten and we sing Christmas out. On "trettende dag" we also lit the special tree armed epiphany candle.

The Christmas days are busy with parties. Our huge diningroom table is covered in a red tablecloth and at all times of the day I set the table with my Spode china, filling the plates with cookies and cakes, sweets, nuts and fruits. And after the long meals and coffee breaks the table is a perfect place for board games. This year Rummy and Settlers are the favorites.

In one corner of the table Marta has set up a log house which my father in law made for the boys when they were small. In the log house lives a collection of "nisser" (a Scandinavian kind of santas) and she can sit there and play with them for hours.

Though most of the cookies were made before Christmas, Marta still loves to play in the kitchen. Last night, when we got a few "extra hours" (a family who was supposed to come for coffee, cookies and playing games had to cancel due to illness), Marta found the rest of the marzipan from my creamcake baking the day before, and suddenly she called from the kitchen "the marzipan sweets are ready".

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So we will keep Christmas here for still a week, as we try to keep the Christmas spirit all year (Marta and I were in the theatre yesterday to watch A Christmas Carol). My blog will turn to other topics though, travel memories, reflections, family life, books music..........and whatever I decide to blog about.

If you follow the links given in this post you will be taken to other Christmas memories from The House in the Woods.

The cream cake recipe will be up in The Blue Café later today

Here you can find Merisi's wonderful 12 Days of Christmas posts.

A Family Tradition

I grew up in a big family, and my parents always had an open house. In 1971 they realised that there were not enough days during Christmas to invite everybody to our home. My granddad was a school master and for one night every Christmas mum and dad hired the gym at the school where my grandparents lived. The gym was big enough to invite our huge and fast growing circle of friends and family.

8 years in a row my parents hosted their huge Christmas party there. Then my granddad died and no party was held.

20 years ago the next generation took up the tradition again, and now we come together every year during one of the Christmas days.

The annual party has been celebrated several different places, but last night we were back in the same old gym at the school where my grandparents lived. Where I spent so much of my childhood. Some of the buildings were gone, new had come, but the old gym was just the same. And the row of paintings of the old school masters was still there, granddad Johannes the nicest among all the old men.

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Photos: we all bring food to share at the party. The first photos show the creamcake I made. The last photo shows my dad in front of the painting of my granddad.

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Blog of the week: It is time to lead you over to another of the blogs I visit frequently. This time I want to guide you over to Leikur og List where Mo'a, who now lives in the US, shares alot from her Icelandic background. If you scroll down to her post before Christmas Day you will find a series of lovely information about the Icelandic Jolasveinar.

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Rochambeau had a question yesterday about how we celebrate the Christmas days in Norway. I will try to come back to that question tomorrow.

Up to date

Our gingerbread house is not glued together yet.

The windows on the first floor were not cleaned before Christmas.

The silverware is not polished.

Most of my Christmas letters for friends abroad is not yet written.

Today is the third day of Christmas, a couple of house guests have left, a new one has arrived. I am taking Marta to the hairdresser, we are all going to the huge family gathering Christmas party.

Time slips through my fingers like grains of sand and I strive to keep them there long enough to feel them, long enough to love them.

New Year and New Year's time for resolutions is approaching fast. I need to learn which grains to let go and which to keep long enough to build castles.

Photo: A Sami gingerbread tent, (the most creative gingerbread house I've ever seen),taken yesterday in my brothers house when the whole Lindland household were invited for a marvellous trout dinner.

Do we still sing the old Christmas songs?

We have a rich tradition in Christmas songs and carols. We sing them in church and we listen to them in concerts and on cd.

Do we remember to sing the carols with our own voices or are the songs slowly forgotten? Do we still use our natural musical instrument or is this an art we are slowly losing because of lack of practice?

We are lucky in our family. The house of my parents is always filled with music. The lives of my parents are filled with music, and when people don't come to their home they go out to the people to spread their songs.

Last night was time for the annual Christmas dinner. My parnets wrapp the dinner in a paper of Christmas carols and we are all invited to take part in the unwrapping, accompanied by my mother's playing.

Thank you Mom and Dad for another blessed night.

Follow the "annual Christmas dinner link" and you'll find a family fish story.

Have a blessed Stefanus Day.

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Photos are all from last night at my parent's home.

The Sign

He had lived with God's calling ever since he was a little boy. His family didn't understand him when he went to the seminar to educate as a priest, and turned their back when he moved from the big city and found the church God showed him deep into the countryside.

God's beauty was inside him, and he wanted to preach love to the local farmers and fishermen.

When he held his first sermon the church was almost full. Eyes followed him when he preached, but it was impossible for him to tell what the eyes saw.

It took him some time to come out of the church after the service. It all meant so much to him. How would the locals meet him. Would he be accepted.

A crowd was gathered. Their talk silenced when he came out and people started to part. They had a long way home. Some by boat. Others went to get their horses. A few walked. A small child came running up to him with a blue flower, her eyes downcast but he could see a smile playing on her lips.

The years went by. He followed his path. Funerals, weddings, baptisms, Sunday services. Only a few people came to the church these days. The farmers and fishermen were busy and the church was too far away. He was an old man now. All his life he had preached here where His Creator had shown him he belonged. He was lonely. His long nights were spent in silent prayer. "God, you led me here. Give me a sign to make me sure that I have followed your will. Give me a sign that I am here for your people".

No sign came and his nights became darker and more lonely.

She was a young girl when the priest came to the village many, many years ago. After the first sermon she wanted to go forward and welcome him to their church. But nobody else did and she was too shy to go by herself. But before leaving she found a small blue flower which she ran up and gave him.

Since then she had been to church every Sunday. In the beginning the church was crowded, now she could be the only listener.

After the first Sunday she felt that God had a calling for her. For a long time she couldn't understand what it was, but one day she picked up her needle and started to sew. She worked on her piece for years, not knowing at first what she was going to make. Pink and white were not her colours, but between her fingers they blended and got life.

The years passed. She had a busy life working on her brother's farm. His children adored her, and when their own mother died giving birth to her 7th child, she was there for them.

She didn't have much time for her needles and for years the white and pink was stored in her old chest.

Her nephews and nieces grew up, her brother died and time was again hers. During long, lonely nights she kept on with her sewing. Now she knew what she was making.

He was deep in prayers one night when he heard a light knock on the door. Last Sunday there had been only one person in the church. An old woman. He knew she had been in church every Sunday since he came, but she was so shy and always left before he had the opportunity to speak to her. He pleaded God for a sign. "Why God did you send me here. Here is no place for me. Take me back to the big city of my youth. Take me back to where I lived among music, paintings, art, fellow litterature lovers. I can not endure this plain life any longer"

He heard the knock again. Louder this time. Stiffly he rose from his prayers and walked to the door. "Please God, let this be the sign I have been praying for"

When he didn't open after her first knocking she almost lost her courage. How could she imagine that he would accept her gift. How could she imagine that her humble sewing could be a piece of sacred art in his church. She turned and was about to go home. She would tuck the gown she had made back into her old chest and keep it there as a remembrance of her proudness. Then she heard God's calling again. "Knock, and the door shall be opened for you."

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This is a repost from September. I'll be back tomorrow.

God jul - Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my readers!

I send you my Christmas greetings with this Christmas car filled with gift.

As our tradition is, we decorated our tree yesterday, on "lille julaften" (Little Christmas Eve). We always do this together as a family, using ornaments we have collected through our 28 years of marriage. Most of them are handmade, and the girls find them a bit out of date. This year they had a wish - "Mom, can we decorate the tree with more modern stuff? You are always so old fashioned, sometimes we wonder if you were born before God!"

Now I have been to the Salvation Army's shop and bought 50 shining red baubles, and everyone loves the tree.

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We are preparing for breakfast now. For lunch we will have rice porridge with one almond hidden and a gift for the one who finds the almond. Later comes church and home to the traditional Christmas dinner, opening of gifts and dancing around the tree singing the old carols. The day will end with all of us wrapped up in comfort blankets around the fire with new books and cds.

Dirty Sunday

Forth Sunday of Advent. The purple colours will soon be changed with red and white for Christmas.

Traditionally the day was called Dirty Sunday. The housewives were allowed to skip church to clean their houses for the coming holidays.

I finished my "dirty sunday" yesterday. Today we will finally bring the Christmas tree indoors and decorate it. And the house will be open for friends and family coming for meals and holiday wishes.

So they did last night too. I made pizzas, inspired by the thin Italian ones, with parma and mozzarella. We ate in the diningroom, then cleaned the table and played Settlers into late night, eating dried fruits and nuts, drinking Terje's homemade lemon beer, listening to the old old Christmas songs.

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Today's booktalk  - a link to my son's A Booklover's Library.

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Blog of the week: My Christmas gift for you all is the link to Vanessa's blog paradise, A Fanciful Twist. If you don't know her blog already you are in for hours with fun and inspiration.

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Have a Dirty Sunday!

Solstice

Only a few hours of daylight these last days before Christmas. Last night was the longest night of the year, now we are looking forward to the birth of Jesus bringing light to the world.

Tomorrow, the last Sunday before Christmas is called Dirty Sunday here in Norway. Dirty because you were allowed to do work on this day.

I am cleaning the house today. Tomorrow I will enjoy a clean and quiet Sunday, in praise and reflections.

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Photo: Sunrise at Røros, from my book.