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Some days words leave me. I feel blank. I feel sad. Empty.
Even the questions are lost.
I am searching for the questions. The unanswered ones.
I need them to keep going...........
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
(nothing serious, just reflection time, and trying to find a few answers)
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Last week was my blue week of Lent. Since I was away during the week I didn't have much time to focus on The Blue Café, at least not untill yesterday. There was blueberry leftover from Marta's blueberry pancakes which cried out to be used for something sweet, and with Lakmé's ballets floating sweetly from the cdplayer, a focaccia dough was set to rise.
Let just a little salt, just a little sugar melt 25g yeast. Add 3dl lukewarm water, stir well. Add white flour and work till you have a smooth dough. Cover the baking bowl with a plaited old cloth and let it rest for half an hour. Kneed the dough out in the baking pan, add extra virgin olive oil, the best you can get, and cover it with a duvet of sweet, juicy blueberry jam. Let rise for another half hour. Bake at 220C for abour 20 minutes.
Eat while it still warm. Play boardgames and puzzles, chat, enjoy!
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Information for Norwegian readers:
More Lent reflections at fasteblogg.no
Link to "40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse"
.....and English speaking readers can flip through the book here. (and enjoy the photos)
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It started to snow here yesterday afternoon. Terje and Marta drove out for an hour to check on the streets, if ploughing were needed. That's Terje's job, and as the snowing kept on, he has been out for a long time during the night while I was peacefully asleep, but that's another story. Our world is beautifully white again, covering every tiny little sign of spring..........But I am talking too much, sorry, that's a habit I have, sometimes........ Back to last night and Earth Hour.
While Terje and Marta were out, I prepared dinner. Marta's choice, pancakes, bacon and blueberries, my choice would have been the dean's wolf-fish secret. As I was working, I turned off more and more lights in The House in the Woods, in the end I only had the work light over the oven when I finished the pancakes.
Terje and Marta came back at 8.30pm, just in time for Earth Hour.
I had filled the diningroom with candles by then, and as they came in I even turned of my iPal radio which were playing Carmen. Eating a meal together in soft candlelight. Have you tried it? It is something we should treat ourselves more often. "Mamma", Marta said, "we read from your book at school today. About the silent week before Easter, when Jesus was still dead in his grave". I already had my book, 40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse, on the table to read for us when the pancakes were finished. Not about the silent week, that's still in the future, but I read H.C.Andersen's tale The World's Most Beautiful Rose, I read about the colour blue for our blue week of Lent, our blueberry week, and then Marta wanted me to read about silent week as well, through the week till the point where the women came to the grave to find it empty.
There were still time left before lights were turned on. We played boardgames. In candlelight.
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Thank you everybody for your comments to yesterday's post. The comments and the contact with my readers is what makes blogging such a great experience.
A Mouse in France, I agree with you, Earth Hour should be an hour we give ourselves more aften, that's what we agreed about here in The House in the Woods yesterday, and that's what we do every night at hour cabin, where we have no electricity.
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I am looking forward to read comments today about what you did during Earth Hour yesterday. Perroula, how was the Greece Parliament in darkness? Marilyn and Constance, did you turn off the lights? Paris Perfait, I got a new laptop not long agao and then I lost the address to your blog, can you post a link please. NatureGirl, I believe that Mother Nature rejoiced in the world's thanks last night :-). I smiled when I read about your "silent books" Beverly :-)
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Information for Norwegian readers: More Lent reflections at fasteblogg.no Link to "40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse" .....and English speaking readers can flip through the book here. (and enjoy the photos) Are you ready for more pancakes? PLease visit Beverly's blog and Steven's YouTube video. 
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We will turn off the light for one hour tonight. During this blue hour I will sit in quiet, I will let images of nature flow. I will remember moments of beauty.
Note: All photos are from The Blue Garden. Later I will make a similar chain with flower beads from The Cabin.
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Don't forget Earth Hourtonight
Information for Norwegian readers:
More Lent reflections at fasteblogg.no
Link to "40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse"
.....and English speaking readers can flip through the book here. (and enjoy the photos)
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We have a new bishop in Nidaros, Tor Singsaas, and he is spending these months visiting the 12 deaneries of the diocese. This week I have travelled with him for three days in Namdalen deanery.
Friday 13 was a very special day in the small town of Namsos. Totally out of the blue, land slided out in the ocean. Miraculous no people were killed, but several families were deeply affected, loosing everything when their homes were destroyed.
During the visit, we were taken out to see the area.
A swan family swam peacefully in the fjord. Two otters played happily in the water. Nature idyllic. We lifed our eyes and were met my destroyed houses, land which had moved dramatically. Nature brutal.
Please join us in prayeres for the affliced families. Is is not easy to find the grip again with your lives turned upside down.
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We have met many times, always we discuss food. How to grow potatoes, what to add to the fish sauce to give it the special heavenly taste, when to pick wild berries. I have learned old secrets and have shared some of my new ones.
Yesterday I was invited to his home for dinner. Secret menu, long anticipation, but I was allowed to come early to look, to learn, to taste.......and to talk food.
Carrots from his rectory garden. There hee also grows potatoes, three different types. "Molt" was the right choice for the fish dish. Delicate white wolf-fish marinated though the day in white wine, vinegar and olive oil, covered with salt, pepper, parsley and onion. A sauce out of this world. And I have learned its secrets!
Dinner around the big kitchen table, the family gathered. Two guests, the bishop and I. Eating. Sharing stories. Friendship. Silence to enjoy the food.
Thank you Inge and Randi. I will remember the meal. I will remember your kitchen. I will remember you!
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With Back's Art of Fuge on my ears, I am sitting in a tiny little B&B bedroom thinking back on a day filled to the brim.
Highlight was the dean's fish dinner. I will take you along to the rectory kitchen tomorrow. meanwhile you can enjoy the view out of the two windows there.
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Images of God has been in my mind. The God I believe in, how is he? How is she?
God as the Almighty, the one who knows everything, the one who masters every situation. God has another side also. The child God, the child who runs towards me to throw himself, to throw herself into my arms, the child which believe in me whatever I do. The playful child, the laughing child, the child which forgets her sorrows and live fully here and now.
This image is new to me, it is so much easier to think of God as the old man who knows everything. But God knows us all through, God has lived a human life all through. He knows how it is to be a child, how to play, how to trust, how to be weak. He know how it is to be a teenager, a grownup, old. He knows how it is to be!
My God has all these sides. It is not for me to put him in a box.
How is your God?
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Photos: from a Kristoffer Leirdal exhibition at Trondheim Art Museum
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A large sized envelope came in the mail yesterday. Carolyn knows about my love for hotel stationary, a shared love we didn't realize when I was in India but through the sharing of letters through the winter. Hossy, her husband, has travelled all over the world, almost a hundred countries, and used to collect stationary for Carolyn from hotels where he stayed. Now a small part of this collection has found its way to The House in the Woods.
I look at the thin envelopes, let my fingers run down smooth sheets of paper, the traveller in me gets excited, dreaming myself into another place, another time.
I am having a lovely time writing letters to you all. Many were written in the small log cabin Friday night, before my snow walk to the toilet. Terje was busy packing and repacking his backpack, he had to carry a 3 1/2 kilo backpack through the ski race, looking through the ski race map over and over again, planning his race. I was fine in my own silence, in our shared silence, writing letters.
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If you want to read all my Indian stories, you find them here.
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Creation met me with one of her wonders. Heavy snow filled most of the day and when Terje, Marta and Øystein walked over to Granåsen to watch World Cup in Biathlon, I decided to stay at home. The first part of the week-end had been busy and I wanted the silence. the solitude. I need silence, need solitude, and never get much of it, though over the years I have become pretty good in finding it in the middle of crowds of bursting life - airports, on the bus, walking.
My daily garden walk is a challenge during the winter months. Too much snow everywhere. When I was out feeding the birds yesterday, I was met by nature's wonder. Sheltered in a bed halfway under the carport, which keeps snow away, the ice is melting, and out of the ice a flower grew.
The Norwegian name of this flower is "stepmother". The story behind the name - a purple woman is sitting with her two purple daughters and her two white stepdaughters around the table. Placed om the table is a bowl with porridge, in the middle of the porrige is the rich butter (the yellow of the flower). The butter is only for her own daughters though. The stepdaughters are forced to eat their porridge plain.
Note: the other day I say the first migrant birds, "vipe" (I don't know the English name). I always mark the day of the first migrant bird, it is part of following life as it unfolds. After dinner I said to Terje; "Guess what I saw today". "Vipa" he said with a smile. He had seen it as well.
Following life as it unfolds.
Sharing.
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