Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Nidelven, the river I see from my office window

 

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A chest filled with imaginations, filled with days to come

 

I pass an old chest in the mornings. Worn by wind, by rain, by life. Always closed, but it opens up when I pass and gives me the my day.

     

Though worn on the outside, the inside is filled with colours, music, fragrances. And the more I am given each morning, the more is left in the chest. Music flows out even before the chest opens its top for me. The music fills me, me feet start to dance, my heart swirls. Most days the music is bright and happy, other days a requiem flows.

 

The chest is almost like an altar. I meet God there. I am given my day.

 

Walk, God says, I am with you. I walk at your side day and night. Lean on me. Dance with me. Cry. Laugh. Be silent. Talk. Be. 

 

Tulip fever, from cabin last spring. Will spring ever come again?

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These photos were first published in April 2008.

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These photos were first published in April 2008.

Tate Modern. Share the Art.

 

I had lunch with friends in London. near Russell Square. Italian food, sparkling white wine, talk and laughter.

After the late lunch we decided that the afternoon was perfect for Tate Modern.

A taxi, a black London cab, took us down to The Millenium Bridge. we walked over The Thames and ended right at the entrance of tate Modern

 

Inside I walked alone. I prefer to meet art alone (mostly). I have heard so much about Tate Modern and was excited about what to find. I met alot of disappointments. Even felt disgusted. May be that's what art is supposed to be? well, not my kind of art.

There were some exceptions though, Anselm Kiefer's Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom were among them.

 

Kiefer travelled in China in 1993, and some years later made a series of paintings based on photographs taken there. The title refers to a 1957 speech in which Mao encouraged greater freedom of expression, declairing "let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thoughts contend". This freedom was short-lived, as the intellectuals who criticised Mao were swiftly arrested. Kiefer portaits a statue of Mao partially obscured by dried roses and tangled brambles symbolising the profusion and withering of revolutionary dreams (Tate Modern)

 

     

In one of the halls a young boy was busy studying a painting, making his own drawing. He was with his grandparents, and after his drawing was finished, they discussed the painting and his sketchbook piece of art. Sacred moment.

 

I visited London with Ingrid when she was 10. Several times we went to Victoria and Albert, Ingrid with her sketchbook and her pencils. She sat down, among art students, making sketches, absorbed by the atmosphere.

 

Last photo: The Millenium Bridge and St.Paul seen from tate Modern

The island Selja

 

A dream of mine came true two years ago when we visited the island of Selja, a small island on the western coast of Norway. Around 1000 years ago a young Christian woman, Sunniva, came over from Ireland when she was forced to marry a pagan suitor. In an open boat she let God lead her, and with her servants she stranded on this small island. You can read more of this story and our visit, here.

 

I often think of Selja. We had such a short time there. I would love to go back, stay longer, walk around, sit down to breath the island's history. Write!

 

Sigrid Undset was fasinated by the island. She visited several times and she wanted to buy a house there to spend her summers. She was not allowed, and the reason - she was a catholic! Too bad in a lutheran Norway at that time!

 

I like to bealive that I am realistic and know my place in the world, but I have a funny, funny "Sigrid Undset - tale" to tell. Last year, when my book was totally new on the market, I had a booksigning with my publisher. A man who came to buy my book asked me to sign it. Of course I did, I even had a special felt pen to use. After I had written my name and a short greeting, the man picked up the book, smiled and said: "You see, I collect signed books. Now I have two. One signed by Sigrid Undset. One by you!"

 

May be Selja is the place I should go to work on my next book..........

 

I read Marit's On The Needles regularly, and imagine my surprise a few days ago when I found this! Marit, do you need any help this summer?????

 

I know I shouldn't, but...........

 

I landed around 6pm and was taken right to the small, charming hotel. There I left my suitcase and went out to the restaurant Mother India to have dinner and a meeting. On the way I passed a sweet shop and was almost drawn into it by temptation. But there was no time so I was forced to resist.

The morning after, I had to pass the shop again on my way to the next meeting. I had left snow covered Trondheim and a bright sun from a deep blue spring sky the day before, and I was so sure I would come down to spring in the south. But it was wet, misty, windy and snowing heavily. No one can say that I shouldn't go into the sweet shop to get some cover from all this icy cold water pouring down from the sky! And while I was there it would be unpolite not to buy anything, wouldn't it?

 

I searched through my mind, was there any excuse to buy sweets? I am good at finding excuses when I need them. Very good. And of course there was one now - Øystein would be home for the week-end and he had proclaimed that Saturday afternoon he would watch football (soccer), his favorite team, Roma, was playing. Would there be any nice dinner during the match, he wondered.

Of course there will be a nice dinner, something Italian because of Roma. And there will be dessert.......a milk blue glass bowl filled with sinful temptations.

 

I can't wait to see the faces when I put this colour feast on the table.

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Sure, I know it is Lent, I know these artificial colours are poison, I know I can make a colour feast with fruites........but you are not supposed to say NO to all temptations, are you?.....and I do plan to spend a long time in silence, reflections and prayers today.

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Some photos from the sweet store:

    

    

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Through Lent I follow the rainbow, the Sign of Hope God once gave us. With seven colours in the rainbow and seven weeks of Lent it is easy - I have given each week its own colour. Tomorrow is the first day of the yellow week.

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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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How do you spend time at an airport?

 

After work yesterday I flew from Trondheim down to Oslo, there I changed plane and kept on till Kristiansand. I had a dinner and a meeting in the night, and a long meeting is waiting for today.

The second plane was delayed. Unexpected waiting time. Boring? No! Not at all! Where there is an airport there is always a bookstore, where there is a bookstore and I am close I am drawn into it. And a bookstore is for buying books, isn't it?

 

Some years ago I spent two weeks alone in New York. I was sent by The Church of Norway as an observator to UN's General Assembly. Two very interesting weeks, which I should blog about some day (this was before I started blogging). Interesting in many different ways, for example because of more and bigger bookstores than I had ever seen, well, that is except from Foyles in London.

Every morning I had my breakfast, pretzels and coffee at Borders on 5th Avenue, or was it 4th Avenue?. Second Floor. With my diary. Fascinated by the regulars I could have stayed there all day. Looking, breathing, making up stories of the old man who seemed to sit there all day with a huge pile of books on his table, the midle aged woman with her fluffy, grey hair who loved fasion magazines, the gay couple who read Dickens and James, the young girl who just sat there with her coffee, the writing woman (did she make up stories about me, the dark haired foreigner with her black backpack and her notebooks?).......

 

Waiting for the plane yesterday I browsed the shelves of the bookstore at Gardermoen airport. I did not buy Cecilia Samartin's book Senor Peregrino, I already have it, at the cabin, and read it during winter break. A wonderful book about unexpected friendship. I did buy something though. Of course I did: The Various Flavours of Coffee by Anthony Capella, and The Book of Unholy Mischief by Elle Newmark.

I spent the night at a hotel room south in Norway, but with books I am never alone.

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Which were the latest books you bought? Why did you buy them?

 

 

A Call to Journey

 

My journey is always just a beginning.

A fresh new day,

On an old, old path.

That's the blessing,

That's where the hope blossoms.

However much I wandered yesterday

I can start again tomorrow.

And when all the tomorrows are used up,

I'll still have travelled.

And you know what people say,

It's the journey that counts,

Not the arriving.

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The above piece is written by Mary Feeson in her book Life Journey

For some time now I have known that some new writing is on its way, words are coming, thoughts try to knit themselves into a pattern. Still I don't know where this will lead, I don't know if it will become a book or what it will be. I walk under the moon, alone or with my lover, I share with him and get the support I need. Often the support is silent. The silence is filled with love. "I believe in you". He makes me believe in myself. Writing is a journey. My journey is always just a beginning.

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Photo: Inside the basement of the Archbishop's Palace, old part, looking out.

Note: writing right now feels like looking out an old window where the glass makes the world alien. I search for the words, for the images, I like what I see but I struggle to make it out.......

Fill the cathedral with song, praise, prayers, silence, life

 

I work as an adviser for the bishop and diocese board of Nidaros, one of 11 dioceses in Norway. Nidaros diocese has 12 deaneries and alot of congregations and churches all over the two counties of North and South Trøndelag.

 

Once a year the diocese board invite all church workers in Nidaros to a two day's meeting, "Stiftsdagene", Monday and Tuesday this week were the dates for this years meeting.

The cathedral and the Archbishop's Palace have been filled with more that 200 church workers, and we've been together for seminars, speaches, singing, praying, eating, fellowship.

 

The photo shows the bishop of Nidaros together with the priests and deacons of the deanery of Nord-Inherrad after a service they were in charge of in the cathedral yesterday afternoon.

 

I have been working in The Church of Norway and the diocese of Nidaros for almost 25 years. Many years as a deacon in three different churches in Trondheim, for the last 9 years as an advicer with my office in the Archbishop's Palace, neighbour house to the cathedral. It is a blessing to work in such surroundings, history all around, a majestetic cathedral, but the main blessing is to be one of the workers, one of the apprentices in God's garden here in Nidaros. An apprentice among so many others. Together we sow, together we weed, together we watch God's garden grow.

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Some of you might remember the funny tale from Stiftsdagene a couple of years ago.

My Second Week of Lent is Orange (follow the rainbow)

 

 

My second week of Lent is orange. Two candles, one red, one orange.

Juicy oranges offer me vitamins while I wait for even longer days.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

 

"Dance the Orange"Rainer Maria Rilke.

Photos: Do you see the angel?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Repost from last year. Through Lent I follow the rainbow, the Sign of Hope God once gave us. With seven colours in the rainbow and seven weeks of Lent it is easy - I have given each week its own colour.

-------------------------

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)

 

 

My second week of Lent is orange. Two candles, one red, one orange.

Juicy oranges offer me vitamins while I wait for even longer days.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

 

"Dance the Orange"Rainer Maria Rilke.

Photos: Do you see the angel?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Repost from last year. Through Lent I follow the rainbow, the Sign of Hope God once gave us. With seven colours in the rainbow and seven weeks of Lent it is easy - I have given each week its own colour.

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