Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Janus and his two faces

@brittarnhild

Janus, the god of beginnings and traditions. The god of looking back and planning ahead. The god who gave January its name.

We are into the first month of the year. The month of looking back on the year we´ve just finished. The month of looking ahead to days, weeks and months to come. Learn from your past, dream of your future. Important lessons and good reminders on one of the first days of the year.

Still, isn´t there something missing in this. I look at Januses two faces, I think back on the past year, its joys and sorrows, the great plans I had for the year, some fulfilled, others just floated away. The people I met. With some I walked just a step or two, with others I shared the view both from deep valleys and from mountain tops. I make plans for the year which is still in its pure beginning. What will it bring? Where will I go? Whom will I meet?

 

Janus, the god with its two faces. Beginnings and traditions.

Then I realise what is missing!
Here!
Now!

How can I live my life fulfilled, my life as it was meant by my Creator to be lived if I concentrate only on the past and the future?

What about the moment?
What about the here and now?

New Year´s resolution #3:
Carpe Diem.

Only then can the barbed wire unfold.

 

There is a garden……..

@brittarnhild

There is a garden......outside a private hospital in Oslo. Sometimes I go to the guesthouse connected to the hospital for meetings and conferences, and when I do, I always make sure to find at least a few minutes to visit the garden. The Silent Garden.

A few minutes during lunch break yesterday was enough -
to fill up my heart with beauty
to pray for a good friend

A few minutes alone, in the middle of a day filled with people and words.

And then I was ready to walk back.....

.....on a carpet painted by the Creator.

 

Stylized life

@brittarnhild

Walking in The Royal Parks means smelling flowers, watching birds, photographing, teatime and reading time, sore feet and a lot of time for reflections. Outside Kensington Palace I met this "hair dresser", busy stylizing the shrubs.

Branches growing wild, in all directions, were efficently cut down. The criteria was style, beauty. The result perfect.

 

Or........

 

As I stood there watching, my thoughts wandered from the gardener and his work to my own life. How often do I cut my own branches, stylize my leaves to make the most perfect impression? How often do I display my perfect side, only my perfect side?

The gardener outside created beauty, a pleasure for the eyes.

 

But..........I do think I prepare life,
seen from all sides.

 

One is a lot more than none

@brittarnhild

There is a clematis outside my greenhouse. Her name is Dorothy Walton. I planted her last year, and has been impatiently following her growth since early spring. Green leaves sprouted, but they looked nothing like a clematis. "Well, may be Walton is creating a new fashion" I told myself. More leaves grew and I was really wondering about this new fashion. Then one day I understoood. The green leaves were no new Dorothy Walton fashion at all, but a completely lost raspberry plant. Carefully I digged up the raspberry with its roots, replanting it over in the raspberry garden, carefully I looked for my Dorothy. Yes, she was still there, though oh so tiny.

Well, I fertilized and watered, talked with her, blew her kisses, fertilized and watered some more, and slowly, slowly she grew. Then one day, a few days ago, I found a bud, and yesterday the flower opened. "Look" I cried to Terje, "our Mrs Walton is in bloom. Sadly with only a single flower though." Terje came over from where he was, mowing the lawn, looked at the beautiful flower and said: "You know, one flower is a lot more than none at all"

I learned an importan lesson. One flower is a lot more than no flower!

Focus

@brittarnhild

I am calling the current chapter in the book of my life Focus. I am 56 years old. I am back working full time after a period of health issues.  I still have these issues but I am learning to live with them. I still have about 10 years before retirement. I love my job. I want to do it good, and to manage I need to focus.

Focus. Focusing. Keeping on track. Keep the mind on the goal. 

Though, while doing so, I still want to nourish the little red riding hood girl in me. I want to continue to pick some of the beautiful wild flowers along the path.

 

Spring Cleaning Out of Season

@brittarnhild

I went back to work and it started to rain. For a week. Then Saturday came and the rain stopped. My two breakfast friends had left and I sat out in the garden with a book. I did not read a word. Instead I looked at the air, the flowers, the glass bird, the dry seeds flying in the wind, the sun rays.

I looked up to the sky and looked directly into God´s eyes.

Celtic spirituality talks about the thin film between heaven and earth. As I sat there, with the book in my lap, there was no fil mere at all. Heaven was open.

 

 

There and then God had an out of season spring cleaning.

Now the angels are playing ping-pong with all my dust balls.

Sometimes……..

@brittarnhild

Some days I dream of being a waterlily. Growing in the Water of Life.
Still, peaceful, with an only purpose To Be.

 I dream of letting God´s blessings shower me like summer rain, the wind cherish me like a mother, the sun warm me like a lover.

Other days, most days, I know that I am a human. I thank God for the life he has given me. The laughter, the tears. The joy, the worries. The love. The contentment, the longing. The life. The death.

 

The way we paint our lives

@brittarnhild

I read an article recently about the death of blogging. Blogging which came into my life as a completely revelation almost 10 years ago. I had written group mails for several years and sent out, about books, from travels, all through advent, and when a friend sent me a link to a page where her son wrote about his newborn son, a blog, a door to a completely new world opened. It didn´t take me long to have my own blog. First on blogspot, but only a few months later on typepad, and since then I´ve been here. On and off the first year or so, but most of the time I´ve posted every single day.....except when I´ve been unable to get online (on a few travels that is)

I started to blog in English, my goal was to improve my second language. Over the years I´ve got several blogs, quite a lot actually, even one or two in Norwegian. My blogs have different themes. Life, travels, books, cooking, garden, Nidaros cathedral, city of Trondheim to name some. 

Britt-Arnhild´s House in the Woods is my main blog, where I post every day. What I blog about varies though, from deep reflections, to travels and everyday life. It is also important for me to express and to share my belief as a Christian.

 

Last night, after the hike up to Pulpit Rock I had so much I wanted to blog about, but I was too tired and only managed a kind of short postcard. And I guess that´s how life is. You can´t paint the big, famous paintings every day. If could do that, I would use my words to paint the artist who had taken easel, paintbox and brushes with him up in the mountains, I would paint the sherpas hired from Nepal to come to Norway to make the trails for the hikers easier to walk, I would paint the view along the hike, the people, the butterflies.......

 

.....and the heather, which was already blooming even though it is still only mid-July.

 

Life is not like that. Most days I´ll continue to do the rough sketches, then, from time to time there might be a watercolour, and may be even a bigger painting.

  

Meanwhile I do my very best to keep blogging alive.....but to do so I need all of you. The value of a blog shows in the number of its readers.........and also the friends from all over the world blogging has given me, continues to give.

 

 

The idea and the corner in my heart.

 @brittarnhild

A pumpkin flower is growing in my garden. Still small, still hiding under an umbrella leaf to get shelter from sun, rain and wind. An idea is growing in my life. Still hiding, but bursting to come free. To make itself more than a dream, make itself a reality. The idea was conceived in a corner of my heart which I did not know about, but following the idea´s whisper I found my way there and was greeted by a room painted in colours I hadn´t seen before, people I didn´t know, music new to me. 

Come get me, the idea whispered. Water me, nourish me, sing to me, find my words, love me. Make me grow.

 

I will, I whispered back, I sang back, I shouted back.
And now we are creating a new road, the idea and me.

 

 

A bumblebee

@brittarnhild

There is always a list of things to do. Bake bread, weed the flowerbeds, clean the bathrooms, write another five hundred words on my book, buy milk and juice and sunflower seeds, book a travel, phone a friend, invite the neighbours over for coffee, iron the tablecloths, dust the livingroom..........

But most important is to sit down, breath deeply, free my mind and say a prayer of thanks for the bumblebees.