Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Shrove Tuesday

@brittarnhild

It is Shrove Tuesday, dinner is just over, and I am full.
Welcome Lent :-)

A salted leg of pork, mashed rutabaga, potatoes and jam made of fox berries. Oh, I love it!

Lent starts tomorrow, so today is traditionally a day with quite a lot of food, of fat food. I have been told that in England the days is called Pancake Tuesday. Pancakes, with many eggs and a lot of butter, rømmegrøt and pancakes are all traditional meals on Shrove Tuesday.

I would love to hear from you if you have any specific food traditions on this last day before Lent.

 

Blue Monday, with Lent preparations

@brittarnhild

Yesterday was Shrove Sunday, tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Tuesday. Today, the day in between, is Blue Monday. From when I have read it got its name from the Blue Cloth the priests  in the Catholic Church covered the altar with on the start of Lent.

Here in Norway we do not have any specific traditions for this day, but as a preparations for the coming 7 weeks of Lent, I have picked, from my shelves, a few books which will follow me through the Lent weeks.

Michel Pastoureau´s Blue, The History of a Color.
Victoria Finlay's Colour, Travels Through the Paintbox.
Nature´s Palette, A Color Reference System from the Natural World, by Thames&Hudson

 

What an amazing blessing to live in a world filled with colours. What if God created the world in black and white only? Can you imagine? I am looking out my studio window just now. A sky in a multitudes of grey shades, winter green trees, white snow, a red house up the road with stacks of logs piled up along the wall, birds in brown, yellow, splashed of blue (on the blue tits), a mother and her daughter coming home from school, the daughter with a happy, pink backpack, a man holding a red plastic bag. Colours everywhere.

The colours of Lent. Red

@brittarnhild

If you have been following Britt Arnhilds House in the Woods for some time, you will know that Lent is a lot about colours for me. Seven weeks of lent, seven colours in the rainbow, and so I have given each week is own colour, starting with red. Two years ago I expanded this rainbow  calendar to also include knitting. I have talked a lot about this in my YouTube videos the last few years.

With Lent starting on Ash Wednesday, and each week starting on Sundays, we are already into the third week of Lent, which according to the rainbow calendar is yellow. I will come to that, but since I haven't been here for some time, I want to start with the beginning, with red.

This year I want to knit wrist warmers in the different colours of the rainbow. Using my own designs, kind of, I find inspiration in a wonderful book I have with watercolours by the Austrian Swedish painter and designer Josef Frank. In the images in this post you see both the painting which is inspiring me, and also the finished wrist warmers.

What a balm for there soul in is to sit here in my studio, looking at colours, making drawings, knitting.

 

If you want to see and hear more of my rainbow calendar, you are welcome over to this video, which I posted during red week.

 

 

 

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You can easily find my other active blogs through my new webpage, brittarnhild.no
The other blogs, which focus on different themes, are all in Norwegian, but the images are all our shared language, and you can always easily use google translate :-)

I have a list of different instagram accounts:
@brittarnhild
@akeleiehagen (the blue garden)
@brittarnhildsstrikkedagbok (knitting)
@brittarnhilds_naturdagbok (nature notes)
@brittarnhildsbokhylle (my bookshelf)
@brittarnhildsflora (wild flowers, active during the summer months)
@brittarnhildsmatseddel (menue)
@dagenslillegrønne (green living)

On Facebook I hava a page connected to this blog, which I call, obviously 
Britt Arnhild´s House in the Woods. Feel free to subscribe to it. I am also considering making a group connected to this page, where we all can post, chat, have discussions, sharing and so on. Would that be of interest for you? Well, let's see where this path leads us, shall we?

I do have an account on snapchat as well, mostly for family and a few close friends. Let me know if you are interested in getting the stories I share there, and we might connect :-)

 

The first week of Lent is red

@brittarnhild

Lent has started. Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, was the first day of an almost seven weeks period leading up to Easter. According to the rainbow calendar I created when I wrote the book about Lent and its tradition, back in 2008, the first week is red, and I focus on red in my knitting.

A pair of red socks. A red ball.......

.......I explain all about the rainbow calendar in my latest YouTube-episode:

 

 

 

 

We have a God who forgives

@brittarnhild

There was no Ash Wednesday service in my local church, so I went to another one, the one where I was ordained back in 1988, the one where I worked as a deacon at that time, the one where Ingrid was baptised in 1989, the one where our grandson was baptised on my birthday last year.

I will bring one thing with me into lent from the service:

We have a God who forgives

 

Shrove Tuesday

@brittarnhild

 

In Norway we call today feittirsdag, fat Tuesday. In America I think you call it Shrove Tuesday, in Great Britain Pancake Tuesday. Whatever you call it, in Christian tradition today is the last day before the long fast which leands up to Easter.

There are several feittirsdags traditions in Norway. The one I am used to, is to eat a salted, boiled leg of pork.

Traditions, both local and global, are important to me.

That´s why I started the blog Vandring gjennom året, A Walk Through the Year.

 And that´s why I wrote the book about Lent 10 years ago.

 

 

When I worked on the book, I spent some time with my dear friend Dagmar in Austria. I was on her farm on Shrove Tuesday, and Dagmar made their traditional Shrove Tuesday food, a herring salad.

Dagmar´s Herring Salad

 

Make a cream of:

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

pepper

1 tablsp mustard

olive oil

vinegar

3 tblsp majonaise

3 tbsp creme fraiche

 

Dice and mix in the cream:

4 hardboiled eggs

1 apple

4 spiced herrings

4 potatoes

 

Make the salad a few hours before you plan to eat it, to make it more juicy.

I had problems with my camera when I spent Shrove Tuesday with Dagmar, so the photos are of a salad I made another year.

 

Today I got a message on WhatsApp from Dagmar:

 

 

My mouth started to water.......

 

 

How do you celebrate Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Pancake Tuesday, feittirsdag?

 

 

 

In Norway we call today feittirsdag, fat Tuesday. In America I think you call it Shrove Tuesday, in Great Britain Pancake Tuesday. Whatever you call it, in Christian tradition today is the last day before the long fast which leands up to Easter.

There are several feittirsdags traditions in Norway. The one I am used to, is to eat a salted, boiled leg of pork.

Traditions, both local and global, are important to me.

That´s why I started the blog Vandring gjennom året, A Walk Through the Year.

 And that´s why I wrote the book about Lent 10 years ago.

 

 

When I worked on the book, I spent some time with my dear friend Dagmar in Austria. I was on her farm on Shrove Tuesday, and Dagmar made their traditional Shrove Tuesday food, a herring salad.

Dagmar´s Herring Salad

 

Make a cream of:

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

pepper

1 tablsp mustard

olive oil

vinegar

3 tblsp majonaise

3 tbsp creme fraiche

 

Dice and mix in the cream:

4 hardboiled eggs

1 apple

4 spiced herrings

4 potatoes

 

Make the salad a few hours before you plan to eat it, to make it more juicy.

I had problems with my camera when I spent Shrove Tuesday with Dagmar, so the photos are of a salad I made another year.

 

Today I got a message on WhatsApp from Dagmar:

 

 

My mouth started to water.......

 

 

How do you celebrate Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Pancake Tuesday, feittirsdag?

 

 

The life of a monk ought to be a continuous Lent

Text ©brittarnhild and Sr. Miriam

Images © Turvey Abbey

When I decided to write about lent in my Norwegian blog this year, I sent an email to my dear friend, Sr. Miriam at Turvey Abbey, the monastery north of London where I have been several times, asking her to share some of her experiences of how they celebrate lent in the monastery. A few days ago I got Sr. Miriam´s post. I am going to translate it into Norwegian and post it on Blåklokkeveien, but I have also asked Sr. Miriam´s permission to share her original English words here with you.

 

The life of a monk ought to be a continuous Lent.
Rule of St Benedict Chapter 49

I’ve been living according to the Rule of St Benedict for more than 20 years and each year these words both challenge and inspire me. They are tough words. These words were written with a particular community in mind, a community of ordinary human beings who were trying their best to seek God in a monastery. In the rest of the chapter St Benedict explains how he understands the season of Lent, he says; ‘we urge the entire community during these days of Lent to keep its manner of life most pure and to wash away in this holy season the negligences of other times.’

 

During Lent, one of the ways in which we are helped to ‘wash away the negligences’ is by listening with our whole hearts to God’s word in communal and personal prayer. During Lent we listen to the Book of Exodus. I always look forward to this. I find myself in the story and I am challenged to allow God to provide ‘the manna, the water and the quails’ that I need for my monastic journey.

St Benedict recommended that his monks should be given a book to read during Lent. We still keep this practice in the monastery. This year I am reading The Didache by Tom O’Loughlin. (The Didache is an early Christian text, thought to be written in the First Century. It is like a ‘handbook’ for Christian living. I am enjoying the academic style and am finding much to think about. Another book that is proving to be a great spiritual tool for me is: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo. Marie Kondo is an expert in de-cluttering and her method is potentially life changing. During Lent I have tackled various areas in my room and the results are wonderful!

During Lent we also have a little extra time for prayer and creative activities. I like to try a new craft or to work on an on-going project. This year I have been inspired by ideas I have found on Pinterest for using old magazines.

I made a cross to send to a friend who works as a teacher in London.

It is traditional to fast during Lent. In practice, this can be rather hard to arrange in a monastery. We are of varying ages and have very different metabolisms. We try to eat simply and to enjoy what we have. Of course, there are several feast days in our calendar and so we really appreciate something special on those days.

At the heart of Lent is the desire to have God at the centre of our lives. Our time spent in prayer, or trying to fast, or in doing some small act of kindness brings us closer to the God we seek and to the new light of Easter. At the end of the journey of Lent we are ready to sing with St Augustine, ‘We are an EASTER people and ALLELUIA is our song.’

 

Thank you Sr. Miriam for your thoughts and thanks for letting me share them here.
I had to laugh when you write that you read Marie Kondo´s book though. I have never read it, but read about it in a newspaper a few weeks ago. And wrote this post:

Å faste fra eller å faste til

May be I should read the book, and get some new ideas myself :-)

 

By the way, your cross is beautiful. Next time I come to Turvey you must teach mw how to make it.

 

 

The Sunday Gardener at the cabin garden. Fir branches on Palm Sunday.

@brittarnhild

Spring always comes to the cabin garden before it comes to The Blue Garden outside the House in the Woods. We came out to the cabin today to spend Easter break here, and the first thing I did was to inspect the garden.

Under the fir branches daffodils, primulas, tulips and crocuses are trying to find their way out to freedom. In the herb garden chives, mint, parsley and melissa is growing, ready to use already, the fruit trees have tiny little mouse ear buds, the roses all seem to have survived and the forsythia is bursting with yellow buds ready to bloom.

 

I walk around, removing the fir branches.

Today is Palm Sunday. The fir becomes my palm branches. The praise of spring and new life, a praise for My King.

 

 

A letter on the table

@brittarnhild

I was late home from work today. After almost 13 hours working non-stop I felt I had no more energy left. Absolutely no more energy left. I opened the front door, took my shoes, coat and scarf off and walked into the livingroom. Oh, a letter. From a person I don´t know personally, but still not unknown. I use the beautiful pen knife I have inherited from my parents in law to open the letter. Inside is a lovely art card with a painting of fishing boeats from the north of Norway, and words written in a beautiful handwriting:

Dear Britt Arnhild
Thank you very much for the amazing and very inspirational book about Lent. We have had the book for several years, but I have never read it/used it like this year. It is so filled with information - and so beautiful..........

 

All of a sudden I was filled with energy again.
I know how it feels to be a writer and receive fan mail :-)

 

Shrove Tuesday

@brittarnhild

It is Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday, feittirsdag, Fat Tuesday......or, what do you call today? The day before Ash Wednesday and Lent? Today´s traditional dinner in The House in the Woods is salt pork and mashed root vegetables.

It is so easy to celebrate the happy feastday. The days when we do something extra.....because we deserve it. We always deserve something extra, don´t we?

But what about the other days. The days of Lent. The days of sharing.
The days to do something for others.....because they deserve.

 

Ever since I wrote the book about Lent, it has been my mission to live Lent, to live simple. To take care. To pay forward.

 

I wonder where this path will take me this year.

The road less travelled.

 

 

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In Blåklokkeveien yesterday I shared a moment at a museum in Brussel, a museum where I went to see Peter Bruegel´s paintings. While googling Shrove Tuesday today I came over another Bruegel painting -
the fight between carnival and lent

 

He got the point Bruegel.
It is a fight,
and I hope both of them win

a time for everything