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Showing posts from 2012

En miljon ögonblick

Ett snabbt överslag säger att jag har gått ungefär en miljon steg i sommar... (upptäckte att det fanns en funktion på "My tracks-appen" som visar "Aggregated stats, total distance: 1049.49 km") Det är ju inte så speciellt i sig själv. Men det anmärkningsvärda är ju att det har sjungit om så gott som varje steg. Det har funnits en svikt, och en kraft, en glädje och ett lågmält jubel i nästan varje steg. Ja, förstås, det var den där midsommaraftonen också, när jag beslöt att lägga in ett sent kvällspass i vandringen, efter en lång morgonvandring och en totempålsresning i Riddarhyttan på eftermiddagen. Det ska erkännas, att då kände jag att det tog tid att vandra. Varför är jag inte framme snart? Och genast kändes benhinnorna stumma och vägen lång. Men så här i efterhand är man ju tacksam för de stegen också. Hur skulle jag annars kunna förstå vilken fantastisk glädje och nåd jag har fått vandra alla de övriga stegen i? Nu är bara problemet att bloggen känns för trå

Mundekulla Music Festival.

We are here in the embrace of Mundekulla, the course centre in the middle of the woods. Every morning kicks-off with a circle-dance on the lawn. What a wonderful way to start the day! The first morning we sang a new song of Anne Elmberg: I am beautiful  just the way I am. You are beautiful  just the way you are. Shining like a star, we are here to be  who we truly are. We are beautiful  j ust the way we are. And we danced and saw our beauty. Just as we are. It is wonderful for a walker from the long, straight roads to rest in a circle-dance. That is a home-coming of sorts. The meeting is the reward of the walker, the fellowship his goal and the trust his staff. The festival ended with us all summing it all up by creating and singing a new song with Sadhu the dancing dervish in the middle.  Download the full score from here! The lyrics were born out of the moment:  (in a not-so-poetic English translation;) "The time of trust is no

The Child and the Horse / Barnet och hästen

I love this statue. You'll find it at the Archeological Museum in Athens. I got very moved by it when I saw it there in my youth and decades later I got this text very spontaneously and only now do I connect the two.  Maybe there is also a connection between the statue and the text and the question I get very often: What is the purpose of the walk? Every time there is a new answer. Maybe this story is one  possible answer.  There are many others. Greek bronzestatue from 150 B.C. that was salvaged from the sea and is now exhibited at the National Archeological Museum of Athens.   Grekisk bronssstaty från ca 150 f Kr som bärgades ur havet och nu står på arkeologiska national-muséet i Aten.     A horse comes galloping: goppeti, goppeti, gop! A small child sits on its back.  The wind and the sun plays in the child's blond locks, goppeti, goppeti, gop! Such a big horse! And such a small child!  But the horse is comfortable with the light burd

In the circle of life. / Vi sätter oss i ringen

Papis, Gunilla and Peter on the go. It is the third and final seminary on our walk on the theme of ”Existence” at Mundekulla retreatcentre. We sit in a circle under the trees in the meadow and listen and talk. The first day it was Sadhu from India and Papis from Senegal who spoke about their life-journeys starting from the religious contexts they grew up in. Sadhu’s grandfather was a Brahmin (a Hindi priest) and as a child he followed him to the temple to pray four times a day. And Papis who comes from a Muslim family grew up with five prayer times in the mosque each day. Despite the fact that they have lived on two different continents with two different religions you are struck by the similarity of their stories. They are deeply rooted in their traditions and carry them still with gratitude and pride. But they have both gone further, seeking their own road away from a world dominated by religious conformity and sometimes bigotry. They have walked a path towards their o

The road to love / Vägen mot kärleken

I have landed in Mundekulla. Another circle is coming to its completion. Here the idea of The Path started, a walk through summer-Sweden in search of… Happiness? No, not that I haven’t been filled at times during the walk of bliss, absolutely, but was that what we were looking for when we left? Health? As well, I have not felt this healthy in a long while, but surely that was not the reason for the walk… Enlightenment? OK, I hope I have come to some better understanding of who I am, but there are still quite a few rooms that are waiting to be illuminated... Love? A red rose, the rose of love, is carefully opening its petals, innocently, unaware of its own beauty. Its bloodred colour is the colour of life. Its striving for the ultimate beauty holds all of Creations will for perfection, to complete the journey from Eden’s lustfilled garden through the scorged landscape of the desert to the eternal land beyond all dried rosepetals, seasons and sunr

In the blue berry-mountains / I blåbergs-skogen

The staff walks on. It has travelled  in my friends Anders Claesson's and Peter Elmberg's confident hands, along lake Vättern and via Jönköping up into the Southern Swedish Highlands. The rain – and indeed the "Class 1 - warnings" from the meteorologists – have kept on showering this summer, but the reports from the walkers have been sunny and warm. Maybe it is one of the big paradoxes for us walkers to meditate on: when you are in the flow on the path, in the proximity of Nature – or maybe even better  in communion with nature - you are able to receive a rainfall as a blessing rather than as the curse we often perceive when we sit indoors in our safety looking out. * I have travelled up to Dala-Floda to give attention to house and family. But I have to admit that the walk is nothing you leave behind as you would a wet raincoat. I am still very much in that energy, and the desperate cries from the garden to be seen and attended to, calls I any other summe