Vaugely I was

For the Director of Music.

There are days when words seem empty and meaningless. I'm familiar with pains beyond description. I'm blessed to know The Director of Music. Where words stop having meaning, the music begins.

Psalm 139

For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.

¹ You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts,God!
How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

¹⁹ If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
²⁰ They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
²¹ Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
²² I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
²³ Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

The art of letting go

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson


Gunnar took these photos of one my toughest partings. July 23rd 2011.
The day after the right wing terrorist, whose name I will not bother to mention, robbed Norway for its innocence and turned our world upside down.
We were to meet with our daughter to watch a Shakespeare play in wonderful Rosendal. Our two day vacation. Serina had a summer job in TV2, Bergen. She was among the first to know. I forbade them to turn on the telly, if we were going to see the play afterwards. I simply could not do both. We only knew about the bombing then. I was hysteric about it. The news would reach us soon enough. We needed each other now.
While I was in complete denial, the murderer went around shooting young, defenseless teenagers through their head.

The next day the joyful summer village was totally silent. People whispered. I didn't want to part. I offered to go with her. I by and by understood my daughter was turning into an adult before my very eyes.

P.S. Like Emily Dickinson I know of Immortality.

I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.

Emily Dickinson

Pictures shot by Gunnar Jacobsen.

Magical Mystery Teacher is hosting Ruby Tuesday 2 together with Gemma Wiseman

THAT TINGLING MAGENTA THRILL

"Most of all I love the naked spring," Norwegian author Sigrid Undset wrote. The first days of March are the best naked days of the year. Some brave snow drops popping their heads above the brown soil. Some brave birds returning from their winter hibernation to the bleak sun of the North. Singing, as if their sheer will power can change the season and make the landscape ready for new love and new life. In my heart I quote immortal Shakespeare.




Magical Mystery Teacher is hosting Ruby Tuesday 2 together with Gemma Wiseman