The making of
Hundred Hymns
The power of setting your intentions...
In the summer of ¨22 I created a folder in my computer, and I had to give it a name. After giving it a quick thought, and in an attempt to be a bit poetic in the small space and time given, I wrote: "Hundred hymns".
There's a new hymnbook on its way in Sweden and a call had gone out for anyone who wanted to contribute with proposals. I thought I ought to send in something before the deadline on New Years and the folder was created for this purpose. I started to browse through a life's worth of song creation attempts and did not find much suitable, managed to come up with about 30 songs that I thought could work, after editing them quite substantially.
After that I fell ill in Covid. Little did I realise then how necessary this was for the developments that were to follow. For the first time in my life I had a personal and very tangible experience of life's brevity. And a reminder of the importance of taking every day as a precious gift.
Nothing happened with the folder after that, my time was consumed by concerns for eartlhy matters.
In the beginning of November I embarked on a journey that would first take me to Nepal and a Song Safari there, then via South Africa and my son's wedding with Yasmine, to conclude with another song course on the beaches of Gambia.
Something happened in Nepal that is hard to put words to. My still frail post-covid body could not walk up the Nepali hillsides – but it could still dance. In song and dance, through sharing of nature and culture, with the Swedish group and the wonderful Nepalese people in this the most majestic of settings, my sole rose to Himalayan heights.
And grow did also a feeling that I was pregnant with something, a bit unclear of what.
Heading 5
"The Mountain raises its mighty horn.
Blows a praise with an ancient tone.
All is still, time is past.
The Spirit soars free at last.
The wind responds with shouts of joy,
Whizzles 'round white wall in glistering sun
All things for all, and all things are mine.
Peace in the Kingdom forever is Thine.
After the course was over I checked in to a small lodge as I had a week for myself and decided to remain in the beautiful town of Bandipur.
In front of me from my tiny veranda, I overlooked a valley, often from above the clouds...
It was such a beautiful experience: I woke up every morning at around 3 o'clock and the music and the lyrics poured forth. Every morning the same; like putting out your empty vessels in the night and find them full the next morning. Absolutely no effort, only grace. I only needed to be there, the open heart being my vessel.
From Katmandu, Nepal I went to Cape Town, South Africa and found myself suddenly heading up to the Namibian border.
...and behind me I still had 6000 meters worth of holy mountains rising to indescribable peaks.
On the road to Steinkopf, on the Namibian border
This is desolate country, flat and dry and scorched, the absolute counterpoint to the Nepalese landscape. Yet there was no feeling of going from one extreme to another; more like from one home to another or rather; a feeling of same-same, of two perceptions of the same entity, two expressions of the same reality.
As the well kept pouring forth, I kept up my collecting of songs in the nights and mornings.
There's no need to look far to find life in the desert. It's everywhere. And wherever there is a little trickle of water surfacing from the underground, there is life in abundance, rich and immediate.
I stayed with one of my oldest South African friends, William Bowles and his wonderful family. We've known each other for 45 years. In their embrace of hospitality, musicality and spirituality I felt much at home allowing me my wish for privacy and time for creating. As well as having time together for song and merry.
And after the desert; The Sea!
Fair Scarborough;
Sun setting in the Atlantic.
I headed to Cape Town, this world in itself, that keeps on fascinating in its many disguises and appearances, as capricious as the sea itself. We had booked a house in Scarborough, a small place perching on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, quite far from the hustle and bustle of the Mother City. Although the days were happily loaded with wedding planning, socialising and meeting old friends and new family from far and wide, the nights and mornings were still there to let my buckets be filled and emptied over and over...
The Wedding!
Oh, the Wedding!
Ralph and Yasmine showered with petals of love from the hands of the world.
Final stop Gambia; again I feel humbled in the presence of such a generous and kind people. This time located on the shores of a big, warm sea. And my buckets kept overflowing.
Gambian Drumfest
in the circle of life
Connecting non-verbally with a musical heritage so ancient you feel the echo, the re-percussion, of the big bang in your open palm.
Gambian Sunset
The sun sets – a glowing drum
snuffed out with a fizzle in the cool of the ocean.
By the time I came home from my trip, in mid- January, hundred hymns were tucked away neatly in my folder, infused with metaphors of mountain, desert and sea. Inspired by Nepalese dove-calls and pentatonic tunes, by South African kwaya-music and bridal-mysticism, with Gambian rhythms and the generosity of poor but dignified people of faith and joy.
They were also created in a sense of life lived to the fullest because of an awareness of death's reality. Of living every day as if it was the last. And the first. The only.
It's all there in the songs; a travelog of tones, a rhapsody of reminiscence, a re-collection of consciousness.
But more than anything else it is a collection bearing witness to the power of stating your intention, about the power of faith. About how small words can turn to flesh. About setting your intention and then do nothing. That is the hard part, to do nothing. To just let grace fill your buckets to the brim while you're watching, overwhelmed.
Now the journey continues. To the fun part, but also a seemingly scary part. Sharing in the hope that the water of life shall keep flowing and find a way to places where it can be of a blessing. In a source close to you.
Hundred hymns; an attempt to be a bit poetic in the short time and space given us.
Take part in creation!
The Hymnbook "Hundred Hymns" is out now!
And at Advent time we will start, together with you, to explore the hymns. Get the details on how, here!