Å leve fra Ånden...

So I´m on my way again. A week in China and DPRK and now heading towards Kona Hawaii for 3 months. To  get going  has been hard on both these trips. With the last trip I faced much fear of the unknown, this time it´s harder than I thought to leave  home , I´ve gotten too used to Christina´s great cooking and having the kids around me at all hours, my own car (graciously rented to me for free from our neighbors) and just little practical responsibility. It´s been like a 4-month long holiday. Now it´s back to reality. Cooking my own meals, cleaning my own apartment and figuring out how to bring the things I need from Walmart and Safeway on the scooter. Plumbing problems, lots of practical things to fix in the apartment... Not tons of people to call if  I´m in an emergency, and not that many people I really know. No security net.  It´s been hard to leave with this in mind. Coz Hawaii is so much more to me now than just beautiful weather, beaches, and va...

This is my third and probably last blog entry about North Korea for now. It still feels like a dream having been there, and dragging up memories and watching pictures is draining emotionally. Not everything in North Korea was rosy and beautiful, and a lot of things were.... well, weird... though that word can not quite cover what I felt at times. Here are some quotes and experiences to try to explain some of the weirdness I felt during my trip there. One of the men in our group put it best. He said: "I feel like I´m in a movie.... and that I´m one of the actors." That put it right. I felt like that many times.  Other quotes from the group were: "It´s easier to get run over on the sidewalk here than in the middle of the street." A feeling we that came around all the time: "I walk around here feeling normal, just looking around. Then suddenly something happens that shakes me and makes me understand that this is not a normal place..." At certain...

Coming out of North Korea I want to write a little about all the beauty I saw in the country. I have read quite a few books about the country, told from its own people, and I've talked to several that have lived there. I have heard childhood stories of kids going to swim in the river after school, and when I was in China in 1998 we could look directly into the country and see the beautiful mountains and the green scenery. I knew it was more than the media told me. I knew there was so much more . But all the beauty I saw still surprised me. It was more than I had imagined - and deeper - it touched my heart many times. And I've only been to Pyongyang, the main city, and Kaesong, the border. What if I traveled around the whole country, saw the infamous mount Paektu, or biked along the gravel roads across the country? What if I joined the few people that just learned to surf the waves in the long shore line? How much more beauty would I find? Part of being in North Korea ...

I just came out of North Korea 5 days ago. It was a very special experience after hearing about the country for the first time in 1997 and having it in my heart ever since. It was a dream fulfilled and now a few days later it almost feels like a dream. Was I really there? Did I really see all the things I saw? Did it really happen? I feel privileged and honored to visit this country called a "hermit country" and "the closest place on Earth". This country with a population of about 24 million people that most of the world knows so little about, for sure.  I was inside only 5 days, but when I came home I felt like I had been gone a month, with a journal full of notes and hundreds of pictures. And still, though I felt like every day was a week of experiences, I came out with so many questions, even more curious than before. There are so many layers, but also much simplicity. There is so much beauty, but also a darker side. I´m not a great photographer, and wit...

Da denne boken kom ut i Danmark i april skapte den store debatter og høylytte diskusjoner. Den er gitt ut på det sekulære venstreradikale forlaget Information og dansk presse gikk helt av skaftet. Vårt Land-journalist Olav Egil Aune bemerket tørt at " Her hjemme ville kollegaer «skutt» det ned med sløv mine."   Boka fikk liten oppslutning her til lands, og da den kom ut 22.juni på norsk skapte den såvidt noen krusninger i overflaten, blant annet da forfatteren selv presenterte boken på Litteraturhuset i Oslo.  Diskusjonene gikk derimot høylytt i Danmark, også i den danske kirke blant de kristne.... noe jeg personlig forstår, men syns er trist... siden det kanskje hadde vært naturlig at slike historier var vanlig kost i kirken.  Jeg leste om dette i april og tenkte at "denne boka må jeg lese", og i forgårs gav jeg den som gave til ei venninne med et kjapt spørsmål om jeg kunne få låne den etterpå! (smart gave! Kjøp til andre noe du ønsker selv!) Historien begy...

Jeg har blitt utfordra og kjent på en lengsel etter å søke stillheten . Oppsøke ensomheten. Aleneheten . Bli litt kjent med meg selv. Lytte. Være. Høre. Som jeg har blogga om før, så leter jeg framdeles etter Gud. Leter etter svar. Leter etter et møte. Kjenner på lengsler etter noe mer, noe større, større enn meg. Det er ikke så lett å møte stillheten i dag. Ikke for meg heller, selv om jeg er student og single. Det siste året har jeg bodd sammen med andre hele tida, og da jeg kom hjem bestemte jeg meg for å leie leiligheten min ut og bo med Christina, Magnar og ungene. Skjønne Isabella flytta med glede ut av rommet sitt for min skyld, slik at jeg kunne få det. Nå har hun alle lekene sine under trappa og har med venner dit i stedet. Og så sover hun med mamma og pappa, og lar tante få bo på rommet hennes, bruke senga og skuffer og hyller. Så leiligheten ble utleid fra 1.juli, men jeg har flytta inn til min søster og bodd der fra 22.mai. Jeg elsker ungene, å alltid ha folk der...

I'm home again. In Norway . After a long year of traveling. It feels amazing. No matter how much I love Hawaii and Korea, Norway is still home, the safest place on Earth for me. It's like I can rest in a totally different way! For those of you who don't know what I'm doing, I'm currently a student, doing a master program in Norway with field research in South Korea, and on the side being a volunteer slash missionary with Youth with a mission, based in Kona, Hawaii. I live in 3 countries, and am planning on doing that for a while, with one apartment in Hawaii, another one in Norway + lots of friends and family I can crash at, and an organization and a few friends I can stay with in South Korea. It's a life where I'm living out of a suitcase, in and out of jet lag, and my mother tongue more and more mixed with English phrases. It's a daily life in constant culture shock, uprooting before I get to settle down and a struggle to find a daily rhythm before I...

Siden sist bloggeinnlegg ja .... Det har vært et par ganske intense uker for min del siden det. Da jeg sjekka dagen etter jeg skrev det var jeg forberedt på kanskje 2 likes (som det ofte er når jeg poster noe kontroversielt), og ikke over 40 likes, mange kommentarer og 200 hits som fort ble til 500 (som er rekord for min lille personlige reise - tanke - studie - opplevelsesblogg!) Jeg var mildt sagt uforberedt på kritikk og så mange tilbakemeldinger, at det skulle utvikle seg til homofilidebatt på Facebook, og i det hele tatt at bloggeinnlegget mitt skulle bli satt under lupen. Jeg var nok litt naiv, men forstår veldig godt reaksjonene i etterkant. Så det ble en del grubling disse ukene, og noen tårer, må jeg innrømme. Vil gjerne si at jeg vil beklage om det er noen jeg har støtt eller såret, og spesielt om det er noen jeg ikke møtte på en god måte i diskusjonen som fulgte på Facebook, og ellers i innboksen min. Kanskje jeg kunne skrevet noe på en annen måte, kanskje jeg skulle vært ...

Jeg får ikke sove etter å ha sett på Eurovision song contest 2015 - alt for mange bilder og tanker svirrer rundt i hodet. Jeg lurer på om jeg virkelig så og hørte det jeg tror i kveld, og hva det sier om oss i dag, om Europa nå . Vi ble sittende i taushet en lang stund, min søster og jeg, etter at showet var ferdig. Jeg tror vi begge følte oss triste… og rystet. Får jeg lov å si, eller er det intolerant, at jeg ble trist av å se på Grand Prix i kveld? At jeg blir kvalm av å se og høre Conchita, og skremt av utropelsen av henne som “Queen of Europe”?  For hva vil det si om oss? Hvis hun er dronningen i denne tida, vil det si at hun er hersker og forbilde for en kjønnsforvirret generasjon i Europa? En mann som kaller seg Conchita Wurst, og legger vekt på at fornavnet er kallenavn på vagina på spansk og etternavnet er kallenavnet på penis på tysk, og som er mann til vanlig, kvinne på jobb, men med blandet utseende - er det hun som er dronningen i Europa?  Er vi a...

“Grief changes shape, but it never ends.” Keanu Reeves said this in an interview in 2006.  I read it then and again today. His life was full of tragic events - his father abandoning him, his best friend (actor) River Phoenix dying of overdose, his daughter being stillborn in 8th month and then her mother dying in a car crash. Through these events he´s had a lot of chances to contemplate these profound words. A friend of mine in his late 30´s, who lost his Mom suddenly at the age of 18, told me: "It changes, but it never really gets better!" I´ve seen people and friends flipping out or totally closing up because of grief, for years and decades, and I´ve seen it used to bring up other issues and giving them a chance to deal with brokenness in their pasts and lives. And then we have the everyday-grief. Huh, is there an everyday-one too? I don´t know, but I think so. What about the smaller grieves we face daily or weekly - the painful memories we just can´t forget about...

It´s been two intense weeks here in Hawaii, and I´m finally getting some downtime to process these weeks. People coming and going, visits from Norway, preparing and then hosting our first conference, celebrating Easter and just a lot of "doing" and "going". Now it´s time to rest, and then get into my studies again.     My good friend Kayla (in the middle), one of my students in July´14 Awaken DTS that also went with me to Korea in January, was leaving us and Hawaii to go back to Canada for a while. It´s been hard to let her go, having been so close for a while, and not knowing when I´ll see her again. I guess the beauty and pain of this life, is the amazing people you meet that you become so close with, but then also so many of them coming and going in and out of your life. At times it´s heart wrenching, and it was when this lady left.     Right before my first conference I was given a "firkløver" - yes, with four of them! Is ...