Our Best Dreams

The houses opposite to the school where I work were old, scruffy and sad-looking. As if no renovation in the world could give the neighbourhood the lift it desperately needed. One day a few months ago, they finally started tearing the houses down. One by one, wall by wall. It happened just outside my classroom window and I didn’t expect it to be quite so impressive to see, hear and feel big, solid house structures come crashing down.

When nothing was left but big piles of bricks, wood and glass, looking highly dangerous with electrical cables sticking out of the pieces of walls that layered the piles, they brought in the heavy artillery – the mystical magical transformation machine (which I am sure is the technical term for it). It looked like a kind of dragon, with a long neck and a big, open, angry mouth that hungrily swallowed big chunks of debris. Then it went BRRRRRRR, to finally let go of a jet of finer, softer gravel. This gravel makes the foundation of the neighborhood’s new beginning. The new, light, friendly-looking houses that are to take shape here, will rest on the joys and pains of the past. This in the form of years and lives now ground down to pebbles and sand.

The area looks really light and clean right now. The old structures are down, have been cleaned up and ground to lucky dust for a new time. Now we have entered the next phase: piling. With another impressively big and loud machine big piles are driven into the ground to form a solid fundament for the houses yet to come. This is heavy-duty work. There can be no fine-tuning during this part of the journey. The huge piles that go into the earth have to be strong enough and in the right place for anything beautiful and safe to rise out of the ground. It is a loud, messy process. Everyone living or working close to the site, myself included,  move around as if we have a bad case of acute, aggressive hiccups. The ground is shaking and we with it.

Now, I know I am a sucker for metaphors. But I also happen to speak symbolic language fluently. We get help to understand the deeper levels of our lives through things going on (seemingly) on the surface. I know and believe that I am one of the ones who get to live this life during a precious, rare, remarkable time. One in which we are taking a huge step together as a human family. (With some non-human help, for sure.) And this is pretty much where we are right now. This building site is a symbol of our ascending process. Old structures have come crashing down or are doing so as we speak. Amazing transformational powers are helping us change the energies that are not working for us anymore into colours, tunes, words and deeds that will. At times, everything looks kind of awkward and empty. Huge piles are driven into the earth, like shining swords of truth, to prepare for structures that can hold us in a new time. What we see with our inner eye, has never been more important. What we dream, long for or fight for. Our dreams and hopes are what is actually driving the piles into the ground right now. We are doing it. Together.

Many of us long for the times when the inconceivably beautiful houses that will be built are standing tall. We are not quite there yet. We are in the midst of something great. We are co-creating what will be, right now. Now I am not going to pretend that I love the pounding, the mess, the noise and the dust all the time. Like you I get tired and confused. I lose track of it all now and then. But like today, when I remember, when I can feel the greatness of this time and how important each and every person is in the constructing of a new earth, I feel grateful and humbled beyond limits.

The ones of you who might read this and feel that it’s garbage and that it doesn’t make sense at all, stop reading. Read something else that does lift your heart and helps you love your life. We share this journey together anyway. The ones out there who recognize what I am talking about…thank you for sharing this journey with me consciously.

Let’s dream our best dreams. Our most beautiful ones.

Love,
Camilla

photo: Butterfly Art

Fröll

Every summer at my aunts beautiful yellow house in Sweden is coloured by special moments and themes. Moments that are pressed into tiny diamonds of the hearts and labelled like summer jam.

One summer it was the countless visits to Zetas garden centre.  I had just returned to Sweden to stay for good, I thought, and the Swedish names, like stjärnflocka and smaragdnäva blew my mind. Kina ran around like an euphoric lunatic between the fifteen different kinds of lavender and the huge, homemade cakes and steaming hot lattes in their café didn’t exactly make us want to stay away either.

The amazing salsa verde that we made for a barbecue evening in the garden seems to have made its way to my personal summer memories top 10 (you’re a foodie or you’re not). Another summer it was Jesper’s campaign to get permission to buy Assassin’s creed that made me chuckle til Christmas when thinking about it. He must have used up hundreds of post-its that summer, all very strategically placed and so funny.

Our yoga summer is not forgotten. Out in the garden at sunrise, stretching and breathing away. It’s a good thing we had those Önellian amounts of food to compensate with or we would have become way to healthy.

This year, the one phenomena that enframes all the glittering, joyful, tearful, precious moments – is fröll. Yes I know, I am going to have to explain this one.  Even I didn’t know what it was until a few weeks ago. See, fröll is that golden brownish wheat bran-looking stuff that will come flying down from birch trees and land in your morning yoghurt. It will look like bugs in your coffee, will give a wooden accent to your chardonnay and drive you crazy if you ever try to extinguish them from your home with say a vaccum cleaner, mop, steam cleaner or nuclear weapons. They are everywhere. Now, I am quite sure my aunt made up this term. If I google it I can find some Icelandic lady called Hrölli Fröll. Some people call the decorations on a wrapped gift fröll. But on Segersminnevägen 38, the totally official and scientific term of nature’s own, annoying wheat bran – is FRÖLL.

The thing is, there is this funny and amazing secret about fröll. Much like friendship or love, we see it, taste it, try to clean it up, take it for granted or accept it. But we don’t often take a good look at it. I mean really looking, with our heart. If we would, we might discover something very special. Looked at very closely, like this photo shot with a macro lens, fröll, my dear Kina, is just like the friendship between you and me: unexpected, beautiful and angellike.

Love,

C

Search Craft

 

” - Search Craft.”

” – What do you mean?”

”- That’s the name of my future school. It’s a school where you get help to search for your talents.”


 I had asked my students to think about what kind of a school they would like to create, in a world and a time where they could do anything they wished to. Merlijn, twelve years old, sent me back to the key moments in my own education with his answer.

 I think most people have had one or two teachers in their lives who really influenced us forever. Who did something other than just tell us what they knew. Who did something more than to keep a safe distance and limit their task to that of filling us up with terms, years and numbers. I am talking about the ones who actually dare to take a plunge with their pupils or students and walk next to them for a while when they need it on their journey to adulthood.

In my case it was the two art teachers at my gymnasium, a married couple who were about as old as the school building itself. Mr and Mrs Ringström. These two old crows didn’t care about the fact that some teachers had me pinned down as someone who could learn easily and fast and therefore should study maths and physics and try to move on to a higher education. They saw something else in me that was not just slumbering but snoring away in a winter sleep that had lasted for about sixteen years. A creative flame. A love for colours, shapes and movement. A longing to express all that was fluttering around in my chest.

 They provoked me. Woke me up. Got me to start expressing myself through painting, sculpturing and drawing. They also helped me not to kill all first attempts with harsh self-judgement. Thanks to them my life took a very different direction and I am forever grateful.


So if I think about it, the deepest value of education to me is when we get help to search. Search for the boundaries of our knowledge, for the markers telling us where our comfort zone is, search for the talents that might still be slumbering within us but which are nevertheless very much present and waiting to be developped and shared with the world.

Education to me is definitely more about the searching than about the finding. Like I said to young Merlijn, I would sign up for his Search Craft any day.



Love,
C

 

Daily Rumi

Give us gladness that connects

with the Friend, a taste of the quick.

You make a cypress strong

and jasmine jasmine.

Give us the inner listening

that is a way in itself

and the oldest thirst there is.

Do not measure it out with a cup.

I am a fish. You are the moon.

You cannot touch me, but your light

fills the ocean where I live.

Wisdom according to Dr Seuss

"When things start to happen,

don't worry. Don't stew.

Just go right along.

You'll start happening too."

To be and not to want

No jewelry today. I am not wearing anything today. Not even the best pieces. Not the pendant in which I carry mini drawings by my nephews around my neck. Not the angel given to me by my family. Not the earrings from my girlfriend, making me look almost royal. Nor the beautiful ring given to me by my aunt and other family members for my 40th birthday.

I don't want to hope or wish for anything today. Not love from a distance. Not pray for someone's health. Not today. Today is a day of not wanting.

Today is a day of just letting go. Loving life just the way it is this very moment. Celebrate it exactly the way it is.

My bones are aching. I feel filled to the brim with all kinds of intentions and it is a relief to untie them today. When I let go of the visions I wish to make happen, I am rocked by this energy reaching me from underneath, from the very core of Mother Earth. It is the eternal Mother. The She of that divine flame, the core of all that is. She who always knows how to breathe and grow and make everything come to life again. We shake off the rain drops weighing down our leaves, but she keeps on streaming up through the thick roots of our lives, bringing strength, power, stamina. A red drop of always running up from the centre of the Earth.

So I celebrate today. Life. Exactly as it is.

Elias

Lillasyster Emelie och hennes Tony fick en liten Elias!

Snart får vi träffas lilla systerson. Stor kram till min fina familj. Kärlek.