How to Navigate in the Urban Jungle

‘Go left! Go left!’ The voice from the GPS is repeating herself. ‘Shut up!’ I am talking out loud. ‘You don’t know this city. It has been illegal to go left or right in this crossing for like two years. No way I am going left, getting a big fine and probably having an accident on the top of it!’

There are so many voices these days telling you all kind of stuff. I need to be very careful who I listen too. It doesn’t mean I am not listening to a lot of people or voices. I do. I listen but I don’t listen. It is like the other day I was sitting in a conversation and the agenda was pretty clear, but we started out with some small talk. The guy in front of me talked about something at work. I think. I didn’t really listen. And I thought to myself: ‘Concentrate! Pretend you’re interested. I did and managed to concentrate.’

I make a lot of choices and decisions these days, both in business and in my personal life. Too many choices. I cannot pay attention to everything. How do I navigate in this urban jungle? I listen to a lot of different voices, well meaning people and experts and then I make my decision.

There are loads of people that have opinions but I tend to follow the people that can show me results. People that have achieved something have got something right. It doesn’t mean they are right about everything, but there is something they have understood.  

Proverbs in the Bible tells me;
“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.”

Do I follow the GPS’ direction? Yes, most of the time. But not when the terrain tells me something else.

Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart

Lately I have been speaking to heartbroken people. Just people I know that have shared the pain of different kinds of heartbreak. I totally understand, feel compassion and at the same time completely useless in terms of helping. I can only let the story and tears come, listen and then point to a greater perspective, share a few thoughts that have helped me in similar situations and then agree to stand together through this. I believe in that; Standing together. The feeling of standing alone is devastating.

I also believe in something else, something greater and someone greater. The facts are still the same, the situation hasn’t changed, but there is going to be a change because I know the creator of heaven and earth and the one who can mend a broken heart.

Alicia Keys sings:
“Have you ever tried sleeping with a broken heart?
Well you could try to sleeping in my bed
Lonely, own me, nobody ever shut it down like you”

There are loads of people with this condition and similar feelings and experience. Also loneliness seems to be one of the biggest diseases in our modern society. Are we all left alone? Should we just give in to this or are there ways out, around and above all these things?

One of the prophets is describing how much God cares for the ones with sorrow and grief in their heart and spirit:
‘I dwell in the high and holy place, With him who has a contrite and humble spirit, To revive the spirit of the humble, And to revive the heart of the contrite ones.’

I’ll let Alicia sing the last phrase here:
“…So, tonight I’m gonna find a way to make it without you…”

How to walk on water

People tend to love how-to-books. You can get all kinds of books on gardening, golfing, marketing, carpeting and what have you. We like to achieve things in life, be able to create, develop and mend things. It is good I guess. Our society is in constantly changed because of this. We want to approve the ways we do things, the way traffic is organized and the way we build houses.

We tend to like simple explanation on how to fix everything. People show me apps on their iPhones that make them able to monitor their sleep quality during the night, the best prices in the stores and so on.

At the beach in Santa Barbara, California, I watched some guys walking on water. They used the stand-up-wave-board which probably has a more elegant name. I guess they would have problems with waves but on the flat water it worked perfectly.

How to walk on water if you can’t afford a board like that and if there are winds and waves? According to the Bible Jesus came wandering on the water. Just like that. I think there are two or three methods.

If the density of the surface is changed, you should be able to walk on water. This is known as ice. The circumstances and environment is then changed. So I guess it is cheating. The second method would be to cancel or even out gravity. That takes power and buoyancy.

Peter wanted to walk on water. Jesus said: “Come.” It went well at first but then he started to sink. Jesus gave a clue to the most effective method by his direct question:

“You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

Understanding signs

We were driving back over the mountains to Taormina on Sicily. In a hurry actually. We were to return the rental car. Suddenly signs are telling us that the road is closed ahead. «Earthquake» they said. I didn’t really believe them. The road wasn’t blocked. We kept going. Didn’t have the time to go back down  and around the mountains. After a while big rifts appeared in the road, not deep though, so I still found it possible to drive. But I was disturbed. Was it safe?

We met a couple of motorbikes and stopped to ask them whether it was safe to continue. «Yes. It is OK. Just drive carefully.» So we did and to be honest it wasn’t too bad.

Why did I first ignore the signs? After a few weeks travelling in the south of Italy, we had kind of adapted. We were getting a grip of the language. People didn’t speak much English. And we got used to the traffic. I read the signs to be more guiding and not strict regulations. They were not always pointing in the right direction. Not always updated either.

I have thought of this situation many times since then. I learned something from it. There are situations where I would ignore the signs and it will be completely OK. But for sure there are signs I shouldn’t ignore.

And I have connected this to what Jesus told the poeple that asked for signs;
He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

There are signs.

Kunst

English version after the illustration.

Vet ikke om jeg kan si jeg har noen favorittkunstner. Med kunstnere i familien når jeg liksom ikke helt opp når det gjelder å ha greie på sånt, men det finnes jo definitivt kunst jeg liker og det finnes kunst jeg synes er fullstendig motbydelig. Og da kan det faktisk godt tenkes at det teknisk sett er god kunst, men jeg trenger heldigvis ikke synes det er god kunst. Det har nok mye med smak å gjøre, som med alt kreativt uttrykk.

Men jeg kan si at jeg liker den bergenske kunstneren Harald Kryvi. Av en eller annen besynderlig grunn studerte jeg i sin tid biologi på Universitetet i Bergen. Der var det ingen kvinnelige studenter som gikk glipp av Kryvis forelesninger. Det trenger ingen utdypninger. Senere har jeg bare observert kunsten hans. Han lager fantastiske bilder hvor han gir liv til de indre organene i kroppen. Teknikken er etsing og radering av kobberplater. Han får tarmtottene til å danse og hjertet til å smile. Noe sånt. Det kan være verdt å besøke nettbutikken hans eller få med seg en kunstutstilling.

Gode kunstnere har en gave til å gi liv til tingene de gjør. Jeg kan huske en gang jeg hørte Leiv Ove Andsnes spille piano. Det var noe helt annet! Her var det ikke bare snakk om å spille feilfritt. Musikken ble levende. Det samme skjer når Ole Edvard Antonsen tar deg med over vidden med tonene fra trompeten sin.

Skaperevne er en fantastisk ting. Det er tydelig at noen har fått mer av det enn andre, og hvem har vi det fra? Gud sier gjennom profeten Jesaja;

Det var jeg som formet jorden
og skapte mennesker der.
 Jeg spente ut himmelen med mine hender
og gav påbud til hele dens hær.

Tårekanalkonsert

Bildet viser en del tårekanaler (glandula lacrimalis), som ligger mellom øyet og nesehulen.
www.kryvi.no/webshop.asp

Art

I don’t know if I can state that I have a favorite painter. With artists in the family I kind of feel that I don’t quite qualify to state something like that. But clearly there is art that I like and there is art that I despise. It might technically be good art, but luckily I don’t have to think so. It is all about taste I guess.

But I can state that I like the Bergen artist Harald Kryvi. For some strange reason I once studied biology at the University of Bergen. I can tell that no female student ever missed Kryvi’s lectures. No further explanation needed.  Since then I have only observed his pictures. He creates amazing pictures that give life to the inner organs. The technique is etching and scratching on copper, probably not described correctly. He makes the villi dance and the heart smile. Something like that. I can recommend visiting his webshop.

Skilled artists give life to the things they produce or the way they perform. I remember listening to Leiv Ove Andsnes playing the piano. That was different! It was not a question of only avoiding slip of fingers. The music came alive. The same thing happens when Ole Edvard Antonsen take you on a journey over the mountains with the tune from his trumpet.

Creativity is a fantastic thing. Some have got more than others. Who did they inherit it from?

God says through the prophet Isaiah:
I have made the earth, And created man on it.
I–My hands–stretched out the heavens,
And all their host I have commanded.

Small World

Some years back I wrote an email to one of the most powerful women in Norway. It was meant as an encouragement and not really supporting her political views. It was more acknowledging the challenge it must to be to have a position like hers. She wrote me back and thanked me, but we never met. Then.

A few years later I was in a empty bar waiting for a date who actually stood me up (it turned out he had a good reason), and the woman from the former paragraph just walked in. I had to make myself known; short hand shake, presentation and small talk. Moment of acknowledgement.

And I just realized: You can meet just anybody at any time. No pre warning and no limitations. We’re living in a small world. Everything seems to be more and more connected.

A business connection livng in New York was telling me about a guy he knew in Oslo. He was describing his work and accomplishments. I looked at him and just said; “That is my cousin!” Of course.

Like when my friend told me she was closely related to one of the Beatles’. My world shrunk again and the world history came very close.

It is a lot of action in Egypt these days. A few thousand years back this guy Joseph was in prison there. He had a gift of interpreting dreams and was brought to Pharaoh’s house to do so. It gave him a position as a minister in the government in a very challenging time. I bet his 11 brothers felt strange when they came from the famine in Canaan to buy food and realized their brother, who they thought was dead, was in charge of the whole development program.

Small world.

Royal Jeans

I have read half of Queen Noor’s autobiography twice. The same half twice. Famous, great leaders have led fascinating lives and I like to read their books, but I might skip the part that looks more like a flight schedule and is naming all the ambassadors in the universe.

She was given the name Noor when she married King Hussein of Jordan. Her birth name was Lisa Halaby. She is American by birth, and of Syrian, British, and Swedish descent. She met the king when she was 24. He was 42 and had been married three times and had 8 children.

It is an amazing love story. She describes how little prepared she was for a royal life. She says that she basically wore blue jeans and blazers. She describes the transition when she got married: “Life as I had known it was over.” But she found her own way in a new country with a new religion. They got four children and she became involved in both politics and different international organizations, and she still is after Hussein’s death in 1999.

Her “Leap of faith” as she calls her book make me think of another young girl entering in to a royal life. She also had a purpose. She also was brave. Esther in the book with the same name in the Bible became a queen and was by that saving her people.

That is also an amazing story and I would read the whole thing. One small glimpse here:

“Each young woman’s turn came to go in to King Ahasuerus after she had completed twelve months’ preparation, …..: six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with perfumes and preparations for beautifying women.”

It was time to get rid of the jeans.

King Hussein and Queen Noor

Early Bird

For a few months now I have had this illustration hanging on the mirror in my bathroom. It’s put there to remind me that an early rise is not a waste.

The old English proverb behind the illustration is “The early bird catches the worm”. It is not really about getting out of bed. But still. I mean, if I get on my feet, step into the bathroom and turn the lights on, I will wake up. Right? I will get ready for another day.

The actual meaning of the proverb is said to be: “Success comes to those who prepare well and put in effort.”

It doesn’t mean I cannot sleep in. For some reason we need sleep. They keep telling us that there are important processes in the body and the brain that run during sleep. So I sleep.

But there should be no contradiction between rest and an early rise. I can sleep when I sleep and get ready when I have to get ready. But I guess there are different ways of preparing and putting in effort.

Many years ago I remember I was looking for a new job. I prayed about it because I didn’t actually know which direction to go to get job offers. The next morning I got a phone call and a job offer out of the blue.

It made me think of a psalm in the Bible:
“It is vain for you to rise up early, to take rest late, to eat the bread of anxious toil–for He gives blessings to His beloved in sleep.”

Good Coffee and Great People

In the morning I can feel happy just by thinking about coffee. Just the idea of coffee makes me smile. There is justice in the world after all: I can drink coffee. Drinking the coffee I am getting my hopes up again: This can turn out to be a really good day. I feel sorry for people who don’t drink coffee.

I can enjoy my coffee all by myself or I can share the moment with friends. If the company is good there are no limits. Ideas are born, news is shared and compliments and feedback is filling the air. Sometimes it is a play ground and sometimes it is a holy place for revelation. No kidding. I have seen it. I have taken part.

I am really impressed by what can happen through good conversations. Lately I have had several meetings with great people, and I am amazed beyond expectation what can happen during a couple of hours talk.

Recently a meeting with an old friend turned out to be a place of acknowledgement and encouragement. For both of us I believe.

In some cases I think: God must be here. These words are putting everything into place! I should probably have built an altar there. At least I should have put up a small rock; a token of gratitude and appreciation. A milestone.

I think it must be almost the same feeling that for instance Jacob had, described in Genesis:
‘There he built an altar, and he called the place El Bethel, because it was there that God revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother.’

But I don’t think he had coffee. Poor guy.

Inspiration

Is there such a thing as divine inspiration? Where does it all come from? Do all creations or ideas come from coincidences and random appointments?

“It wasn’t really planned,” a friend of me stated. Another baby on the way, and they hadn’t really planned for it. On the contrary; they wanted to other things now. Yet the baby was making its way and hopefully turning out to be a big blessing for the family.

The piece of art hanging in front of me is kind of childish. A smiling elephant is kind of cute. It is wearing a yellow dress which makes it even cuter. It takes creativity to paint something like that.

Listening to Handel’s Messiah make people speechless and some will start crying from the beauty of it. Amazing is a word worn out these days, but that oratorio is amazing. All the accords, harmonies, lyrics, instruments and voices put together – it is amazing.

Where did Handel get his inspiration? From a new baby born? From a cute painting?

“Has God created everything?” I asked the children visiting. After some discussion the 5 year old concluded: “God has created everything apart from the things.” Things were referring to roads, furniture and so on.

In the Bible Moses got instructions from God how to build the tabernacle and all the holy elements:

“And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty. So you shall speak to all who are gifted artisans, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron’s garments, to consecrate him, that he may minister to Me as priest.”

5-year-old has drawn his mommy with a baby in the belly