Dear Souls of Norway:
I looked for a picture of something of Norway and her people that might represent this time. I found this picture of a beautiful Norway Pine, one who is limber and leans to the side, and yet remains strong. Like you. This tree belonging to you, is literally called “weeping Norway spruce,” like our “weeping willow” trees here in the USA are named too, for their green wands and leaves growing fountain-like.

My grandmother who was from the Old Country had a weeping willow in her side yard. But she could speak little English, and could not remember the name “weeping willow”… thus she called the weeping willow trees, the “sorry leaves.”

Many of us here on this side of the ocean, are like the ‘sorry leaves’ now, for you. We are swaying and bending and are so deeply sorry for all the pain you experience now. As a post-trauma specialist for four decades, I know that though there are near 100 souls who have perished right before your heart’s eyes, there are thousands of stories attached to each dear soul… and I hope you will write those stories, pray them, dance them, music them– for those in addition to calm silence– are said by most of the holy books across the world, to be many voices of Creator bending near to help heal us. Healed but scarred, this will be your endeavor now, remembering that scar tissue is stronger than skin.

I wanted to tell you too that I have moved to translate into Norwegian, a post-trauma recovery protocol for deputizing citizens in this much needed work of comfort and calming that will continue in the months forward in Norway once the shock burns lower and lower. Currently this protocol to help citizens know the signs, symptoms, ways of helping is translated into Farsi, Chinese, Haitian French, and soon Japanese. But especially I wanted to mention that when I put out the request for volunteer Norwegian translators for the protocol on my facebook page, within an hour, twenty native Norwegian speakers had volunteered. I just wanted you to know of the many hearts rushing toward you in so many ways. That there are so so many who are true and stalwart, like your hearts too.

I’ll be calling my Norwegian book publisher, Vigmostad & Bjorke, here in a few minutes. I stayed up late for you are now in the middle of your business day about 1:30PM while it is 5:30AM here. I wanted to give my condolences to my publishers who I know are young and single, and also middle-aged persons with teenage children. I’ll be offering to them too the counsel that they stay away from the news on television and print, for there is such a thing as secondary trauma that comes from repetitive news after a close-in tragedy. The dear people I cared for after the Columbine High School massacre and the survivor families of 9-11 on west and east coasts, found they were able to walk with more calm and strength when they did not watch in media that which is already indelibly engraved on their souls with flame.

In closing I wanted to tell you, as a poet, I love the Norwegian poets and want to bring this poem from your own land back to you, as miel, as we Latinos say, as honey over your hearts.

Be well and may arms greater surround you and comfort you siempe, always. There will be time enough to sort out all the who, why and wherefore. Let not the media and its interest in fingerpointing and guilt push you away from your central work which is to grieve and to heal, and to help others. May you ever have the resiliance of all the Norway pines, for now, the weeping spruce… and as time passes, the giant spruces who grow so tall and sway in any wind, proud and in grace.

This comes with warmest regards, and here is the beautiful poem by your own …Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge.

CODA
Laertes, at the end of Olav H Hauge’s poem, is a figure from Greek mythology, who even as an old man, took down his sword in joy in order to run forward with his sons into another battle, then another, another, for it gave him a sense of meaning and life. Here in the poem by Olav Hauge, he has placed Laertes to living life instead of dwelling on strife: he shows him growing a massive new tree, a tender and nourishing fig tree, ‘holding the center of what can grow and fruit again’ …in other words, tending to that which bears sweet fruits, whilst others swirl in the cacophonous worldly world.

This is a poem I’ve shared for years with my patients who have lost so much in a disaster. It is not always a poem for a fresh wound, but for a wound that aches, later, or from time to time. It is a poem calling the person away from focus on the wound only, and back into the center of soul again: the care of the living ‘tree of life.’

Everyday
from Olav H Hauge’s poetry sheaves, Drops in the East Wind, 1966

You’ve left the big storms
behind you now.
You didn’t ask then
why you were born,
where you came from, where you were going to,
you were just there in the storm,
in the fire.
But it’s possible to live
in the everyday as well,
in the grey quiet day,
set potatoes, rake leaves,
carry brushwood.
There’s so much to think about here in the world,
one life is not enough for it all.
After work you can fry bacon
and read Chinese poems.
Old Laertes cut briars,
dug round his fig trees,
and let the heroes fight on at Troy.

This is a fruiting fig tree.