Truly, the exchange programme is helping us to unfold so many unknown things that sometimes I'm left out wondering about the way the Swedish people live & carry out thier lives so nicely, even if they are stressed about each minute, each second of time. Truly appriciable.. :)
On 18th of March, we had a class on Swedish religiosity and culture by Ma'am Hanna. She talked about Martin Luther's contribution to the promotion of the Protestantism. Then she had a conclusion saying that Swedish people, most of them, separate their lifestyle from the religion, because of the industrialisation and urbanisation. As a result, there is a substancial decrease in the people's belief in God. Hence it is found that only a few people go to the church. Having said this, she showed us with the help of a video clip, that how, with the help of various musical concerts the youth is encouraged to visit the churches all over again. Following this, she adviced us to visit a church and attend a concert just to have an idea. Thus, it was decided that we would plan to visit the same.
Sunday was the day of visit. In the evening we visited 'Mary Magdelene's Church.' To hear a concert first of all, was an unknown thing to me, since I'd never attended such a thing before. But the minute it started.. the first tone of the chorus, really touched my heart. The concert was basically a group of people and.. that was it. They didn't have any additional intrument other than the tuning bell which is normally used for identifying the base tone, in Western Classical music. The whole of their strength was their voice toning, voice modulation, and that urge of putting forth the thought behind each composition performed... For each composition they shifted themselves according to the demand of the voice required. This group was headed by one single man, who directed with his hands and the group followed and sang. I was basically mesmorised with the way it was presented. Some people in the group had such a superb base voice whereas the others were touching everyone's heart with their high pitch of the voices. They presented around 8 to 10 compositions. All worth listening, worth enjoying.
I would say, if such methods are used to attract more and more people to the church, the religiosity here has a wonderful future. :)
Dear Vibha,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the informative post. Our priests here in Goa keep telling us -how the churches abroad are practically empty and some even closed! Sad state of affairs.
Anyway, did you get a chance to interact with the parish priest? Do they celebrate mass? how often? How do people there spend their Sundays?
Thanks in advance,
regards,
Sameena
Dear Ma'am Sameena,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Ma'am for the comment.
Since the visit to the church wasn't on the official schedule, we couldn't meet the priest. We went there just to observe as to how the youngsters are being encouraged to come to church. We discussed about the mass in the religion class. Most of them don't go to mass. Agree with you ma'am.. sad state of affairs!