SAKs 30års jubileum i Kabul

SCA 30^th Anniversary Kabul  2012.11.01 

Dear Distinguished guests,Your excellencies, SCA staff and management, ministers, ambassadors, senators, parliamentarians from Sweden and Afghanistan:

This we have now

- is not imagination.

This is not grief or joy.

Not a judging state, or an elation, 

or sadness.

Those come and go. 

This is the Presence, that doesn't.

By this words from the poem ”This We Have Now” of our beloved Mawlana Jalal-ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, I’d like to set the tone of the few minutes we have left.

Swedish Afghanistan Committee is in the time, in the running course from birth in 1982, via tough times and Diaspora, struggle, growth, resistance and many achievements in the youth, to the maturity of a 30 years old but still young adult.
A body that is thirty knows its own value, it is an entity that the surrounding world recognises.
It can even be a well-established organisation that continuously has produced good deeds and renders praise!

But let me quote Rumi again – he also says:

“Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth.”

I, who for a short second in eternity have the privilege to be the chair of this collected efforts that we are, I also think in all humbleness, that we can only live in our present. The magic is in the present.

We struggle with our plans and policies, our strategies, evaluations and matrixes in order to ensure good quality and effectiveness. We constantly therefore look backwards and forwards in time and around us in society and geography. And so we shall!

But it is NOW and HERE that we exist. Only now.

So let us for one little moment relax from the struggles of yesterday and tomorrow and from the struggles in the outer world or maybe even from those amongst and inside our selves. 
Let us unfold our own myth and magic!

What do we find?

Other wise men say there exist only three real choices in life: that what brings you farther away from love, that what brings you closer to love and finally - the choice to wait.

My personal finding is that we now need to wait. Need a little rest. A halt, a pause for reflexion. 

-Have we become that 30 year old personality we wanted to be?

-Are we where we want to be ?

- Or are we what the surrounding world wants us to be?

-Maybe are we too occupied with duties that we loose the track?

-Do we risk to lose contact with our hearts and souls?

“Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth”, Rumi said.

I will not try give you my answers to these questions. I will just, as chair, instead give all my heartfelt thanks for all efforts and struggle being done by everyone so far. Both by people present in this room and by absent friends

I would like to give us all this one moment in eternity to listen to our hearts and maybe find some rest and a good portion of hope for the future of the Afghan people. 
Hopefully we all also share this deep thankfulness.

Dear friends: SCA is one and shall stay one. It is the unified struggle and efforts that has taken us to who we are and where we are. Let us not forget that.

The “we” and “them”, the east and west, the polarities, boundaries and different view points are all just an illusion. It is just US. It is HERE and NOW.

At last another Rumi poem of ecstasy and sobriety, a little shortened, will sum up what I intend to say:

Why think thus, Oh men of piety,

- I have returned to sobriety?
I am neither a Moslem, nor a Hindu
I am not Christian, Zoroastrian, nor Jew
I am neither of the West nor the East
Not of the ocean, nor an earthly beast
I am neither a natural wonder
Nor from the stars yonder
Neither flesh of dust, nor wind inspire
Nor water in veins, nor made of fire
.....
Not of ancient promises, nor of future prophesy
Not of hellish anguish, nor of paradisic ecstasy

……

My place is the no-place

My image is without face

Neither of body nor the soul

- I am of the Divine Whole.

I eliminated duality with joyous laughter

Saw the unity of here and the hereafter

Unity is what I sing, unity is what I speak

Unity is what I know, unity is what I seek

Intoxicated from the chalice of Love

I have lost both worlds below and above

…

For that hour spent, for such moment

I’d give my life, and thus repent 

Beloved Master, Shams-e Tabrizi

In this world with Love I’m so drunk

….

Thaskakor!