Photo of the Author, Aashild, and her husband Rolf Schanke Eikum, volunteer from Norway 2010/2011 ; 本文作者 Aashild和丈夫 Rolf Schanke Eikum 合照, 他們是挪威的2010/2011年度義務工作者 Photos are provided by Rolf & Aashild 相片由作者提供. The title is added and the Chinese Translations is done by Adalyn YP Chan 中英文標題及後面的中譯文由陳婉萍提供
Reflections by Aashild：Every morning we are starting the day with Morning Prayer at Tao Fong Shan, in the Christ Temple. It is in Chinese, but almost every time someone is translating for us.
But not for today, the preacher is engaged. He really wants to tell us something. People around me are listening, and I can see on their faces that they like it. Sometimes they are laughing, but I can’t understand a word. Chinese is so different from our Norwegian language.
So, what am I doing? I am doing some reflections. Maybe it is like this when coming into a sermon in a church, in Norway or in other places, where you are not often visiting, or you are not familiar with the spiritual language, or maybe you are a child, and the preaching is more for the grownups, and it sounds senseless……
What will be the result of such experience? Maybe they will not want to come again unless they have to.
Or, they can do as what I did this morning. I started to look around. I found some Chinese characters on the wall, but they are also senseless to me. Then my eyes turned to the cross, the symbol of where Jesus died to save us all, and then to the baptismal. I remember that I was once baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And my eyes went further to the altar, to the sun symbolizing Jesus as the light of the world. A lot of Christian symbols.
So, this morning all the art, all the symbols, the building itself was the preaching to me. Hopefully our churches also will give this kind of experience when the preach can be difficult to understand. And that shows how important also the decorations and art are in such holy places. They can give meaning in what elsewhere would seem absurd….
(中譯 Aashild的分享) 在道風山的時候，我們以參加在聖殿舉行的禱告會，來開始每天的生活。禱告會用中文進行，但差不多每一次也有人為我們作英文傳譯。
今天倒例外…傳譯者剛好忙著帶領今天的禱告會。他真的想要告訴我們些甚麼。四周的人都在傾聽，我可以從他們的臉看得出他們喜歡聽。有時他們都笑了。我卻完全聽不懂。漢語跟我們的挪威語差別很大。那麼，我在做什麼？我在思考。也許有時到教堂去就是這樣，無論是在挪威或在其它地方，有時你到訪不熟悉的教會，或許不熟悉他們的屬靈詞語，也許你還年青並且當天的訊息比較切合成年人，有時主題與你毫不相干…
這種經驗的結果會如何？如非必要，也許他們不想再來。或者，他們可以參考我今天早上的做法。我開始四處看看。牆上有些漢字，他們的形狀對我毫無意義。然後我的眼睛轉向十字架，那是耶穌的死亡拯救我們的象徵。我的眼睛接著落在洗禮座上。我想起我曾經奉聖父、聖子、聖靈的名受洗。接著我的眼光落在聖壇上，那裡的正中央有「太陽」，象徵耶穌乃世界之光。我又看到大量的基督教符號。
這樣，今天早上，我眼前所有的藝術、符號和教堂建築，向我傳遞聖經的道理。希望我們的教會也能讓會眾有如此的經驗，因為有時不可能所有來賓都很理解講壇上的訊息。並且，這經驗讓我明白，在傳遞上帝話語的地方的裝飾和藝術，顯得如何重要，在訊息以外賦予易於理解、易於接收的意義。