ORDO AMORIS - please be my eyes, my hands, my sword

SÅ festival, Åmot, Norway 2026

For 24 hours at a Christian punk festival I was blindfolded, mute and with bound hands. I could not eat, drink, find my way or rest without the festival participants. Around my neck hung a sign: I cannot speak, please be my words. I cannot see, please be my eyes. I cannot protect myself, please be my hands.

For a day and a night, deacons, families and children carried me from hand to hand.

I wrote this text afterwards :

"ORDO AMORIS – who is my neighbour?

A girl fed me porridge. Spoonful after spoonful. And the porridge never ended. I had given away something I had never thought of as a right: deciding for myself when it is enough.

For 24 hours I walked through a festival in Norway unable to see or speak, with my hands bound. In my bag lay one single rule: Do not leave me alone. If you cannot stay – place my hand in another person's hand.

The first evening I was carried like something precious. I felt welcome in the world.

The second day I was still there. That's when I heard the sighs. I was left sitting in a corner. At dinner: taco chips, salad and tomato sauce with a fork – no eyes, no help. Nine out of ten forkfuls came up empty. Nothing about me had changed. I had gone from intriguing stranger to burden in sixteen hours.

And then my demons woke up: Look at you, playing your games! Everyone KNOWS you're not really blind! How can you be so selfish, demanding this of people – when there are REAL needs?!

But the people said something else. A woman sat down beside me, tears in her voice: she had been thinking all night about how we belong to one another. A deacon told me he would look at his fellow human beings in a new way now, and truly try to listen. The children never left my side, and made bracelets with my name.

Where does love actually end? At the border of the nation, perhaps? Or earlier and closer: at the smell we don't recognize, at the one who is too strange, too demanding – for too long?

This is what I most want to tell you: they made it. With sighs, with a fork – but no one broke the rule. They shouldered the responsibility in different ways: one roasted coffee and let me touch and taste through the whole process, one kept an eye on me but left me sitting in a corner, the children took me into their hearts in that open way only children can. My hand was placed in hand after hand, all the way through.

Embroidered on the hem of my dress: though many, we form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. (Rom 12:5)

The parts of a body do not choose each other. And they are allowed to grow tired.

It hurt. And it held."

I was invited to the festival by artist Gunhild Sannes Larsen. I am thankful for the photos by her and musician Alwin Nedrum.