It’s December again, almost the year 2024 has ended and a new year will begin. December is every year the time when the daylight hours are few, the weather is mostly cold, or wet, or both, so there are not many outdoor activities. Instead I look for activities that I can do indoors. Usually getting rid of some clutter in my work room is part of this.

This year I was sorting out a pile of papers that came from a never opened box from moving over 10 years ago. The box itself had been moved around many times in those 10 years, but since we didn’t miss any of the contents it just sat there. And this year I decided to sort it out.

I found a nice letter from my dad with a text that he loved and wanted to share with me. My father died about 15 years ago. Yet after reading the letter I felt I was receiving a message from beyond the grave. The text is from the book ‘a Path with Heart’ by Jack Kornfield (1993). The text moved me and that’s why I want to share it here with all of you.

“There is a tribe in east Africa in which the art of true intimacy is fostered even before birth. In this tribe, the birth date of a child is not counted from the day of its physical birth nor even the day of conception, as in other village cultures. For this tribe the birth date comes the first time the child is a thought in its mother’s mind. Aware of her intention to conceive a child with a particular father, the mother then goes off to sit alone under a tree.

There she sits and listens until she can hear the song of the child that she hopes to conceive. Once she has heard it, she returns to her village and teaches it to the father so they can sing it together as they make love, inviting the child to join them. After the child is conceived, she sings it to the baby in her womb. Then she teaches it to the old women and midwives of the village, so that throughout the labor and at the miraculous moment of birth itself, the child is greeted with its song.

After the birth all the villagers learn the song of their new member and sing it to the child when it falls or hurts itself. It is sung in times of triumph, or in rituals and initiations. This song becomes a part of the marriage ceremony when the child is grown, and at the end of live, his or her loved ones will gather around the deathbed and sing this song for the last time. “