We, about 80 adults – with our about 20 children – who are what are called 'permanent residents' on Vækstcenteret in Nørre Snede, everyone has taken responsibility for our wonderful place.
Which is both a course venue, a social experiment (my words that I'm not sure my friends there will all agree with) and a small spiritual university.
This shared responsibility is both internal and external. It applies to both the daily operations of the place and the way we represent it externally.
So when I say yes to producing this Advent calendar, together with Christoffer, it's not without some nervousness. Because what will my friends and colleagues at the center think?
Do I act as an okay representative of the values, practices and way of life we share?
Am I filling in too much? Can friends and fellow practitioners recognize themselves in the calendar's picture of the place?
And what does Jes, who is both a close friend and my teacher, think?

In addition, the Growth Center has generously accepted the project. Christoffer is staying at the center during the recording, he and I have been provided with the Wooden Hall, the ideal setting for the production. Three of my close friends have been interviewed and told deeply personal things about religion, about faith and experience and about Christmas as a transmission. Can Christoffer and I live up to the hospitality?

And what will the listeners think?
I believe that the total amount of practice, that is, guided meditations, that Christoffer and I have integrated as a central part of this calendar, is some of the most meditatively comprehensive that has ever been broadcast on Danish Radio.
So isn't it understandable that I feel a certain amount of nervousness?

So far, the feedback I have received has been positive. Christoffer says the same about what DR has heard.
But we are not there yet. Tomorrow comes the fourth episode. And it is coming to a head, in which we will deal with some of the deepest – and most controversial – parts of the Gospel of Thomas. And we will refer to some really exciting, but not yet published, texts that Jes Bertelsen has written about the gospel. Which also require you to keep your hat and glasses on.

But that's how it has to be. A calendar is also a build-up of tension towards a culminating event: the story, the memory, the account of the birth of Jesus: about the miracle that an ordinary person, a person like, in a certain sense, you and I, can be born and develop into a channel for a call to love and the presence of someone who is today shockingly radical – and perhaps a necessity?

ABOUT ZEITZ ZEITZ ON DR P1

The fourth episode of DR's Advent Calendar with Christoffer Emil Bruun and Peter Høeg, Peter's Christmas, is about love. The heart of Christmas.
For Christoffer and Peter, love is the main theme of Christmas.
At the same time, it raises some of the big questions of the holiday:
How does love unfold in the Christmas consumer festival?
If Christmas is a celebration of the heart, why is it also the season for domestic violence? And for loneliness?

The focal point of the Advent calendar is once again the Gospel of Thomas. This time especially the passages that say something deeper about love. About the relationship between the spiritual teacher and the close student. About the balance between daily life and spirituality.

Christoffer and Peter ask – again – each other and the listeners if it is possible to be inspired by the radical calls of the gospel. To find a practice, something that can be done, that can lead us closer to an experience of who Jesus really was, and where the path he pointed to goes. Something that can help us towards the heart of Christmas.

You can hear the fourth episode of the Advent calendar, Peter's Christmas, in the program  SPIRIT OF THE AGE on P1 from 11 am on Sunday, December 18th.