Saturday, January 26, 2013

Student-DTS in the city of tigers

Here is an illustration I did for YWAM Norway´s DTS-magazine for 2013/2014.

On the tiger´s shoulder you can see the YWAM-logo,
and if you look well, you can read "YWAM" and "Oslo" on the top and the bottom of it´s flank.

With Jan Erik from Aventis Studio, we did a photo-shoot for the other six YWAM-centers that are running a DTS this year.
We were not able to get a hold of the couple from YWAM Oslo, so I made a tiger illustration for their page in the magazine. The finished magazine is down here:



Here are some photos I took while I drew the tiger picture. On the third photo I had started to draw a sketch for the Vilde-poster, but finished it with a tiger-sketch as practice for the big tiger drawing.




Oslo, City of Tigers
Oslo was first called referred to as "city of tigers" in a poem from 1870 by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, one of the four great writers of 19th century Norway, and autor of the Norwegian national anthem.
He described the people of the city to be cold and hostile like tigers. In the poem a tiger is let loose and attacks a rustic horse that represents rural Norway. The onlooking people of city are eager to see the horse bleed. But the horse defends itself well by kicking the tiger off in flying curves. The poet leaves the fight unresolved, and the rustic rural horse remains unconquered.
Several other Norwegian poets and writers have since referred to the city of Oslo as a city of tigers.

Student-DTS Oslo
More than a hundred years later, the city still has it´s tiger-stripes. Many who are new, foreign and strangers to the city are met with reservation. This year, YWAM Oslo is starting a DTS for christians coming to study and work in Oslo. Confessing christians are a minority in Norway, and I think this DTS will be a rare opportunity for them to hang together and learn to cope with, and kick off the tigers of the city.



Any christian, coming to study in Oslo, I would really recommend to take this DTS or be involved with YWAM Oslo.
When I was 16, I moved from countryside Gramsbergen to the green city of Arnhem, where I started to study. I was part of a christian student-union there, and that made a big difference for me. The christian people around me in that time – fellow-students with the same backgrounds and desires – have made it so much easier for me to choose to keep on living as a christian.

What Joakim and Elyse talk about in the video, is also one of my personal goals for 2013. I want to follow Jesus daily, and set my priorities and efforts on making it the norm of my every day.
After I drew and wrote something on my blog for every day of the last year, I got to see how much being a christian is in the daily choices, rather than that it is about special and typical things.
Regular DTS-courses are good, but there is a danger that they miss out in translating the teaching and experiences from the classroom-setting back into "the ordinary life".


You can read Bjørnson´s original poem (starting at page 47) online at the Norwegian National library´s website.
Project Gutenberg has an english translation that is titled Good Cheer. (the same page has an english translation of the Norwegian national hymn)

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