The Great Divide

(If you prefer to listen to the Audio Version, scroll down to the very end of the blog post)

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a new kingdom was born somewhere in the north of Italy. Idyllically nestled in a chestnut forest, a queen settled down with her king and her children. They decided to found a kingdom of peace, love and healing. So they built a castle, rivalling the high Alps that towered over the wide plain. 
The kingdom grew and prospered. A flower-filled garden was created and the castle became larger and more beautiful. Soon more people settled there.

Among them was another family. They had left their country of origin, as they hoped that life in this new kingdom would bring them more freedom, abundance and a sense of connection between people.
 At first, everything pointed to the fulfilment of this wish. The abundance of the kingdom seemed great, the dream of a house in nature and their own horses was fulfilled, the human community endeavoured to be honest, clear and lovingly connected with each other. But after a while, the beautifully painted picture began to crack. The power of the royal couple was great. Too much for the new family.

They felt more and more uncomfortable in this ruling hierarchy, which was not only characterised by nobility, titles and possessions, but also on a psychological level. Even though the royal couple endeavoured to use their knowledge and power to heal others, their own core was not healed enough. A dark power seemed to be creeping in; it was no longer clear whether the queen's witchcraft was bringing about light or darkness, whether it came from the inner light or from the hidden darkness. The family, and especially the wife, suffered more and more.

They could have bowed down and said goodbye to their own truth. Then perhaps they would still be there today and perhaps the kingdom would have continued to grow and expand, for better or for worse. But they did not bend. One day, in a circle convened for the woman's healing, she shouted: ‘I've had enough! I don't want this anymore!’

She raised her head, stood up, looked the royal couple in the eye at a height, turned round and left the circle.

The royal couple became furious and demanded compensation.
 Deeply disappointed, the family decided to found their own kingdom. And so they moved to the other side of the mountainside. They began to build a second castle, and courted other people who wished to enliven a realm of family life. As a result, more people, and above all many, many children, moved to the mountain. 
So the mountain was home to two kingdoms, separated from each other by a large moat that a stream had formed a long time ago. You could sometimes see and even hear each other talking, as the two sides of the moat were not far apart. It was only a few minutes' walk to the other side.

But the trench that disappointment and conflict had dug was huge. There was an attempt at rapprochement when they shared a train carriage, but it ended disastrously. They argued about money and property and so the kingdoms remained deeply divided, which felt like the best solution for everyone.
The great divide remained, in the landscape and even more so in the hearts of the people.

Two castles, two empires, many people with similar values, and a wide gulf between them.

Many, many years went by without any significant encounters between the two realms. This was to change one year when both communities gained a new member at the same time: on the one side, a girl called Ronja. On the other, a boy called Birk. It wasn't long before the two children met. Young and naive as they were, they didn't care about the rifts and quarrels of their elders, made friends and played together. But the king and queen didn't like this rapprochement at first. They scolded the child and told him to concentrate on his own kingdom and the people there. Confused, the child tried to fulfil this ‘wish’ for a while. However, as it was still very much in touch with its original nature, it didn't take long before it naturally met up with the child on the other side of the ditch again.

As a result, Ronja and Birk completely disregarded the ditch and jumped from one side to the other as they pleased. 
The child of the kingdom, however, sensed the scowls and displeasure of the royal couple and other followers. He was torn between the harmony of his own home and the natural aspirations of his heart. What should it do? Give up the friendship or confront the anger in his own family?


One day, however, the unbelievable happened:The royal couple decided it was time to put the old quarrel to rest and start meeting again. They even thanked the child for being a bridge between the two kingdoms.

So there was a ceremony, high up on the mountain, where the people of both kingdoms came together and welcomed a new year of peace with loud drums. The child could hardly believe it and was delighted to be able to go to the other side of the moat and play there without a care in the world. Birk and Ronja experienced a brief period of light-heartedness in which everything seemed to change for the better.

But it wasn't long before the royal couple began to feel insecure about their power. For the ignorance of the moat was not the child's only difference. More and more, it seemed to doubt the existing foundations and the beauty behind the facades kingdom. This reminded the royal couple all too well of the woman who once left the kingdom for similar reasons. Sensing a threat to her own position of power, the queen decided that the child had to leave the kingdom. At the time, the child was suffering from a severe fever and it was raining and storming outside.

But that didn't matter to queen. She closed her heart and threw the child out of the kingdom.
 And so the great divide grew again, rapprochement began to falter once more and the mountain was once again forced to harbour division and discord. 
But there was one good thing about it all: Ronja and Birk could now play together unhindered and roam the woods. And they soon realised that it was much nicer this way. 
And if they haven't died, they are still playing today.

‘The GreatDivide’. A title I stole from an Asterix book. In this one, too, a great divide - a dispute, to be precise - splits one community into two. The two communities I am talking about in my story are the Terra Amica and TerraMiSu communities. The real history may have been different in some details, I have no insight into the exact events, I only know accounts of both passages and have added my own interpretation. 
In any case, we lived in Terra Amica ourselves from July until we were kicked out overnight in February. Lou and Elouan had high fevers, I was recovering, it was raining outside, we had appointments... it felt very heartless and it was completely incomprehensible to us. Writing it all down seemed too exhausting and ‘vomit-inducing’, but in this fairy tale form I have at least managed to convey the story of the great divide that actually exists in the landscape and has shaped our experience here. 
In the Asterix book, a man from one side and a woman from the other side fall in love and ignore the ditch. I found it difficult to identify with this pair of lovers. So I chose Ronja and Birk, from "Ronja robberdaughter". On the one hand, this fits better with the wooded landscape here, and on the other, there are actually two large houses that look like castles or fortresses. One of the ‘royal couple’, one of the ‘family’ who left the kingdom of Terra Amica and founded TerraMiSu. The most pertinent point for the character choice of Ronja and Birk, however, is probably that it was actually the case that it was not appreciated when we went to the neighbours so that Elouan could play with the children. We always felt like Ronja or Birk when we ‘hopped’ back and forth between the sides of the ditch. The only difference is that the peace between the two sides at that moment did not end as fabulously as in the novel. Now we ourselves are on the other side of the divide and look back with anger.


This experience has brought us close to one of humanity's biggest problems: the ego.

It has shown us that it is probably never good for people to have material and psychological power over others, even if the intentions behind it are good, even if the goal is healing. As long as the core is not healed, no healthy plant will grow from it.
 We learned that speaking out truth can lead to kickouts. We were also able to recognise that many beautiful, even dreamlike words and promises are only a fleeting glamour if they are not really lived beyond words.

It certainly wouldn't have taken long for us to leave ourselves, but the kick out only more than confirmed our strange feeling.


It's crazy: not long ago, this divide between the communities annoyed us immensely. Now we're happy about it. It's also a prehistory of humanity that we came very close to: separation.

Yes, we have come very close to some deep topicss, both personal and collective. We have learnt a lot, made some progress and yet we are back at a similar point as before.

So now we seem to have travelled another round on the spiral of life and the familiar questions arise again: what's next? Where to and how? When will we finally get going and not just dreaming? Or maybe there's something else to dream about? Not even a car anymore. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? The crisis from a year ago is knocking. It's really annoying!


And even though the crisis is tangible, we are also more confident than before that everything is just as it should be. Fortunately, we know one thing for sure: things will get better! What were we actually planning to do before we came here? To Norway. Aha. So we're going that way after all? Well, let's take things nice and slow. Feeling instead of thinking to find the right direction.

We are temporarily taking care of a house, two dogs and two cats in the TerraMiSu community, which owners stay in Germany for a while. Those days it is not clear if this community will still exist longer, as half of it is about to move back to Germany. Also ourselves don't know whether we want to stay at all, but we are grateful for now to stay here and be surrounded by friendly people whom we can meet at eye level. We have donkeys as neighbours, Elouan plays happily with the children and, despite all the uncertainty, we are planting seeds in the ground and looking forward to revitalising the garden.

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