Religion with a Swedish flavour ...

I am right now reading in Swedish a small book entitled Frälsarkransen, which translates into English as lifebuoy. It is by an older bishop of the Church of Sweden, Martin Lönnebro, who has devised a set of prayer/meditation beads, a bit on the line of a rosary/prayer rope, though in the hand more like Moslem worry beads, and explains how to use them.

What am I doing anywhere near the Church of Sweden? some will ask. The CoS, with gay marriage and a coupled lesbian bishop (of Stockholm), is not exactly flavour of the month in the Russian Orthodox Church. Yet there is something in the book, written extremely simply, which attracts me. I can best describe the approach as giving people space and time to find their own way to God, with a strong emphasis on silence, and with reference to the European mystic tradition. It is an approach in which, if I have understood it right, morality and ethics come out of this silence and the relationship with the Trinity which it leads into. This silence is something I miss in the Orthodox tradition, which quickly becomes a barrage of words, with no space for silence (if there is a gap of more than 3 seconds in a 2-hour Orthodox liturgy, someone has made a mistake) and where morality is imposed and policed heavy-handedly. The Swedish approach restores a balance...