State Representative David Bly, MN District 25B

I recently attended the St. Olaf Christmas concert and was reminded how moving the choir performances can be. It was a rich selection from a variety of cultural backgrounds of Lutheran and Christian music performed by the various choirs and orchestra. In addition to a number of folk tunes from across the globe I was pleased to hear two hymns by Bishop Grundtvig of Denmark.

Grundtvig was the ideological father of the Danish folk school, though his own ideas on education had another focus. He believed the university should educate its students for active participation in society and popular life. Thus practical skills as well as national poetry and history should form an essential part of the instruction.
The two pillars of his school program, the School for Life (folk high school) and the School for Passion (university) were aimed at quite different horizons of life. The popular education should mainly be taught within a national and patriotic horizon of understanding, yet always keeping an open mind towards a broader cultural and intercultural outlook, while the university should work from a strictly universal, i.e. humane and scientific, outlook.

The common denominator of all Grundtvig’s pedagogical efforts was to promote a spirit of freedom, poetry and disciplined creativity, within all branches of educational life. He promoted values such as wisdom, compassion, identification and equality. He opposed all compulsion, including exams, as deadening to the human soul. Instead Grundtvig advocated unleashing human creativity according to the universally creative order of life. Only willing hands make light work. Therefore a spirit of freedom, cooperation and discovery was to be kindled in individuals, in science, and in the civil society as a whole.

Grundtvig’s ideas were born out of a time of hardship, as Denmark who sided with Napoleon was thrown into economic and psychological depression after his defeat. He searched for something to bring his people to a more positive perspective. You can here this yearning in the two hymns chosen for the choir, “Bright and Glorious is the Sky,” and “O Day Full of Grace.”

Some years ago I wrote a paper celebrating the memory of the Paracollege (St. Olaf’s experimental college I attended in the early 70s) in which I mentioned Gruntvig’s ideas as not only evident in the spirit of the Paracollege but also in St. Olaf itself. I learned in that community about the importance of wisdom, compassion, creativity and sense of civic duty and public service. I listened to the hymns hearing not only their Christmas message but also Grundtvig’s promise to his people that there would come a better time for them and reminds me that we have reason to hope as well for a time that will be filled with more promise.

With joy we depart for the promised land,
And there we shall walk in endless light.

(“O Day Full of Grace” — Grundtvig)