Our last full day started in a rich atmosphere of expectation: the week has been intense and there is a longing for resolution. On the other hand, people are getting to know each other a bit better now and the vibe is growing more casual. It’s a nice space to be in.

The opening lecture of the day, presented by YIP alumni Caleb, Daniel and Gésaël, related on-site experience at Standing Rock Indian Reservation- Protest in the USA. With powerful imagery in both words and pictures, we learned of the challenges and realities of being at a historically large protest site, of what it feels like on the inside. These foundations allowed a rousing call to action to emerge, questioning our positions as bystanders.

Fika is familiar now and people fall easily into conversations, some on topic and others meandering around whatever fancy strikes at the time. Pleasingly, we are also getting better at returning to the main hall promptly when the bells ring.

At last, words for the heart. Street Poets, Inc. left behind the global challenges and the anxious pondering, and connected to us on a personal, present level. Poetry and ritual governed us now in an exercise of healing and bonding. Now was the first time we would feel that Initiative Forum: Beyond Borders was stepping towards a close. It felt right. We were then offered to take part, and formed sharing circles to begin digesting our place in the week so far.

The space between us had changed now. On Monday we played icebreaker games, but this lunch we were comfortable, like sharing a coffee with an intimate friend. We were working on a different level and it showed.

Today would be our last day of workshops, and this new tenderness, this delicate understanding we reveled in, but quietly, would allow a blossoming. Many workshops pushed past previous barriers and found new wisdom, for a magic worked underneath and behind us all.

In what would become an ever-more familiar theme, the last afternoon fika also held a reverence. We felt solidly the urgency of time drawing to a close now, and conversations were purposeful and held closely together, by the fire, by the window, by any surface that could host one.

Open spaces were overwhelmingly for processing now, discussions of connecting and reflecting, forest walks and fjord swims, or acro-yoga were the primary offers now.

Of all the differences of the day, the evening was perhaps the most prominent. The Night Cafe was alive with chatter; waffles and tea abounded. What had been a quiet out of the way nook in the Kulturhuset was now stuffed full, full of little conversations and full of love. The music still had its purpose though! Mandràgora Reggae raised a lively salsa environment, which eventually gave way into long, guitar-soundscape epics by SOMA AGE. In all cases, bums were shaken, and we sang our souls with our feet.

The fire lived long that night, and so did the couch whisperers. But eventually all faded, and slumber overcame the last night of Beyond Borders.