I would like to briefly speak with you about news. Because that's what Ode Magazine is about. And that's where we present a different perspective.

We are made to believe that news is whatever is presented to us on the daily front pages and what makes the headlines on television. Media pride themselves about their objectivity. But one can hardly argue that the media present us with an objective picture of whatever goes on in our world. We only learn about the mistakes and the problems. About fraud and violence. We only learn about whatever goes wrong. And then we are supposed to believe that that is our reality.   Read more...

I used to think I knew the best place to find peace for my mind. It's a place in France, a farm tucked away in the most northern parts of the Provence. I have been going to that farm since my parents bought it with two friends when I was six. I have been there as a child, as a student and as a father and over the years I have learned that whatever pressures I bring to this decades-old family hideaway just melt away on the ancient hills. A friend once wrote a poem about the place referring to the power of the ‘mountains that would always be there.' Indeed there is relief in finding things in the same place and order year after year. Somehow the rapid changes of modern life pass by this farm and its surrounding hills. When I sit in a chair gazing into the horizon that stretches 50 kilometers and beyond, I know that as much as change is good and necessary, there is a deep value as well in things staying as they are.

Much to my surprise I recently found an experience that seems to bring my mind even more at ease than our annual retreat to the Provence. I had been to a conference in Arusha, Tanzania. It had been an exciting experience being together for four full days with an enlightened group of people from all over the world who shared a passion for Africa. We heard stories of promise and hope that put shades on the usual news of despair about the continent. Africa is much more than disease and poverty, which the media only seem to report about, it turned out. We left inspired and energized with a bag full of uplifting African stories for Ode. And yet such conferences are exhausting as well. We spent late evenings meeting and talking with new friends, only to get up early again to listen to the morning's first speaker.   Read more...