A few reports of auction events

In September 2014 we held a fun auction to generate income for the foundation. Below are reports of events that were brought in by sponsors.  

{slider Huub and Adelheid Kortekaas|closed}

Let’s start with the auction, which we experienced as a beautiful and animated start of the pilgrimage Walk of Wisdom.

Damien was well on his way in articulating what makes the pilgrimage route so special compared to the many existing walking routes. The chairman of the day, however incredible his first performance, did an excellent job and together a pleasant relaxed atmosphere was created, where there was room for deepening, but also for roaring laughter at all bids.

As fate would have it, Huub and I were split up. I, Adelheid  , enjoyed the floodplains on a bright day in good company. For the first time I saw mouse-eared mushrooms and a number of wildflowers unknown to me. My beloved floodplains were given another dimension on this interesting educational walk.

On Sunday morning at 11.00 am I met Huub with a small group in the forest café Merlyn in Grafwegen. This was in response to the silent walk that Paul van Tongeren had offered as his contribution. Paul read a text by Nietzsche and invited us to reflect on this text from our own hearts during our silent walk. So this became an unexpectedly tough inspiring trip.

Upon returning to the wonderful warmth of Merlyn – it was fascinating how differently this text was interpreted by our group. After listening to everyone with a sympathetic ear, Paul mirrored these views to what Nietzsche might have wanted to say.

We each enjoyed the first walks in our own way in the perspective of the Walk of Wisdom.

{slider Manja Bente}

Guided tour of the floodplain from the Dijkhuis near Beuningen

It was a special experience to get a tour of the floodplain. With beautiful weather and nice people.

I now know that there are horizontal cobwebs and vertical cobwebs. (I had never noticed). That trees can communicate with their roots underground. That there is a kind of aspirin in the willow branch and if horses eat it longer, the taste becomes bitter, so they stop taking it.

That there are mushrooms that only grow on this type of soil and that they produce ink that used to be used for writing, but also that you can eat them, but you should not combine them with alcohol, because you can get sick. And all this information on a small piece of the floodplain.

It was very worthwhile to be informed a little more intensively about nature, so that you get a different view of the world around you. Thank you William for this nice tour and your warm welcome in the Dijkhuis.

Guided tour of Stevenskerk

We were with an intimate small group and also heard a lot of news about the origin of this church and the battle that has been waged for this church, such as the transformation from the Catholic  to the Protestant faith. A beautiful story about the chandeliers and how they ended up in the church. Actually, too many to mention. I am now looking around this church with completely different eyes. So you see how you can become more aware of unconscious and knowledge certainly has a certain value to be able to understand things.

Hans, thank you, it was a very inspiring, informative tour and I’m sure there is much more that can be told about this beautiful church.

The lunch voucher from Oortjeshekken

I took advantage of this on a Sunday morning with my daughter. This morning it was raining and we decided to go by bike instead of walking. It was cold and it was wonderful to sit down at a table after cycling and be served with a very rich breakfast. Nice to catch up with my daughter and enjoy delicious sandwiches supplemented with nuts, dates and figs and an egg, what a wealth on a plate!

Thank you people of Oortjeshekken for this fantastic offer for the WOW

Carol

{slider Hanneke Vermeer}

I participated in the walk in the floodplains. In a word it was great,  foggy at the beginning and then everything opened up and it was beautiful. Learned a lot about the mushrooms and other beautiful nature elements. Met nice people, have a nice day.

Impression Walk of Wisdom 

Through the connection between the Friends of St. Stevens’ Church and the Walk of Wisdom, I got to read about the pilgrimage in my own area. And that area is now Nijmegen. The idea of making an activity possible close to home, where I do step out of the daily grind and go out with myself for a while, but also to experience it around me, is very appealing to me.

At the auction there was an enthusiastic group of people of different ages and different backgrounds. It’s inspiring and great that this idea is being picked up by many people. The auction was a good place to publicize the Walk, and to show that very different inputs and experiences are possible, all of which are of value.

A few weeks later I joined the stroll through the floodplains of Beuningen with William. I enjoyed the explanation about the spiders and the mushrooms and about the tangles in the cattle. It is also good to hear how the government, with whether or not to widen a side channel, is also looking for a balance between economy and efficiency on the one hand, and the preservation and development of natural value on the other. I then hear that not only individuals are searching, but also organizations, and that it is good to make the various interests heard and appreciated. And the weather was beautiful on a beautiful Sunday.

The meeting at Christine Berkvens’ was a fun and useful activity. The people of Nijmegen had to be on the road that day, on the road for a while. And by coming together with these people and taking the walk virtually under the leadership of Christine, a new treasure was created: problems, setbacks, associations, moments of enjoyment, connections and solutions. Clearly a step along the way. The Walk of Wisdom is a beautiful way to experience and enjoy life, and to pass on this enthusiasm to others.

Hans Peerden

{slider Elsbet Hazewinkel}

Walking reading with Paul van Tongeren   

Paul van Tongeren is an ethicist and a connoisseur of Nietzsche. On December 7, 2014, he guided a morning of walking reading. In Café Merlijn, near the Reichswald, we met with seven people. There we had coffee and Paul van Tongeren told us about Nietzsche.

Nietzsche wrote about truth, power, illusions, and the death of God. Lots of aphoristic works.

I thought a nice description for an aphorism was that you can see it as a piece without a horizon. And perhaps it was Nietzsche himself who said that an aphorism is a truism. Nietzsche was a philosopher and philologist.  He had his own ideas about reading texts. You have to take in a text at rest, read a text like a cow eats grass, Nietzsche said.  A cow mows the grass, brings it inside and chews on it. But that’s just the beginning. A cow is a ruminant. The grass passes through four stomachs, it mixes more and more with the inside of the cow and thus becomes, bit by bit, more and more something of the cow itself. 

In this ruminating way we read a text by Nietzsche that Paul van Tongeren gave us. A short text that was read three or four times by different people. So we could hear the same thoughts, the same words over and over again. The piece  was called ‘Travellers in Gradations’ and was about the way in which, according to Nietzsche, travellers should be distinguished into five degrees. With the reading by different people, we were able to open up to the text every time and let the content come to us again and again. Listening with new ears each time and noticing what it touched in us.

Pondering the text, we went out in silence and took a walk in the Reichswald. Nietzsche was an avid walker. For him, there was a connection between walking and thinking. He made long trips in the mountains where he got his hunches and ideas.

This morning we chewed on ‘the Travelling Ones in degrees’. I liked the slowing down and rumination. For me, the piece was about the different phases that we can go through in our lives as human beings. But over time, my attention went from my mind to my body. It was nice to walk like that, to be outside in silence with others. To experience freedom and space, to feel the earth, the leaves and the wind.

Halfway through our walk, we read the piece aloud to each other again. This way we could have the text come back in after an hour of walking and let it work on us again. It was nice to read Nietzsche’s thoughts together outside in the woods and walk on in silence. I felt the connection with my environment, the rhythm and the flow in my body.

Back in café Merlijn we talked about the piece of the travelers. Each of us had our own and different experiences.  The connection between thoughts and experience is what I remember most, the cows we saw along the way and a calf that bleated. We shared our reactions in an open conversation. The play had no single truth, there was no horizon. We had space and attention for each other. It made our meeting meaningful. For me  it was a special and valuable morning.  

Elsbet Hazewinkel 

{slider Damien}

Report Damien

Last week we were taken with a group of eight people by Paul van Tongeren, professor of philosophical ethics at Radboud University. He guides people within the concept of ‘walking reading’: we took turns reading the same short text by Nietzsche in the Merlyn forest café and then went for a silent walk on the Jansberg. 

Here is Nietzsche’s text that we read:

“Travellers in degrees – The travellers must be distinguished according to five grades: those of the first and lowest degree are those who travel and are thereby seen – they are actually traveled and are, as it were, blind; those who follow them do indeed look out into the world themselves; the third parties experience something because they are watching; the fourth live the experienced and carry it within themselves; Finally, there are some people of superior strength who, after it has been experienced and experienced, must finally live out all that is perceived in actions and works as soon as they have returned home. Like these five categories of travelers, all human beings go through the whole journey through life: the lowest purely passive, the highest by action and living out inner events that are left behind.”

{/sliders}