A journey within, Rebekka van den Brink

Text and photos: Rebekka van den Brink

There I was in front of the Stevenskerk in Nijmegen. So here I would have to register as a pilgrim of The Walk of Wisdom (WoW). This was my starting point and also my end point. But the church was closed. In a flash, there was this first inclination to do something about this unclear situation, to consult the internet. But that wasn’t an option at all, because I didn’t have a smartphone anymore. No internet. So I just started. I started walking.

Benedict of Nursia called it ‘stabilitas’. Creating a routine in the day to eventually bring order to your moods. An order that ‘does not just repress something, but that opens up a space in which the heart can be healed’. It’s a healing process. I needed time to get used to the new order of the day. The first two days I sucked up everything during the day. The sun, the birds, the views, the history of the landscape and the beginning of spring.

But in the evening I felt lonely in a strange world with nothing more than a diary and a thin book by Anselm Grün to guide me through the evenings. An important part of the stabilitas is to address your problems, rather than avoid them. According to Benedict, you would do this by not fleeing into all kinds of activities, but first confronting yourself. He called this “staying in your cell.” Pascal even believed that “all people’s unhappiness stems from their inability to stay quietly and alone in their rooms.” In the most physical and psychological sense of the word, I was confronted with this. And in those first days, I thought these moods would accompany me for the rest of my journey.

On the third or fourth day, however, a new routine arose and this brought a special calm. I also experienced this very consciously. It was after another long day of walking that I sat next to a stove and I felt it: it was just good. Along the way I met several other pilgrims, with whom I walked for a longer or shorter time. Each and every one of them are special encounters. Above all, I will remember the travel companion who turned our special encounter into a poem. A poem about my life’s journey. I’ve become aware again of how often I connect with people I don’t know. A greeting, a remark, a kind word, a short conversation, a close meeting. Not just now, but that that’s part of who I am.

Every day I walked between 20 and 30 kilometers. Although the WoW is 136 km long, I have walked many more kilometers. Yet my journey was mainly a journey inwards. The last few days I didn’t meet any other pilgrims and although there were short encounters, I still walked all alone. By that time my mind had calmed down in a special way. I experienced a very uninhibited vulnerability with regard to the connection with my emotional life. How, for example, the lying wind gave my cheeks a chance to warm something up and the gratitude that it evoked in me. How happy and proud I was when a bunch could provide a perfect toilet. The awe I felt almost physically in my chest for the desolate floodplains of the Waal and for the vast beaches without footsteps. Just me and the wind and the water. A bumblebee, frozen grass.

Everything came in, raw. A dead fish in a meadow (as proof of the high water level last week) brought tears to my eyes. Nothing that disrupted the connection between me and the world around me, no noise. Just what was there. Sleeping, eating, walking, seeing, feeling. Life. What a blessing it feels that this experience, this journey inwards that was again so unique and unique, has been granted to me! That I have a good travel companion in myself with whom I can go out much more often. At the end of the trip I was back in front of the Stevens Church. More confident this time, I rang the doorbell. And the door was opened…

“The question was asked and I answered
Yes, I said, yes
At that moment, escape routes were blocked, back doors closed, there was nothing left to hide behind or in,
there was no more darkness to be unseen in, lifeline disconnected, safety net rolled up,
There were no more helping hands, from here on I had to continue on my own…
I don’t know exactly when, or to whom, or what I said it, but I said it:

Yes, I said, yes
I’m going”
(Dineke de Velde Harsenhorst)