“A road that is constantly renewing itself” – poet Marjolein Pieks

Poet Marjolein Pieks provides the poetry for the first chapter of our pilgrim book of hours On the Way to Wisdom .

Marjolein crawls into the veins of our symbol Pilgrim and speaks with it.

Here is a first taste of what she has to offer, we love it and hope you do too:

Seedling, all parts of the living you overgrow.

So many times I’ve gone over you,
trampled underfoot, stripped of soil,
kept small and short and mowed
But more often than not I’ve loved you
adored welcomed with an ecstatic smile,
held or plucked with children’s hands,
stroked with the tongues of cattle and butterflies,
Transplant with the love of knowledgeable guides.

When the time comes
May the world open up
growing the spirit that is in us
find ways.

Seedling, your budding is happening
in a path that is constantly renewing itself,
a plant that spreads,
No matter how dead I sometimes feel,
You announce me in what the light may see.

Seedling, where some see only one plant
I see love blossoming step by step,
crumb by crumb, capillary by capillary,
carrot by carrot.

Gently I lovingly wash your feet,
veins of a new earth,
veins of a continuous discovery.

Seedling your great mind is in the void
and insignificant.
You tickle the ditches, fields, forests,
lakes, hills, fens.

No doubt I will grow with you.
Be a path with me,
a boyfriend or girlfriend floating
in every season, grounding in every step.

Seedling, I’ll take you with the vigour
of wind, sun, earth and water.
In this journey, I am your habitat.

Marjolein Pieks

Special departure ceremony

On Saturday 3 September, we will present the first chapter of On the Way to Wisdom in the form of an e-book. It immediately becomes a departure ceremony on the way to the rest of the book. Including a (small) gesture to save the world.

Saturday 3 September, 10.00 am, Stevenskerk Nijmegen.
Limited space, participation €20,- including e-book and a (small) gesture to take home and save the world. Meer.

More about Marjolein Pieks

For many years, Marjolein Pieks was the village poet of Heumen, one of the municipalities along our route. For a long time, she played Mariken van Nimwegen, the girl from Nijmegen who lives with the devil for seven years in a medieval story, until she frees herself and goes in search of what Marjolein herself translated as – ‘her own story’.

Be sure to read the in-depth and appealing interview with Marjolein at Nijmegen, city of compassion:

“When I say the word compassion, I feel how dual the word is. That it’s not easy. That there is always something in between, a wall that you have to go through in order to actually feel compassion. That said, for me, compassion is ‘feeling together’. However, it is different from empathy.”

“With empathy, you also feel together with someone. But I think compassion is also forgiveness. There’s a non-judgement to it. Don’t put a label on what someone feels. Or wanting to change what someone feels, for example if it is deeply and deeply sad what someone is experiencing. Or deeply, deeply destructive. That’s just the way it is.” Meer.

Marjolein has published, among other things, the collection The most beautiful of a village is the emptiness around it. And recently the collection Corvid Corone, in which mourning over a broken love relationship coincides with a drastically changed society due to Corona:

New Normal

a few weeks after you
in the morning or late at night
Who can say
left silently
(it couldn’t be done other than through the front door)
the world gasped for breath

There was panic dearest
Great panic
When you couldn’t hold me anymore

[……] Lake