A Year Gone, Rob’s Pilgrimage Part 2: The Deed
On Friday, June 12th, after a lecture by Joke Hermsen, I bought her book entitled: ‘Moment & Eternity’. In it she wrote: “Seize eternity in the moment“. I was immediately fascinated by the question: how do you do that? What I understand after the first chapters is that first of all you allow stillness, rest, so that you get more and more attention for memories, time, and start to feel inspiration for the life that still lies ahead of you. I let her words sink in a bit and thought, that’s actually exactly what the Walk of Wisdom brought me when I walked the route last year. Specifically, I had one question: why do I avoid conflict? Consciously or unconsciously (read: diary of a stranger).
In the stillness I found memories, time for reflection and when I came back I felt inspiration for the life that lay ahead of me. Not that I could reach it right away. Rather, it was a Word, a promise, not yet an action. But my life was going to change drastically, it felt that way and it was. Because where in an earlier contribution I proudly testify to being together with my partner for 16 years, we decided to end our marriage a few months after the trip. We granted each other a different love which, strangely enough, made love (albeit in a different form) grow between us. There was room for stillness, rest, and memories and finally: reflection.
Exactly on December 31, 2020, our divorce was a fact. In the run-up I moved from a caravan to the monastery on the route in Velp and I started a bit of a wandering existence along (Facebook) friends. At times this was mainly a restless existence, precisely without stillness. The old self, with all its certainties and achievements, had been shaken and that which was still a mere promise, my new self, broke through. Sometimes, as a referee, I tried to navigate between the two; To avoid the conflict, to appease it, in the hope of reaching a compromise. And plans cast in limited time worked out quite well. Until it finally came to a collision, a flash. As Joke put it: time disrupts, that is the moment that eternity reveals itself. Time slowed down, as my old self died so close to the light of the new life. In fact, it was always this conflict that I tried to avoid, I realize that now.
Looking back, it’s like growing up, being born again, and putting off what was childlike; formed in your youth. Well, I’m not there yet. Today I am just at the beginning of a new day in which time unfolds again in all kinds of encounters. Today in silence, because together we continue the walk of silence the Walk of Wisdom in one year around hoping to be able to live something of this mystery: an Everlasting Moment.
The circle is complete and the new life, the next circle, calls out to us: “Go pilgrim, go, every word is an action….. “
To be continued,
Seal
