Unfortunately, we have to announce that spiritual counselor Marinus van den Berg had to cancel for the opening of the Walk of Wisdom on June 21st. We will miss his steady, lived-in and loving presence. Marinus already had the consideration ready. Read below his reflection, a “light sermon” in response to the announcement that Jan Terlouw would preach a thunderous sermon.  

Light sermon

When I was a child, I didn’t know the word walking. It was something of genteel people. Something from rich people. They walked in avenues with a hat, an umbrella or a walking stick.

I don’t come from a city but from the countryside where there were  cows and ditches and founders over those ditches. There were church paths through the meadows and muddy roads. On Sunday evening we strolled. Especially in the summer. That was very slow. We watched the cows and stopped to talk to neighbors who were also strolling.  Cars or mopeds  were a sight to behold. We wrote down the numbers.  We didn’t stroll to school, but walked until we got our first bike. We didn’t know children’s bikes. 

I got to know the more solemn walking in the church and that was the processions that  once a year passed the cemetery and through the garden of the presbytery. I remember all this well. Many times I took part in the walks for young people, the Pax Christi – walk where meeting and conversation along the way were central. Once I took part in an anti-Vietnam  demonstration in Utrecht.  Still later, the Pieterpad and many other paths came my way. 

For a year I walked around the Willemsbrug and the Erasmus Bridge every evening in Rotterdam, where I now live.  Now I don’t do it enough, but it has something of that strolling: along the way I often talk to passers-by and sometimes take a photo at their request. They come from all over the world.

There are beautiful books such as Walking Pureert, Walking by Dirk van Weelden, Walking by Frederic Gros and Meditative Walking by Thich Nhat Hahn. I’m annoyed that  some Buddhists now sometimes walk over areas that you shouldn’t enter without permission. But let me keep it light. 

During my time in Apeldoorn, Ivan Wolffer’s book Een eindje meelopen (A little walk along) was published. As a general practitioner, he wrote about his encounters with people on their way to the edge of life.  This is what I try to do in the Rotterdam hospice Cadenza where I work. In many ways, the theme of walking, walking along, but also away, looking back on the path of life,  meaning and nonsense on the way of life is discussed. But also that strolling. One of the most frequently asked questions is: how long will it take?  Dying is often slow and that is difficult in this time of haste. 

In my book Mourning in Time , I made the distinction between clock time, production time, measurable time, rush time and delayed time.  Many people in mourning due to loss of health or a loved one feel misunderstood. The rush time of the world turns on puts them on a side road. Grief happens slowly. That strolling from my childhood that I enjoyed has introduced me to the value of being on the road, the value of having time. Do not look at the watch.  Whether we would come home was not a question. It was about being on the road. 

How different it is when you are forced to leave, leave home, flee or flee your country to  find a future elsewhere. This year, even more people than last year took part in the night walk from Rotterdam to The Hague in solidarity with all those refugees who are looking for their Silk Roads and do not know if there will be a home for them.  In Rotterdam, people told me stories of their food trips during the Hunger Winter. Stories without the romance of strolling.

In the film museum the EYE in Amsterdam I saw the exhibition of the South African artist William Kentridge called More Sweetly Play the Dance. You are taken in a procession of people beaten by disease, by poverty, by apartheid, but they are not defeated. For me, this exhibition brings together many forms of walking, walking, processions, protest marches, marches for peace, peace tours. A poignant portrait of the resilience of the powerless. 

I think that “the walk of wisdom” can become more than an outing, more than just a stroll, if we connect with our own vulnerability and with vulnerable people. This initiative starts at a time when the whole world is adrift. The tourist on the Greek  island of Lesbos comes face to face with the boat refugee who did make it. I believe that connecting with the vulnerable human being for whom life turns out to be impossible to make, can shed a new light on our journey through the world. May our inner resilience grow with an eye for the other along the way.      

Marinus van den Berg