Faith and superstition on a reconnaissance for a WoW Belgium

Pioneer Damiaan Messing went on a reconnaissance for a Walk of Wisdom Belgium and wrote the report below.

In recent years, two or three people have pointed me to the former Rosario monastery in Bever, Belgium. We wanted to expand abroad, didn’t we? This monastery in Pajottenland was converted into a B&B with attention and poetry, special concerts were organized and it was managed with a sense of ecology. An ideal starting point for a Walk of Wisdom Belgium.

I remember going to Rosario’s website and not knowing what to do with it. It seemed like a beautiful and inspired place, but also a project in itself with rooms that were expensive for a pilgrim. Why would they start a Walk of Wisdom Belgium? A project that would take even more time, with no prospect of profit? Marketing for the B&B maybe, I thought, but that didn’t seem like the right motivation.

At the beginning of last year, an email suddenly came from the owner himself: Johan Vriens. Johan had had a pilgrim of ours visiting and had gone to browse the website that evening. If I didn’t want to come to Bever to get acquainted for a WoW Belgium?

Tiens, they say at the southern neighbors, look now… After consulting with Manja , I decided to answer Johan with an open mind, including reservations. His response was prompt and understanding. He sent an NRC Handelsblad interview with him and the writer of the very short stories A.L. Snijders. It turned out that Johan once had a café in Antwerp where only classical music could be heard. He closed the café because it was getting too crowded. He started a chain of organic bakeries and was later part of the conceptual team of Dille and Kamille. The interview exuded culture and sensitivity – service as well. There were beautiful lines from a sonnet by Nijhof:

“He sailed by night on a river, / He saw the sunlight that colored the streets – / And knew that he was not alive, but happened, / […].”

I became curious about a reconnaissance.

Dead bird

The beginning was promising.

Enquiries with one of our Belgian pilgrims – an avid hiker – immediately yielded enthusiasm about the region: full of quiet places, hills, greenery, but also open countryside and close to the language border with Wallonia, which could give the trip an extra dimension.

The distance to civilization turned out to be ideal: close enough to Brussels to get there by public transport (1.5 hours), but far enough away not to be bothered by it. I got off at a dilapidated station in a town from where I had to take the bus for another fifteen minutes through the Flemish countryside with a smooth connection. Brussels was far away here.

Beaver itself seemed very small to me to find dedicated volunteers, but Rosario exceeded my expectations: Johan and his partner Sofie received me warmly, but also quietly in the former nunnery, which had been tastefully renovated while retaining space and slowness. Lines of poetry in the garden and on the wall, the food sustainable. Even the rainwater was collected and directed to the toilet. Johan talked about a budget room for pilgrims and wanted to transform the B&B into ‘shared living’, where residents maintain a shared part in addition to a private part and, for example, take care of pilgrims together.

Johan turned out to have started a poetry inn next to the Rosario monastery (Surplace) in a second building, next to the church of Bever. That turned out to be even more beautiful than the monastery with 9 rooms, each dedicated to a poet. The Flemish Poet Laureate was already staying there regularly and I saw a beautiful poem by him handwritten, nailed to the wall. The building was almost finished and built with ecological materials: loam and wood, the garden is planted full of edible flowers.

It was amazing that everywhere in the house there were antique wicker pigeon baskets and ‘constateurs’ – time clocks with which homing pigeons are clocked when they return home. Their pigeon ring is put in the clock, who dies out the time and date on a piece of paper for the purpose of the race registration. As it turned out, the building had belonged to a champion racing pigeon. On one of the windowsills I saw a pigeon ring, numbered and with the country code BE on it. Boy, I thought, one of our rituals is to collect pigeon rings. Are we being sent from above here?

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An owl in a sack

Just before I had exchanged my critical, academic nature for a godly walking chest in the miracle of the Lord, I suddenly found myself in a murdered landscape. At the suggestion of my tipsters, I had mapped out a route in the Flemish Ardennes, the neighboring region of Pajottenland, where Bever is located. Here I wanted to wander for hours by means of the famous hiking node network of our southern neighbors.

To my horror, I walked for miles on asphalted paths through a hilly landscape that was green, but also intersected by roads and built up everywhere or made into an agricultural desert where no bird whistled anymore. In a deep sense about what man can do with nature, I hung my head down and saw a succession of litter on the roadside. I decided to do an act of cleaning and soon a large bag filled up until I saw a new bag lying in the grass. I can use it, I thought, and snatched it from the tall grass. The bag turned out to be loaded with a dead, intensely smelly bird. On the pocket a large emblem of the bookstore de Standaard: an owl…

You too with your superstitions!! I grumbled to myself on Flemish roads. After all the evil that has happened in history, how can you still believe in a Good Conductor? I let it go: this world is not for the faint of heart. A pity, but alas.

Hairless paths

Fortunately, this is also true in our world: it can change! That evening I was the only guest in a large youth hostel where, in an oasis of peace, I discovered that the Flemish hiking network indicates two types of paths: paved and unpaved. To my own surprise, I sometimes confuse that ‘unpaved’ into ‘hairless’ in retellings, which I find appropriate in a peculiar way. Studying the network again, it taught me that I could plan that day very differently if I had had the science of the dirt trails before.

The second day I went again. This time as much as possible unpaved. It turned out to be a beautiful route: beautiful old forest areas and delightful country roads, winding through the hills. The area where I walked at the time was also more open and spacious, less built-up. It was in no way inferior to the beauty of the best parts of Walk of Wisdom Netherlands.

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Challenged

Two days later, I sat down with Johan and Sofie to evaluate and think further. We hit it off and Johan asked exactly the right questions: independent, but committed and full of goodwill. Those steel pins of ours, that couldn’t be! It had to be more sustainable. And why don’t we focus much more clearly on ecology by seeking commitment from sleeping addresses or municipalities along the route? Couldn’t we draw up a ‘charter’ with our basic principles so that WoWs in other countries knew exactly what we stood for?

Johan also had an extraordinarily clever plan: the same pin and the same layout for each route guide, but a different color for each country. Beautiful symbol of unity and difference. For the Walk of Wisdom Belgium, Johan thought of a tour that connected Flanders and Wallonia. He had already had the Flemish and Walloon Poets Laureate ride on a tandem to the language border to get off and change places in front of the handlebars.

Superstition was irrelevant here in Beaver, I thought. Good and inspired ideas and the ability to put them into action. They were plentiful here, I noticed.

I hope that this first exploration on hairless paths across the Flemish countryside will grow into a further connection. Whether that will actually happen is still completely open, but it is certain that the exploration has inspired us in Nijmegen: we are experimenting with a bamboo pin and the first draft of a charter with the basic principles for the Walk of Wisdom has already been written.

Thank you for the hospitality and inspiration Johan!

Damien

More about Rosario in Bever: https://www.rosario.be/

More about poetry hotel Surplace: https://www.surplace.be/