We are happy to announce that the musical and creative Peter Freijsen will help accompany the pilgrim’s song during the opening of the Walk of Wisdom on June 21st. It is his task to get the attendees to wave goodbye to the pilgrims of the Walk of Wisdom while singing a song written especially for the opening ‘Go pilgrim, go…’ by Mark Schilders. If you want to come and wave goodbye to the pilgrims or walk yourself, look here. 

Peter Freijsen is an experienced conductor with a sense of spirituality. In 2007 he opened the Nijmegenpad with a self-written song together with organist Joost Langeveld, who also participated in the opening on 21 June . Below are the lyrics of the song he performed at the time. 

 

The Gate

 

Prologue

 

We carry in our hearts the traces of ancient stars.

Gas and dust from our sun, they collided and connected.

For 4.6 billion years, a glowing orb raced through space as the third planet from the new sun.

No one knows how molecules could have combined to form first life forms.

We have been spat out of a hot volcanic primordial soup.

Bacteria we were, feeding on solar energy. 

The host cells didn’t devour us. They took care of us.

Now we walk a galaxy with Nijmegen ommegangs.

 

First part

 

In the meantime the hardness and fragrance of the oak began to speak more and more clearly of the slow and steady manner in which the tree grows.

The oak itself spoke of how only such a habit of growth can be the basis for that which is durable and bears fruit; He learned that to grow means to open oneself to the vastness of heaven  and at the same time to take root in the darkness of the earth.

The oak tree still tells it to the Nijmegenpad, which passes him by.

The path gathers everything that is present around him.

And to everyone who is in charge of him, he gives his due.

Always and from all sides the Nijmegenpad inevitably emanate the same words: the simple preserves the mystery of the Lasting and the Great.

 

 

Second part

 

But the path speaks its animating words only as long as there are people who, born as  its nature, can still hear it.

In spite of all his ingenuity, man’s efforts to put the globe in order will be in vain if he does not conform to the words of the path.

Only the noise of their machines, which they almost take for the voice of God,  still enters their ears. Discontented  people rule  like insatiable  human monsters, trying to drown out the words of the path. The simple disappears.

Its silent power has been exhausted.

Haste! Haste! Aside! Meeeeeeeeeer !!

 

Third part

 

The message of the Nijmegenpad evokes a feeling of freedom-loving, that the gloom just manages to jump into a last impulse of joie de vivre.

It resists the disastrous situation of “nothing but work” – work that is done for its own sake – serves only something unreal.

The message of the Nijmegenpad is a joyful seeing.

Those  who possess it  have it off the path.

The play of youth and the wisdom of the old nature face each other here.

And in the harmony which all this forms with each other, and whose echo is silently spread over the path, all things are given splendour.

It is the gateway to the eternal.

This gate turns on its hinges, once forged from the riddles of existence by a skilled blacksmith.

The forging art of seeing, forming, yes enjoying, letting go and giving.

The art of simplicity,

The art comes out of that always the same fire and iron.

 

 

 Peter Freijsen