Pilgrims, pizzas and pictures – an interview

Maarten de Jonge retired as a general practitioner and walked the Walk of Wisdom with his partner Addie. They decided to deepen their journey with the help of pilgrim coach Lidia van Engeland. He interviewed them afterwards about their experience.

A pilgrimage just around the corner

“It is so nice that we walked this pilgrimage, just a stone’s throw from our hometown. As a result, we were not distracted and were able to make the journey inside even better,” says Maarten. “We didn’t have to read information signs or enjoy the scenery because we had travelled a long way for it,” Addie adds, “there were so few external stimuli, we were in nature with our own themes and they were therefore given a place.”

In their cozy house in Deventer we sit at the kitchen table, on which lies a beautiful diary with the report of their trip. It characterizes the attention and care with which Maarten and Addie have prepared, walked and completed their pilgrimage.

I’ve met them before because they wanted to talk to me about preparing their themes for the Walk of Wisdom , a few weeks before departure. A new phase of life has begun now that Maarten, a general practitioner, has retired. Addie also wants to take a step back in all the volunteer activities she does. She feels the desire to retire as well.

How do you do that when you walk the Walk of Wisdom with your partner? Taking care of your own space. Addie: “I have had an eventful year and I thought that I could never be carefree in life again. Until I saw mushrooms along the path, beautiful mushrooms. I felt an intense joy that I hadn’t felt for a long time. So happy with those beautiful mushrooms, and especially with my own intense feeling. I still carry that moment with me.”

Along the way, Addie has experienced that her own space has to do with more than the space that comes with Maarten’s retirement. As a people person, she is used to being in groups and working together often, which gives energy but also costs energy. Contacts can chafe because everyone is different. She makes the comparison with all the mushrooms she saw along the way, including damaged mushrooms, which also have their beauty.

The Empty Land

Letting go of ideal pictures and being with what is. That works better and better as the trip progresses, they say, culminating in their meal in the pizzeria with a hard fluorescent light bar and cold steel tables with chairs. “It was the closest place to eat in Wijchen. On vacations we would walk around this with a big curve. But look at us sitting there, with a can of soda and a ready-made pizza. During the Walk of Wisdom , things happened to us. In the luxury of everyday life, you may think that it is all malleable. The menu, the table, the restaurant all have to be top-notch. Now we arrived at the top without necessarily wanting to ‘make’ it.“

Now that he has retired, Maarten looks ahead and sees the Empty Land in front of him. Shouldn’t that be filled with new activities? “Do I dare to let it go and trust that something will come in the Empty Land! Walking makes you open up to the environment, I felt more relaxed to have an eye for nature and also for your own feelings. Because of this openness, expectations and patterns also fall away.”

Addie’s mushrooms also had a surprise in store for Maarten. “I realized that I had been photographing cool mushrooms in a cool environment all the time. If there was a leaf in the way of the beautiful image, I removed it. That is true in more places in my life that I strive for the ideal. Now I started to wonder: is that the best part? That has become a profound experience.”

Of course, I ask them if they took a picture of that non-cool mushroom to illustrate this story. Luckily they didn’t take that picture, so my ideal picture won’t happen. And that’s a good thing.

Coming home

Maarten: “Hontelez says in his book, Walking to Wisdom (2019) that the pilgrimage is the beginning of a process, and we have experienced it that way. We didn’t embark on the journey to see beautiful things, but to take something with us to the new phase in our lives. And we can do this again next year, go out again with the things that are going on then. It has helped us tremendously to enter our new life very smoothly, we just walk on.

When we walked over the dike to the Stevenskerk on the last day, there was more noise in the landscape, which is a nice symbolism for returning to society. How can we keep the peace with all the noise in the background when I get back?”

In the diary, Maarten writes the following last sentence: “When I walked the last part home on the Diepenveenseweg, I felt almost uncanny, even though I’m almost home. But it’s not about our actual home, it’s about coming home to yourself and each other. The walk has done that.”

Lidia from England

Lidia has her own coaching practice (Over the North Sea) and is a volunteer at the Walk of Wisdom as master of ceremonies at the departure ceremonies. The pilgrim coaching is done through her own agency.

More about Lidia: link.

More about the pilgrim coaching: link. Or read an interview with Lidia and a pilgrim about the approach of coaching: link.