The story of the departure ceremony (7): ‘At the speed of the seasons’.

The Departure Ceremony/Pilgrim’s Lauden of the Walk of Wisdom on April 3 in the Stevenskerk in Nijmegen was unfortunately cancelled due to corona. Thus, the contribution of pilgrim Jeroen van Zuylen, the text of Doeka, is a pseudonym of the pioneer of the Walk of Wisdom, Damiaan Messing, not recited, but voiced.

The text for each Departure Ceremony comes from the book ‘Seasons of Life: a contemporary book of hours and pilgrims’.

Below you will find the text as recorded by Jeroen.

It’s early in the morning. I sit down to meditate. My mind is racing like a highway. Thoughts rumble through my head and I watch as they make noise.

After half an hour I walk outside. It’s dark, but when I look up, I see a clear night. Treetops grope up motionless in the darkness and I look at the almost full moon in front of which a herd of clouds is moving, slowly, at an old pace, they hang in the air and slowly glide past the moon that shines through the fractures and lights them up one by one in a circle of color as they pass below it.

I walk on, down the street, to look up free of facades, away from the heavy darkness of the city. I feel my toes in the ground as my head falls back and I breathe in the freedom of the space above. My eyes sparkle in the shimmering light of the moon looking through the night. I feel a silent witness above the clouds. Below, there is no wind, but the air moves with the irreversible speed with which a herd of primitive animals once became extinct. The sky became empty. The moon remained.

A cyclist passes over the asphalt with crackling tires.

Hopefully we will be able to hold Departure Ceremonies again soon. Keep an eye on the agenda .