The world as a warm nest

Interview with Hanneke Vermeer who, together with 80 other volunteers, keeps the Stevens Church open: our magnificent start and end point that in all its grandeur also includes so much silence and security. Hanneke has already seen many pilgrims enter and also writes them down in the pilgrim register. By Damien Messing.

A few months ago, Hanneke (76) was knocked over by a scooter on her way to the Stevenskerk. As she lay sprawled on the ground, neighbors rushed to her and heard: “I have to go to church, I have to go to church….” Hanneke can laugh heartily about it now: “Of course they thought: it’s starting to run wild!” But she really had to go to church, to be a hostess. She only got help after someone jumped on her bike to cancel her arrival.

I almost didn’t expect anything else from Hanneke. In the four years that I’ve known her, she’s almost always driven and present: here a chat, there tidying up. If a trash can is full or there are crumbs on the floor, she gets to work right away. She regularly greets visitors standing at the door, charming to perfection and with a radiant, somewhat mischievous smile. She thrives on attention, but also gives it.

I can relate to her eye for detail: she has had her own business in interior advice for 35 years (Atelier ‘t Roth, still in operation). But where does this attention for people come from?

“Being there for someone is something I learned from home. I worked as a volunteer at the Four Days Marches for ten years: stamping the walkers at four o’clock in the morning and then welcoming them back in the afternoon. For years, a blind soldier came to stamp with me, he lived lonely in a room at the back of The Hague. Every day he arrived, he was happy. The applause along the way, the appreciation he received… If he wasn’t inside, I went to look for him with the scanner on the bike: he had to make it.
Nowadays that is no longer possible. If you are too late, you may drop dead. But I don’t have that army mentality. ”

I share my preconception that interior design advice is about appearance, while she also pays so much attention to the inside.

“When it comes to interior design, I focus on the people first. I’m going to have breakfast or lunch with them, have a drink in the evening. Only then do I see their needs: are they warm people or business people, or are they aimed at children. I don’t supply a standard interior copy of Jan.”

Suddenly I understand why I can never just walk past Hanneke anonymously. I feel seen by her. She watches me, but not from some bourgeois standard. For her, it’s all about appearance, where you show what’s going on in your inner world on the outside.

Detail Stevenskerk – signature mason from the 13th century who showed what he had done for each pillar, on the basis of which he was then paid by the superintendent at the end of the week.

That’s how she looks at the church. Of course, she enjoys the enormous wealth of details (she immediately takes me along – see photo) and can tell about it with taste – “preferably to school classes!” But the church is more than just beautiful. “It’s one of the oldest monuments we have in this city.” A monument where everyone is welcome and where the door is open almost all year round thanks to the 80 volunteers, with free entrance. A piece of hospitality on behalf of the city. She conveys that and wants to pass on to every visitor. Hanneke, who was originally a Catholic, has now become ecumenical in this church: “A Protestant has something to tell me and so does a Muslim. We are all something.”

Hanneke herself was one of the first to walk the Walk of Wisdom . Now she enjoys the arrival of the pilgrims: “Those emotions! When they arrive here on the last day… I’ve had people crying. So emotional. Then I ask: is it because you have accomplished it? But it’s not. It is more that they have come deep to themselves, to the core of their self-ness. In normal life, people surround themselves with others, but on such a trip you are still alone for days at a time. That’s emotional.”

I know from her fellow volunteers that Hanneke takes the time for pilgrims. To the incomprehension of one of them – who is done in five minutes – Hanneke can spend twenty minutes: getting something to drink, listening. She was most touched by a woman who had a large company for years and whose children had just left the house. “She was at home with her husband and suddenly she got the feeling of an empty nest. That’s when she started walking.”

In Hanneke’s own life, a nest didn’t happen, “but I would like to be a warm nest for someone for a while.”

More about the Stevenskerk in the publication The Stevens Church: 750 years of the mirror of Nijmegen – link

Stevenskerk – detail
Tombstone of the de Haan family, with an image of a rooster on it as a family coat of arms