Today the blog is an inspiring one. Thinking of place and pilgrimage...
I like you to meet four pieces:
Rufin, O Donohue, Milosz
and a little movie by me.
F i r s t
"Immortelle randonnée : Compostelle malgré moi"
A text from the book Immortelle randonnée by Jean-Christophe Rufin on a new walking species.
The text on the picture is Rufin's (in Dutch), the picture is mine. Taken on the route Rufin took: The Camino Primitivo.
But here's the text in English:
Silently the awareness grew that inside of me a very pleasant companion was hiding: the emptyness. My mind didn't produce images or thoughts and certainly no intentions. Everything I ever knew faded away and I felt no urge whatsoever to dig it up.
Discovering a landscape, I didn't compare it to Corsica or whatever place I once visited.
I saw it all with a refreshing new look and received the complexity of the world in a brain that again was as simple as a reptile or a sparrow. I was a new human, liberated from it's memory, desires and ambitions. A special kind of homo erectus: the walking species.
(As the book isn't translated in English yet the translation is mine)
S e c o n d
"For a New Beginning"
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
John O’Donohue
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
John O’Donohue
T h i r d
"On Pilgrimage"
May the smell of thyme and lavender accompany us on our journey
To a province that does not know how lucky it is
For it was, among all the hidden corners of the earth,
The only one chosen and visited.
We tended toward the Place but no signs led there.
Till it revealed itself in a pastoral valley
Between mountains that look older than memory,
By a narrow river humming at the grotto.
May the taste of wine and roast meat stay with us
As it did when we used to feast in the clearings,
Searching, not finding, gathering rumors,
Always comforted by the brightness of the day.
May the gentle mountains and the bells of the flocks
Remind us of everything we have lost,
For we have seen on our way and fallen in love
With the world that will pass in a twinkling.
Czeslaw Milosz
F o u r t h
Impressions from a camino
Impression by Paul Kouwenberg
(1:55)
