By Willie Van Boven
The following blog was offered by SoULL’s beloved Netherlands resident, Willie Van Boven, who has crossed the ocean two times to be with us for trainings. Willie always brings her very unique seeing to every situation, her joy and her heart. She shares her impressions.
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My name is Willie Van Boven. I am a SoULL assistant from the Netherlands, and an online student since 2020. This May I had the opportunity to join the classes for the Spring gathering as an assistant teacher with Andrea Pollak in Year 2. It was my second SoULL visit to the U.S., and I want to share some of my experiences as a European SoULL student at the in-person gatherings.
Being Dutch – with my European sense of distances and sizes – I was curious if I would experience the U.S. as fast-paced and overwhelming. I was happy to find the vast views and fresh air of Racine, provided by its location on Lake Michigan, and the human-scale feeling of the town and the people. I have felt welcome and not overwhelmed. I did need to get used to big cars, large streets, restaurants in places where I wouldn’t have expected them, and a different kind of food. I’m getting intrigued by the multi-cultural history of the U.S., the different roots of it’s people and the differences and similarities with Europe. As human beings are all different and from the same species, countries and continents are also diverse and related at the same time. Something peculiar I noticed was the use of names: people are quick to introduce themselves with their names and some colloquial greeting.
I have found that SoULL is about re-learning what it is to be a unique human being. It helps me reconnect with pieces of myself that I had forgotten. It is the adventure of coming home to myself instead of leaving that home. The recognition of something deeply known from within, something very familiar. By not focusing on only one stage of life, but by including all stages, from before birth to after death, SoULL has helped me regain my sense of flow and find more ease. SoULL offered me another “road” back home from estrangement and alienation by means of experientials, sharing and offerings of ideas rather than imposed theories. This way of exploring together what it means to be human, what it means to be in relationship, what it means to be in community feels very ‘normal’ to me – which is an often overlooked aspect in a world where being special can be stimulated. To me, it is deeply satisfying to reconnect with life’s organic movement.
My sense of responsibility can make it hard for me to enjoy taking on a new work role, but this time diving into the newness felt pleasurably natural and exciting instead of top-heavy. I have felt very welcome and received by colleagues and students alike, which provided a good ground to exchange and pass on knowledge and wisdom. At the DeKoven Center its sofa’s and cosiness provided the “living room feeling” where we could all be human beings together, taking on different roles and tasks.
During the May retreat, I also visited a place called the Hospitality Center in Racine. The people from this Center offer practical things like breakfast and lunch for whomever needs it but also a place to come together and find fellow human beings. They do this with a down-to-earth merry and solid heart. Carl and Angie, the leaders of this center, came to the SoULL retreat to become aware of what we are doing at SoULL. Their mission of the Hospitality Center seems to link well with the mission of SoULL. It dawns more and more to me how communities make a place thrive if they are willing to get to know each other. This getting to know each other starts with individuals – like Jeanne and Carl - willing to venture into another one’s world, step by step inviting others and then getting the true sense of what it means to be humans together and to share resources.
Teachers of Radical Hospitality, Carl Fields and Angie Green, joined SoULL for the May weekend, and we joined them.
Angie and Carl, thanks for starting a deeper conversation in SoULL about the nature of both bridges and hospitality.
Experiencing the bridge between SoULL and the Hospitality Center, I am reminded of the capacity that lies within all of us. Instead of going the road of estrangement and alienation, we can turn around and share our pain and love. It’s so simple and yet so profound, something worth reviving in ourselves.
Willie Van Boven is a Core Energetics therapist from the Netherlands and a translator of psychosomatic and spiritual books from English and French into Dutch. Her first two still-born children and the six healthy children that followed showed her the complexity and the interconnectedness of life, birth and death and somehow the underlying simplicity. SoULL mirrors for her the organic approach to all of life and nature that is so often overlooked in modern western societies.
