Simply God

I wanted to give my first book, 'Seek the light that rises in the west', to two men. Last time I spoke about the learned doctor, this time I want to describe the other person. I 'met' him first when I was about ten years old, maybe even earlier. Every New Year's Eve we spent with my grandparents who already had a television. And on one of these evenings a show was broadcast on television. It was a 'one man show'. We enjoyed it very much. It was one man, accompanied by a little orchestra, who entertained a large theatre public for several hours - and we laughed through the old year into the new one. I learned to love this kind of humor that wasn't political, or critical. It was a kind of tragic-comic view on the human being of everyday life. The man was a great imitator, but he imitated everyday life. Also he tried to transmit to his audience an already vanishing joy of life, gratitude for living, and he did this with an enormous energy. His humor was not intellectual at all, and despite his enormous success - the streets were empty when he was on television with a theatre-show - some people found his humor boring, precisely because of this rather simple humor - which I found masterly.

When we were students we once went to one of his shows in Theatre Carré in Amsterdam. We couldn't afford expensive places, so we sat in the top, and only saw a very little figure there down below. But a kind of magic grasped the audience.

Then I forgot about him. Not totally, but he went into the background. In the holy nights, after Christmas, we always used to go to a quiet little house with our three children. Once they were a somewhat dissatisfied because of the lack of television or other kinds of amusement. So we put on the little radio that stood there - and on the radio we heard a one man show of ... Toon Hermans. He told a story about the chair of his sister. We renewed our love, and the children were completely struck by his tales. Even on the radio, without seeing him, he fascinated, he captivated the attention. I remembered his supreme quality of making one feel the life, the human life on earth.

And so I wanted to give him a copy of my first book. Not that I expected any reaction from him, I just wanted to send it to him.

But we could only find a telephone number, not an address - and his secretary thought that he would like to meet me personally, that he would want me to visit him. First I had to write a letter. Then the answer came: I could make an appointment.

I met him in his wonderful house near Zeist. He was in his late seventies, but still active.  The first thing I noticed was that he was a tall man - on stage he didn't look tall. And that he was rather earnest, not funny at all. He was more interested in my profession as a medical doctor than in my writing. I gave him the book.

After I left his house again I felt as if I had left my being in space and time, as if these categories were not important at all. Something much greater than space and time seemed to be around this famous man.

But he was - and still is after his death in 2000 - a kind of possession of his image, of his public, of his children. I wouldn't have dreamt that there would be a follow-up of this visit to him.

Still, after a week he called me by telephone and invited me and my husband for lunch. When we came there, my book stood as a trophy on the table. 'When we talked last time, I had no idea that I was speaking with such a learned person', he said - and I always watched out not to take his words too seriously. But he asked me an important question: 'I wish you would live around the corner', he said,'then I could walk in and tell you about my vision on God, about my belief in God. I cannot write about it, I can make little verses, but I cannot write about it. But you certainly could...'

So we sat together for lunch and an interview afterwards, sometimes every week, then every month, then every week again, during a period of three years. I wrote the book, he gave it its title: Gewoon God, which means something like 'Simply God'... After the publishing of the book we went on with the visits, until his death in 2000.

He could have been a Buddhistmaster, although he was a catholic. One of his Christian questions was: Why isn't it said in the bible that Jesus also laughed?

He was born in 1916, so this year 2016 is his 100th anniversary. There will certainly be much publicity around him again. But I learned to know him as an earnest philosophical man who knew much about the tragedy of the human being - and lived with that knowledge by turning it into humor.


Toon HermansSimply God by Mieke Mosmuller