The Art of the Caring Community

Paul Scharff: “When you start, things come to you” On December 26, 2006, Michael Ronall interviewed Paul Scharff, MD, co-founder of The Fellowship Community, in his home at Garden House, for The Listener, the newsletter of the “Spring Valley/Threefold” community in Chestnut Ridge, NY. Dr. Scharff died this past April, and Michael kindly agreed to share this interview.

The Listener: The Listener has a theme for each month, taken from The Virtues. For January the theme is “Courage becomes redemptive power.” I thought of the courage it takes to start a new community, and the courage it takes to face illness and dying, and that you’d be the man to speak to that. What prompted you to think of starting a community that’s focused on the care of the elderly and dying? Even to say “dying” is unconventional.

Paul Scharff: The dedication story for the Fellowship Community was based on the Platonic virtues. Rudolf Steiner traces the evolution of the virtues from the Atlantean Mysteries, and then gradually from the East, through wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. They take their course, east to west. He said what we need to develop today is what it means to work. Courage was the virtue of the early Christian period and into the early middle ages, with its knighthood. Gradually, through the crafts, we develop temperance. The virtue of today is to redeem work. That’s the basis of a community.

TL: How does one redeem work?

PS: It’s the same as for the teacher in the classroom. One addresses the angel before one ends the day, and places that there to meet the angel the next day. As you do in a classroom, so one tries to do here when one starts the day with the morning meeting. Rudolf Steiner has given a beautiful prayer, on meditation with the angel, at night:

"Take counsel with the angel at night / He shows us spiritually the path of the day. / Pray to the Christ in the holy night, / He shows us spiritually the year’s sense of destiny."

You could say that for the sake of the Holy Nights, (1) but also for the sake of work. He gave that to a pharmacist. And that’s something that lies behind our evening planning. Many are not aware of it, but praying to one’s angel for the coming day serves the virtue of redeeming work.

TL: What does one pray to one’s angel?

PS: To meet the coming day with what lives in the future... It’s being able to turn to the past and live in the present for the sake of the future. That takes angel-consciousness—in order to go ahead.

TL: Did the Fellowship develop in a way that surprised you?

PS: First, in order to meet the redemption of work, one needs to ask, How can one do that? Ann [Scharff] was born into the “Oberlin in China” community. I was raised with a brother who was ill, forming a little community. Together we sought where a community for the future might be.

When one undertakes such an activity, one asks that in fact the future be addressed. And the future is always those who die. One dies into the future. One recollects the past. I wouldn’t say I planned it or imagined it. Situations presented themselves that one had to meet, so we came here. And the first thing that was obvious was that one needed a year-round community. Charlotte [Parker] and Ralph [Courtney] regularly left in winter for three months; Threefold was quite empty for that time. So the first thing was how to support year-round activity. Three things require a “24/7”: children, the ill, and animals.

The children were already here. Ann’s a teacher. They had started a school here, so the school was already present. My sense was that one also needed art. We had an artist here, Richard Kroth. I felt it was necessary also to have science, and that was here. Both disciplines disappeared shortly after we arrived; Richard Kroth died, and then Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. What also evolved after our coming here was a threat that the lands in the middle of Threefold would be sold. The lands of the Fellowship were owned by Lisa Monges. She didn’t know whether she could carry the upkeep, and she was talking of selling them to a developer. So, I think it was the middle of winter of 1959 or 1960, I got a call from Nancy Laughlin, who asked whether it would be good to purchase those lands, and I said I think so.

Within the [Anthroposophical] Society already a Fellowship Committee had formed out of Christoph Linder’s wanting to do something for those in need. The committee founded the Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Foundation, but there was never a meeting of the trustees; they were so different that there was no basis for getting together. So I asked for that Foundation to serve the purpose of purchasing those lands. But I also had a foreknowledge of what might come with the future of social process for mankind. It was foreseeable at the beginning of the 1950s, that was that mankind was graying. And I call that one of the greatest revolutions that will occur in mankind.

It just so happened that I was assigned, as an officer in the public health service, to some of the first drafting of Medicare law. And as you know there were about 180 million [Americans] “in town” at that time; I worked in the adjudication process of those who were ill and seeking disability benefits. Out of that evolved the questions and concerns about how to help support older people and how to care for them. So I had first-hand experience looking at quite-a-handful-of-millions of people, and what was going to be the need. The feeling I had was, you can draft all the laws you want, you can make all the pennies necessary, but the worker, the therapists to care for the aging population vis-à-vis the newborn—that didn’t exist.

TL: The aging population vis-à-vis the newborn?

PS: The baby. See, that one has a whole spectrum of life as a basis and a need in social work, I would say that isn’t realized. If you look at The Karma of Vocation 2 you’ll see in the ninth lecture three requirements for the religious life of an anthroposophist: spiritual communion, care of all ages, and Gottesdienst [religious service]. And Gottesdienst is work. So I was aware that you needed all ages. I knew that; that to me was like reading from the book of life. Rudolf Steiner, with his descriptions of the ages of life, merely fortified that. And when I saw with horror what was being planned for the future: the older person stuck away somewhere in a house and the children somewhere separated off in some classrooms, I thought we were headed in a very, very difficult direction.

Then of course in reading Waldorf education you know very well that Rudolf Steiner wanted that people who had work experience would become teachers for the high school. So my feeling was that people who worked over a period of time should gradually become able to do some teaching. You’ll see that we have that now, a bit. It’s not developed. A person comes, and they begin to work, and out of that work, they learn. And out of that they can teach. In the community itself.

You don’t see it; it isn’t formalized. If you formalize it, you risk that you create something that isn’t related to the individuals that are present, neither the ill nor the person who works. Because this is karma. It isn’t something you can lay out and teach. It is not possible to provide care in the same way as education. In education you’re redeeming your old karma. At the end of life the whole future lies open, as it does after about 18 or 19 years of age, right?

You know what happens to the original ether body? It lasts about 18 to 21 years in this day. In his descriptions of Egyptian Mysteries, Rudolf Steiner talks about the gradual diminishing of the activity of the etheric body as the intellect awakens and material culture advances. That’s why the Mystery of Golgotha 3 was necessary. At that time a person had ether forces until thirty. In [Steiner’s] time, it was about twenty-six, and he said there will come a day when the eighteen-year-old will vote, and then you will know the etheric body has come to the end of its activity. If you’ve worked with adolescents, you know that probably about 95% think of ending their life just at that point.

So the question is: How can one then serve? Schools were wanted; Richard Kroth wanted a school of painting, there was always talk of a eurythmy school, Threefold wanted to something with healthcare here. And the person that saw into the situation was Nancy Laughlin. She had been a foundling, and she was very uncertain of her own future in old age, and wanted to see something go in the direction of her concerns. She was concerned about having the child be part of the project, she was concerned about work with the land, so the three things that I mentioned to you lay in her soul: the care of the ill and aging, care of the land with animals, and then the care of all of life, the full spectrum of life. She couldn’t articulate it, but I could see it. You have to look at that as vital in what we are doing today. I didn’t “imagine” what we were going to do. I felt that destiny had to lead the way. And usually at every step I was—or we were—asked. I went to Europe to study in 1964, I got a telegram from her that said, “Come home—there’s 200 shares of Texaco so you can get started.” That was about a quarter of a million dollars. We’d managed to purchase the Monges’ land, and she gave the seed for that, unrequested. I tried to evolve that. Now that meant engaging all the people who were here. We tried to engage them, but it was a terrible threat to the situation, actually.

TL: What was the threat?

PS: To start an initiative totally independent of Charlotte and Ralph and the Threefold Group. Most of them wound up at the Fellowship at the end of their life, so the threat was actually the future not known, when they would no longer be able to care for themselves. At the Fellowship...there was a convergence of destinies, and others who had a sense that something is needed... That isn’t “what you imagine.” When you start, things come to you.

TL: That’s a very unusual approach...

PS: Yes, I think people should go about it very differently than sitting together and trying to create a common image. People should get together and find out who speaks the idea that’s needed for a situation. And here Nancy spoke when the land came; when it came to art, Richard spoke; social process, Ralph spoke; spiritual science, Pfeiffer spoke; medicine, Linder spoke. What one has is voices that are speaking. So it isn’t a matter of creating something, but of listening... To do something different with the finances... Arnold Lever again and again immersed himself in the ideas of economics. If you look at the Fellowship, you will see that a number of the lives of human beings who have died are actually working in this situation. And so, if you want an envisioning, often one needs the help of those from the other side.

That brings me to what is more Ann’s and my destiny. I grew up on Oberlin Road in Ohio and she grew up in Oberlin in China, and that is something about John Frederic Oberlin [1740-1826], who created the first kindergarten. He worked with communities [devastated by the Thirty Years War in Europe] that were inbred, dying, in terrible circumstances; he devoted his whole life to bringing something to those five villages. He married a woman, they had seven or eight children, she died with her last child, and then he and his departed wife stayed in communion for about nine years. He worked out of that communion and developed what I would say was a humanistic “industrial revolution” before the industrial revolution took place. You’d be absolutely flabbergasted at how modern that person was. He’s the man that decorated the Christmas Tree with roses; he was obviously a Rosicrucian. Rudolf Steiner mentions that and says that Oberlin is a prototype of the communion with the dead that will be formed in the future.

So what I would suggest is that if a group of people want to do something, they should get together to see if there’s some common individuality, historically or among those who sit together, who’s on the other side. Take a look as to who that is and what they want of the future; look in the direction in which they might be inclined.

TL: How would it work for people who are in an education to become Waldorf teachers, or eurythmists, and they don’t have yet a working colleagueship?

PS: If they go into the history of eurythmy, they’ll find somebody; go into the history of dance, and go back to the Mysteries, you will find someone. There are people one meets, if one searches, wherever one wants to go. There’s always history. The illness of our present time is the total egotism of the young person who thinks he’s going to do it himself… [Ehrenfriend] Pfeiffer always said, They need to go find out someone who knows something about whatever they are pursuing, not just get together and think they’re going to build the world out of their ideas… Rudolf Steiner was terribly troubled that young people were not sufficiently aware of what was needed in their own questioning to find their way.

One needs a mystery center. That’s what I’ve been concerned with. We need a mystery center. The human being—the three things I told you—that’s the basis of the Mystery. The human being is the new Mystery. And that you can educate a person in a few years and come to a deeper, spiritual, esoteric life? I don’t believe it.

Oberlin formulated it: “Learning and labor.” But that’s not been developed. How to work, how to form work so that individuals will evolve as they serve, that becomes an economic process and a social process. Developing that has not been undertaken. Educators have undertaken… education! How did Rudolf Steiner start the Waldorf School—okay? [In the context of a factory— Ed.] And he asked that people gradually come to their education. What happens instead is that one develops an educational activity that secludes itself from the ongoing work of the day. And I think that’s often death. If you’re trained in medicine, as you know, you go through four years of medical school, then you begin. I don’t think you learn very much in medical school.

The esoteric aspect, the real esoteric, is communion with the idea. That’s your whole thrust, your work with [Rudolf Steiner’s] 'The Philosophy' [of Spiritual Activity]. If you talk about devotion and service to God, you’re talking about fixing a chair, caring for whatever is needed. That can become an educational experience. Look for having all ages present in an education.

TL: What advice would you give someone who has come to Spring Valley to pick up anthroposophy…

PS: The bulk of individuals who come to Spring Valley or to the Fellowship often are in terrible need themselves. And then they begin, and they begin to learn, and they feel they have it in their hands, and then that the community should change for them. But what they need is the next step in their own change. And that step hasn’t been taken sufficiently at the Fellowship…

One of the reasons for taking up the 'Workmen’s Lectures' here this Christmas, which is quite a change here, is so that one can talk about the workmen and what Rudolf Steiner gave to them. He suggested those lectures be a content for America, and only recently has there been enough interest that it was published. My feeling has been to get away from the Gospels and the usual Christological concerns, and find a Christianity more far-reaching... What is “Christian” lives in the whole makeup of every human being.

The question is, What is the deepest source? It is in sleep; it is in the lower senses, in the limb-metabolism system. That is where karma lies, but that’s also where the Christ is working. And when a person works, he then comes in contact both with the future and with the deepest level of human existence.

The challenge is in not being seduced by what is material. It is a real battle, because the material has to be dealt with—and then spiritualized. You’ll find people working at that when they make a medicine, or try to make a new machine, or conduct a religious service. But you don’t find it made available for the well-being of the future of the earth and man. This whole Green Movement is going to take tremendously devoted individuals. To bring devotion, to bring what one has gathered from one’s angel at night, to penetrate each deed of the day—it’s going to take that for the future of mankind.

The future of mankind is there, and one sees that with individuals: you’ll notice how youthful older people grow here, and that’s an expression of the ether-body that grows young with age, and bears the real esoteric of the two initiations of Christian Rosenkreutz. He was first initiated in his teens, and again at age 86; he then lived twenty-one more years. He lived his life to come to Initiation. He set the stage for the human being to be initiated.

Christian Rosenkreutz needs to come before the soul. When you drive along Hungry Hollow Road and see those buildings up there, if anybody thinks this is Paul Scharff’s doing, they’re absolutely insane.

TL: Whose doing is it?

PS: Hosts of beings. I think it is the work of angels— in people—who are here. The dead and the angel-worlds are busy. People could not have such experiences here if the angels weren’t there. But that’s only because one works with the elemental world. So you can try to patch that together! TL: Thank you very much!

Michael Ronall (michaelronall@hotmail.com), the interviewer, received his MA in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research and trained in teaching at the Center for Anthroposophy in Wilton, NH. His writing has appeared in diverse periodicals, including Deepening Anthroposophy, the free e-journal which he helps edit.

Learn more about the Fellowship Community at https://www.fellowshipcommunity.org/