initiative! money as a postmodern threshold experience, a mirror and magnifier of who we are as human beings. Money tends toward being anti-social in how we attach to it and it to us, even though each dollar is, as Steiner states, connected to all the division of human labor in the economy. In movement, in circulation, it reflects the pulse of material life. Money is both mystery and monster, misunderstood and misanthropic, a bearer of light and good intention, and evocateur of rapacious desire. Money is as much a symptom of our inability to connect to the world as it is a symbol of just how deeply interdependent we are. Knowing money is a path to knowing oneself in relation to the economic world and its intersections with the political and wider cultural worlds. Money is social technology that pits self against the other and the world in the process of getting, and celebrates relationship in the world in the process of gifting and letting go. To see that we can live in multiple worlds and a multitude of transactions, maintain our integrity and recognize our interdependence through all of them, and still account for every penny, requires a new consciousness and a significant level of personal transformation. Such transformation requires an architecture that acknowledges present reality with all its flaws, greed, corruption, and extreme inequity, and yet stands as a new structural system in which we can find aid and comfort, challenge and guidance, and above all, a way to live out of love and forgiveness rather than power and violence. The task for our time is to bring practice and visibility to the social architecture that Rudolf Steiner described. What he articulated was that this structure is already there and further that we operate within it, but unconsciously. Through inner discipline, we can develop consciousness of the threefold nature of social life. Then, through that work, we can more fully inhabit the architecture of self and world in a way that brings about social harmony and supports a resilient structure—as the ancient cathedrals, temples, and mosques have stood the test of time—that is home to, honors, and inspires that which is spiritual in the human being and connects the individual with the wisdom of the cosmos. John Bloom is General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America and vice president for corporate culture of RSF Social Finance in San Francisco.
Adapted from John Bloom’s Foreword to Steinerian Economics by Gary Lamb and Sarah Hearn, Adonis Press, NY, 2014. 16 • being human
Colorado’s Angelica Village It is the spring of 2016. A spicy aroma wafts out of the kitchen of 5520 W Virginia Avenue, Lakewood. Lodrigue pats a ball of chapatti dough as big as a soccer ball. Newly arrived from Uganda, he is making his home in the Denver suburbs, riding city buses, and attending the Waldorf school. He is joined by sister Bora, a slender eighteen-year-old with a knack for preparing chicken legs boiled in oil, and by younger brother Audry, more interested in the drumming studio in the garage than in cooking. These three joined the resident community of Angelica Village in May 2016, at that time including Amy and Renata from Denver, Diaz from Honduras, Alonzo from Guatemala, and Rosie from the Pine Ridge reservation in North Dakota. Angelica Village was born in a small farmhouse across the street, home of Anamaria, Terri, and their toddler son Aaron. When a second baby was born, the farmhouse was bursting at the seams and, in perfect timing, the second farmhouse came up for sale. With extraordinary support from the Denver anthroposophical community as well as many other interested friends and donors, this house was purchased and a new chapter began in April 2016. The vision of Angelica Village was born in Renata’s heart many years previously while still attending the Waldorf school. She carried it through college, obtaining her master’s degree in social work. It was nurtured further by her practicum at the House of Peace in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a community for refugee families and adults with developmental disabilities. [The story of the House of Peace was told in being human, summer 2013.] Joining the workforce in Denver, Renata’s vision grew in urgency as she became painfully aware of the inadequacies of the social work system. A small support group formed to hold the intention of Angelica Village: to wel-