being human spring-fall 2019

being human

personal and cultural renewal in the 21st century

anthroposophy.org

rudolfsteiner.org

The Temple & the Treasury (p.14)

Meristem: Awakening the Possible (p.16)

Prison Outreach: 20 Years (p.19)

Bringing Indigenous Wisdom into Life & Education (p.21)

Reflections on the Sacred Gateway (p.23)

Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim Museum (p.26)

A Path to the Word: Steiner and the Art of Eurythmy (p.33)

Spiritual Shakespeare (p.36)

Conduit (p.39)

Redeeming Hearts & Minds (p.40)

Mistletoe “Best Practices” (p.43)

Sunless Light & Wordless Logic (p.44)

Meet Us in Atlanta! (p.48)

a quarterly publication of the Anthroposophical Society in America spring-fall issue 2019

Hilma af Klint, SUW/US Series: Group IX/UW, The Dove, No. 1 (1915), oil on canvas

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The Christian Community is a movement for the renewal of religion, founded in 1922 with the help of Rudolf Steiner. It is centered around the seven sacraments in their renewed form and seeks to open the path to the living, healing presence of Christ in the age of the free individual. Learn more at

Pacific Eurythmy

A part-time Eurythmy Program In Portland, Oregon!

" This is what lies behind Eurythmy! The Human Being as a completed form, Created out of movement!" - R. Steiner

New Classes beginning: Autumn 2019

Fertile ground is found where timeless Wisdom (referred to in antiquity as Sophia) meets the contemporary Human Being (Anthropos). No one has mapped this territory as extensively, or fruitfully, as Dr. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). And no other region in North America has a greater presence of organizations and individual practitioners working out of his insights and legacy.

The Wisdom Working Directory

A Guide to Initiatives Flowing from Anthroposophy in the Hudson River Watershed

Everyday, tens of thousands of people are nourished by the practical idealism of Waldorf Education, Biodynamic agriculture, Camphill communities, congregations of the Christian Community, anthroposophical doctors, therapists, artists, craftspeople, researchers, publishers, and associative businesses. Your help is needed to bring this ecosystem of organizations

is the collaborative platform behind an online and print guidebook to the region’s hundreds of initiatives working out of the anthroposophical impulse for cultural renewal. Please get involved to learn more, submit information for inclusion, and participate in our crowd funding campaign.

Initiatives of Applied Imagination wisdomworking.orgfor more about the collaborating team

Hudson River section - Illustration by Gwendolyn Sherman

Books and Resources for Parents and Educators

An appeal to members in America to become subscribers...

Published in the UK four times a year, at Easter, Midsummer, Michaelmas and Christmas, New View magazine brings contemporary insights based on Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy offering a fresh look at the world and ourselves. Contributions from authors in the UK, Europe and around the world include Health, Education, Arts, Science, Environment, Biodynamic-Agriculture, World events, Community, Book Reviews and much more.

New View began life as an outreach publication within the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain in 1996 but since 2004 it has been a fully independent initiative reliant on subscribers, advertising and fund raising to maintain its existence. Given the challenging political, social and economic times that we are all living through, its editor since 1998, Tom Raines, considered that it would be important to create a bridge to readers in America and initially made a number of free copies available back at the turn of the century for all members in the AS in America to see what New View had to offer. This brought about a small readership in America that we would very much like to increase. As paper copies (which many prefer to leaf through) are more expensive, due to mailing costs, we also offer a cheaper digital downloadable subscription.

www.newview.org.uk ~ editor@newview.org.uk ~ ++44 20 7431 1608

(Read in over 40 countries ~ a wordwide community)

The mission of the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America is to foster a spiritually-based impulse for the work with the young child from pre-birth to age seven. WECAN is committed to nurturing childhood as a foundation for renewing human culture.

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Joaquin Munoz - Trauma, Resilience, & Education

The World In 2030 with Andrea De La Cruz

The Philosophy of Freedom Now with Nathaniel Williams

Story in Our Stars, with Mary Stewart Adams

Anne De Wild on the Fifth Temperament www.bluepearlarts.com

EXPLORE HUMANITY’S PATH AND YOUR OWN. BECOME A MEMBER TODAY!

WELCOME! We look forward to meeting you!

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14 from the general secretary: “The Temple and the Treasury”

16 Awakening the Possible, interview with Meristem founders

18 Anthroposophic Council for Inclusive Social Development, by Jan Göschel

19 Prison Outreach: 20 Years of Service, by Eileen Bristol

21 Bringing Indigenous Wisdom into Life and Education, by Nancy Jewel Poer

23 Reflections on the Sacred Gateway: Marianne and Dennis Dietzel, Linda Bergh, Dwight Ebaugh, Sandra LaGrega, Eric Utne, Jolie Luba

26 arts & ideas

26 Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim Museum, by David Adams

40 research & reviews

40 Redeeming Hearts & Minds, review by Frederick Dennehy

for members & friends

The Anthroposophical Society in America

General Council

John Bloom, General Secretary & President

Dave Alsop, Chair (at large)

Dwight Ebaugh, Treasurer (at large)

Nathaniel Williams, Secretary (at large)

Micky Leach (Western Region)

Marianne Fieber-Dhara (Central Region)

David Mansur (Eastern Region)

Joshua Kelberman (at large)

Leadership Team

Deb Abrahams-Dematte, Director of Development

Katherine Thivierge, Director of Operations

Laura Scappaticci, Director of Programs

being human is published by the Anthroposophical Society in America

1923 Geddes Avenue

Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1797

Tel. 734.662.9355

www.anthroposophy.org

Editor: John H. Beck

Associate Editor: Fred Dennehy

Proofreader: Cynthia Chelius

Headline typefaces by Lutz Baar (Baar Sophia, Baar Metanoia)

Past issues are online at www.issuu.com/anthrousa

Please send submissions, questions, and comments to:

editor@anthroposophy.org

or to the postal address above, for our next issue by 11/31/2019. being human is free to members of the Society (visit anthroposophy.org/join). Sample copies are sent to friends who call, write, or email us at the address above.

from the editors

Dear Friends,

Hilma af Klint (self-portrait, right) has won a remarkable degree of recognition, decades after her death. She joins Joseph Beuys as a second visual artist deeply connected with Rudolf Steiner to become well known in “the art world.” David Adams’ short article about her in this issue invites you to read his full piece for the North American Art Section Newsletter online. Also in arts, Clifford Venho writes a particularly clear and stirring account of the art of eurythmy and its cosmic and human mission. And Gopi Krishna Vijaya reviews, warmly, an anthroposophist’s book on Shakespeare. The initiative section introduces the Meristem initiative in Northern California with an interview of the three founders by a graduate. It also introduces the global umbrella for “inclusive social development,” celebrates 20 years of our Anthroposophical Prison Outreach, shares from a gathering to bring indigenous (Native American) wisdom into life and education, and gathers some reflections on the remarkable “Sacred Gateway” conferences. The research area has a review of Walter Alexander’s new book, an ably affable effort to breach the wall of silence of dogmatic science. Dr. Steven Johnson informs about the advance of mistletoe cancer therapy, a standby of Anthroposophic Medicine. And Boyd Collins gives a stellar and lucid insider’s picture, informed by anthroposophy, of the world of high technology. In the members’ section you are invited to our fall conference in Atlanta, and there are extensive reports of regional and local activity.

John Beck

In this issue we have a review by Physics Professor and author on the topic of morals and technology, Dr. Gopi Krishna Vijaya, of Spiritual Shakespeare, by Marek Bronislaw Majorek, who has analyzed seven of Shakespeare’s plays with the help of the spiritual lens of anthroposophy, including The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Titus Andronicus, plays seldom mined for spiritual content. The book is unfortunately available only on the internet, and we are grateful to Gopi for bringing the book to our attention.

Also in this edition is my own review of Walter Alexander’s Hearts and Minds (reclaiming the soul of science and medicine), very recently published by Lindisfarne Press, an engaging, user-friendly and penetrating study of the thinking that underlies orthodox science and medicine. This is a book that reaches out to a wide readership, including a public entirely unfamiliar with anthroposophy, inviting, coaxing, and finally drawing the reader in to an awareness, informed by spiritual science, of the clear and present danger of reductionism.

Frederick Dennehy

©2019 The Anthroposophical Society in America. Responsibility for the content of articles is the authors’.

Leaving a Legacy of Will Essential Webinars

At anthroposophy.org/store you will find a wide range of outstanding recorded webinars:

Art of Human Becoming (three-part) on Biography and Social Art

Phases Of Life: The Human Being Between Earth and Cosmos (three-part) with Patti Smith and Chris Burke

Healing Forces (three-part): Dr. Adam Blanning, Dr. Carmen Hering, Elizabeth Sustick RN, and Dr. Steven Johnson

The Challenges and Spiritual Gifts of Aging (three-part) with Dr. David Gershan, Dr. Renee Meyer, and Dr. Pat Hart

Death & Meaning: Sacred Gateway 2019 (three-part)

Sacred Gateway 2018 (three-part): Rev. Julia Poulter, Karen Van Vuuren, Lynn Stull, and Maureen Flannery

2018 Conference Keynotes: Orland Bishop, Joan Sleigh

Rev. Patrick Kennedy: Initiation of the Heart 2018

Lisa Romero: Strengthening Foundations of Inner Work (three part)

Who Are the Honeybees? with Alex Tuchman and Gunther

Hauk of Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary

Craig Holdrege: Metamorphosis and Living Thinking

Spirit of Money (three-part): Gary Lamb, Kelley Buhles, Stephanie Rynas, and John Bloom

Steiner & Kindred Spirits: Robert McDermott

Seasons of the Soul

Michaelmas: Hearts are Beginning to Have Thoughts with Rev. Patrick Kennedy

Lynn Jericho: Inner Advent

Holy Nights Journal with Mary Stewart Adams & Patricia DeLisa

Compass Rose of Wind & Stars with Mary Stewart Adams & Patricia DeLisa

Rev. Jonah Evans: The Heart of Easter

Rev. Julia Polter: St. John’s Tide, Depth of Soul & Cosmic Flight

Mary Adams: The Story in Our Stars

Dr. Adam Blanning: Building a Space for Rest: helping children release anxiety

Lisa Romero: Working Holistically with Gender & Sexuality

anthroposophy.org/store

The Anthroposophical Society in America announces the forming of the Legacy Circle

Legacy giving offers the opportunity to make a gift which brings expression to your intention and love for anthroposophy into the future.

Thank you to our 31 founding members, who support the Society’s future through a bequest or planned gift, and to those (next page) who have made bequests in recent years.

www.anthroposophy.org/legacy

www.anthroposophy.org/legacy

Book Notes

Space does not permit us to review more than a few books in each issue. This page is meant to acknowledge some of the many others that come to our attention. Except as specified, the notes are from the publishers — Editor

SteinerBooks steiner.presswarehouse.com

Look at What We Can Become: Portraits of Five Michaelic Individuals, by Neill Reilly, 124 pp. (May 2019)

Neill Reilly presents portraits of five remarkable individuals: Fritz Koelln, John Fentress Gardner, Lee Lecraw, Marjorie Spock, William Ward. These are short, subjective, affectionate sketches. The term Michaelic refers to the qualities expressed by the Archangel Michael, who fights the dark forces that work to suppress human hope, goodness, loving kindness, and true community. These five brief portraits offer inspiration to all those who aspire to live a more Michaelic life, one that pours much-needed loving kindness and selfless service into our world for the future.

Legacy Circle

Many thoughtful and caring members have provided legacy gifts for the Anthroposophical Society in America through their estate planning. We are humbled and deeply grateful for the gifts of these dear friends since 1992:

J. Leonard Benson Susannah Berlin

Hiram Anthony Bingham Virginia Blutau

Iana Questara Boyce Marion Bruce

Helen Ann Dinklage Irmgard Dodegge

Raymond Elliot Lotte K. Emde Marie S. Fetzer

Linda C. Folsom Hazel Furguson Gerda Gaertner

Ruth H. Geiger Harriet S. Gilliam

Agnes B. Grunberg Bruce L. Henry

Ruth Heuscher Ernst Katz Anna Lord

Seymour Lubin Gregg Martens Ralph Neuman

Norman Pritchard Paul Riesen Ray Schlieben

Lillian C. Scott Fairchild Smith Doris E. Stitzer

Gertrude O. Teutsch Catherine Vanden Broek

Contact Deb Abrahams-Dematte at deb@anthroposophy.org or (603) 801-6584 for information about the Legacy Circle.

Rudolf Steiner’s Esoteric Teaching Activity: Truthfulness, Continuity, New Form, by Hella Wiesberger, translated and edited by Marsha Post, translated by Rita Stebbing, John M. Wood and Matthew Barton; 292 pp. (June 2019)

These accounts by Hella Wiesberger (1920–2014) offer an overview of the nature, background, and history of Rudolf Steiner’s esoteric teaching activity. This book is the result of her lifelong study of this aspect of Steiner’s work, including documents she oversaw as an editor of Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works. Wiesberger’s writings were published over two decades as introductions and commentaries in relevant volumes of Rudolf Steiner’s works, placing them in biographical and historical context. The essays were edited for this volume in consideration of more recent context, insights, and knowledge. Included are commentaries and contributions related to the Esoteric School from Rudolf Steiner, Marie Steiner, and Adolf Arenson, and several letters to and from Rudolf Steiner.

Shaping Globalization: Civil Society, Cultural Power, and Threefolding , by Nicanor Perlas, 318 pp., Temple Lodge Press, new edition (2019)

“Nicanor Perlas lays out a framework that integrates the social, the ecological, and the spiritual in a simple and yet profound view of 21st century society.” C. Otto Scharmer, author of Theory U. — Civil Society has become a major power in the

world. The stunning defeat of the controversial and secretive Multilateral Agreement on Investments, the massive worldwide WTO protests, and the annual meetings of the World Social Forum all testify to its coming of age. From these significant victories, civil society continued to catch world attention with the Arab Spring, the grassroots movement that helped elect former US President Barack Obama, and the significant gains of the anti-fracking campaign. With tens of millions of citizens and more than a trillion dollars involved in advancing its agenda, civil society now joins the state and the market as the third key institution shaping globalization. Nevertheless, it cannot fully mobilize its resources and power as it currently lacks clear understanding of its identity. Shaping Globalization asserts that global civil society is a cultural institution wielding cultural power, showing how— through the use of this distinct power—it can advance its agenda in the political and economic realms of society without compromising its identity. Nicanor Perlas outlines the strategic implications for civil society, both locally and globally, and explains that civil society’s key task is to inaugurate “threefolding”—forging strategic interrelationships of civil society, government, and the economy.This new edition includes a new afterword.

Jerusalem: The Role of the Hebrew People in the Spiritual Biography of Humanity, by Yeshayahu (Jesaiah) BenAharon, 278 pp., Temple Lodge Press (May 2019)

“The better I understand the roots of the Hebrew people and its universal-human mission, the better I shall understand the nature of humanity and its mission; and the more human I become, in the most universal sense, anchored in a new spiritual knowledge and practice, the more fulfilled, active, and creative I can be at the roots of my existence as a Jew and an Israeli.” —Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon. Based

on a remarkable series of lectures in his native Israel, Dr BenAharon presents his illuminating research on the meaning of Judaism and the spiritual mission of the Jewish people in the past, present, and future. The Hebrew people have been a central root in the development of not only Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but also the universal human spirit itself. Thus, a new understanding of their development and contribution to the spiritual biography of humanity is essential to understanding ourselves as human beings.

Other publishers

A Sanctuary For The Rights Of Mankind: The Founding Fathers And The Temple Of Liberty, by Maurice York and Rick Spaulding; 276 pp., Wrightwood Press

The story of the founding of the United States is one of heroism and daring mixed with defiance and insurrection; nobility and high idealism countered by cunning and betrayal; compassion and self-sacrifice intertwined with conquest and greed. It is a narrative not simply of the great tide of events that effected the unlikely defeat of a mighty empire by its own colonies, but of the character of the men and women who rejected kingship in favor of democratic governance dedicated to the rights of mankind and the principles of liberty, justice, and peace. In the pursuit of these ideals, the Founders envisioned themselves guided and protected by an inspiring spirit that bound them together and gave their individual struggles and ordeals a common purpose... [They] saw themselves building a home, a permanent dwelling place for this spirit—a Temple of Liberty. The story of how this Temple was built and its meaning for the people of the nation is embedded in hundreds of works of poetry, art, architecture, sculpture, and

Book Notes

song from the first century of the nation’s history. Spaulding and York draw out this often forgotten dimension of the Founding of America, indicating a basis for a renewed understanding of the intentions of the Founders and their extraordinary significance for our own times. www.wrightwoodpress.org

Heartfulness, by Robert Sardello (2015) Heartfulness reveals the mysteries of heart-awareness in short, contemplative passages, followed by what the author calls “prayer/practices.” These practices bring about the capacity to open heart awareness as our spiritual organ of deep presence—to ourselves, others, the world, and Earth. A prophetic book that reveals the missing “middle” between mind and will that will open the essential ways of perceiving the way of knowing through communion. One of the most beautifully designed books you will ever hold in your hands!

Functional Morphology: The Dynamic Wholeness of the Human Organism, edited by Johannes Rohen and Cathy Sims-O’Neil, 430 pp., Adonis Press (2015)

Physicians around the world are familiar with Johannes Rohen’s books on human anatomy. In this, his last major work, Dr. Rohen presents the fruits of his lifelong study of the human organism. Viewing the various organs and organ systems in the context of the organism as a dynamic whole, he arrives at new and profound insights. Functional Morphology significantly supplements and expands the concepts of general anatomy and offers a new basis for approaching the interaction of body and soul. It not only conveys information, but also awakens the reader’s astonishment and joy at the unique nature of the human being and offers fresh insight and inspiration for physicians, therapists, educators, and anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the human organism. www.adonispress.org

The Luciferic Verses: The Daodejing and the Chinese Roots of Esoteric History, by Eric Cunningham, PhD, 199 pp, Academica Press (2018)

Editor’s note: The author of this expensive book is a professor of philosophy at Gonzaga University who draws on Rudolf Steiner’s insights to give an unusual perspective on the esoteric traditions of China (and some technological developments of today). — From the publisher: Eric Cunnigham’s exciting new book combines a new translation of the Chinese classic Daodejing with a synthetic interpretation of the Dao. It innovatively employs the interweaving perspectives of anthroposophy and esoteric world history. Among the inspirations for this work’s unique reading of the

verses of the Daodejing is the speculation of contemporary esoteric scholars that the Yellow Emperor of Chinese mythohistory was actually a human incarnation of the spirit known elsewhere as Lucifer... Cunningham considers these claims from the standpoint of esoteric history and evaluates them on the basis of their convergence with kindred concepts, to show the operations and implications of Gnosticism in history. The book makes a bold case for this common thread in various “all is consciousness” theories of Mind, from Plato, through the ancient skeptics, to Daoism, Zen, and even to the idealism of the 1960s, leading to directly to postmodern theories of “digital consciousness.” What philosophers are exploring today through such topics as virtual reality and digital simulation are presented as new ways of discussing the same contours of reality hinted at in the Daodejing. Rather than leading us to a more humanistic vision of reality, as the Daoist scholars traditionally maintain, this theory of mind may lie at the bottom of a systematic anti-humanist impulse... www.academicapress.com

The Prophecy of Oz: The Victory of Dorothy, The Spirit of the Americas , by Rick Spaulding, 128pp., Wrightwood Press (2017). Insight comes from unusual places. The great American fairy tale, The Wizard of Oz , contains a prophecy for our time. This little book is an attempt to bring the hope that L. Frank Baum envisioned a century ago would be so helpful for America. www.wrightwoodpress.org

KARMIC BIOGRAPHIES

Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz: A European, a biography by T.H. Meyer, Temple Lodge, 2014, 643 pp. First German edition, 1994. Translated by Terry Boardman from the second German edition of 2008.

D.N. Dunlop: A Man of Our Time, a biography by T.H. Meyer, Temple Lodge, 2014, 396 pp. First German edition, 1987. Translated by Ian Bass from the second German edition of 1995.

Editor: Although these biographies are twenty-five and thirty-two years past their first appearances in German, they came into my hands only this year, a gift of the author. They impress me as utterly relevant to the challenges first, of our own historical moment, a century downstream from the catastrophe of Europe, and second, of building spiritual relationships by taking into our consciousness something of the larger being of persons who achieved some real wakefulness about our human situation. Such persons matter, even after their deaths.

Of the challenge of our present moment let me briefly suggest that Europe by 1914 had become rich and worldmastering over several centuries without yet asking clearly what that wealth and power might be for. The same was true of the USA by 1945, when it succeeded Europe in global domination, and the “cosmic day” of 72 years which followed our VE and VJ days saw too little increase in vision and moral stature. The poet (Judith Johnson Sherwin) who wrote in the 1970s that “generosity of spirit does not fail” had it exactly right, with the corollary stated in another of her poems, “The Alarm: for the Secretary of State”: “count down how even the choicest mind’s vehicle shooting its springs out can run amok behave like bomb not clock if the heart be not set right....” Thomas Meyer carefully gives us a generous entryway into the minds and hearts of his subjects, and both enjoyed the closeness to Rudolf Steiner that came from fully sensing his stature.

Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz is known to us as simply an important Austrian anthroposophist. His brother was the close aide of the last Austrian Kaiser through whom social threefolding might have been attempted. Ludwig spent his last twenty years after Steiner death working toward the east, the Czech lands in particular.

Daniel Dunlop was part of an important Irish element in Blavatsky’s Theosophy. He became the leader of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain and organized extraordinary conferences; in 1935 he and the British Society were among those expelled from Dornach; he died shortly after. But he had created a World Power Conference as an enduring example of global economic cooperation.

We have from Rudolf Steiner the insight that human intentions are developed and sustained over multiple lifetimes, through karma and reincarnation. Also, that to get close to the higher level of a human existence—to the spirit-individuality that persists and evolves with humanity, not just the persona that struts and frets its single hour upon the stage,—can open up enduring relationships between the living and the dead which make for resilience in the face of failure and tragedies, opening a place for wisdom herself to enter into our worldly ambitions.

Meyer unfolds his pictures in quite original ways.

Book Notes

The expected biographical details are there, but the spiritual evolution is brought to the foreground, and both the “earnest, heartfelt striving” and the “world-historical” weight of each life is felt. I find myself left with a sense of expectation about their future works and intentions, and a friendly wish to be part of it. — John

Beck

Archives: Scharff and Pfeiffer

Two major additions are coming this spring at the Paul Scharff Archive [paulwscharffarchive.com]. The first is Paul’s two-volume, 388-page work entitled Christian Rosenkreutz: A Study in Humanity. Here are insights through spiritual research which inform extensive meditated commentary on Steiner lectures relevant to Christian Rosenkreutz, plus questions brought to Paul: “What is the significance of Christian Rosenkreutz for our day?” The second addition is Paul’s Commentaries on Steiner’s “Spiritual Science and Medicine” lecture 10. Paul’s in-depth and original work covers the six plants and seven metals discussed by Steiner and the relation of the human organism to the plant and mineral world, including nutrition and healing.

We are also very thankful that Paul’s Commentary on Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course is published and available now from Steiner Books. Working with this material, it is clear to me that when Paul spoke of spiritual research he did not mean reading and extrapolating, but actually researching spiritually in a manner described by Rudolf Steiner in Stages of Higher Knowledge and taken up with practical result by Paul’s friend Ehrenfried Pfeiffer.

Pfeiffer (right) lectured at the Threefold Community and its Summer Conferences, and approximately 100 lectures were recorded on reel to reel tape from 1950 to 1961. Our newest endeavor has been to have these professionally digitized. The audio will be available this fall on the Pfeiffer Archive [pfeifferarchive.com], an opportunity to hear Pfeiffer in his own words.

Folks who wish to support our work should contact archivist Harold Bush [harold.bush@gmail.com] for details on how to help. The Scharff Archive is accessed from around the world with 3000+ visitors per month. All material is is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license making it available to all at no cost with reasonable restrictions. — Harold Bush

from the general secretary

The Temple and the Treasury

by John Bloom

How is it that high-profile banks have managed to perpetuate their mythic images as temples of finance? Despite the revelations of wrong-doing, ethical breaches, and market manipulation, banks are still keepers of our money. The language of trust is brandished amidst the marble columns and promises of security, which we depositors insure through our governmental agencies. However, despite the polished materials and claims that relationships matter, bankers are not priests; rather, they preside over a regulated culture that celebrates money not as service but as commodity. In this investor-driven business context, only profit appears sacred, while true sacrifice in the form of bailouts is meted out from the public trust.

There are deep origins to the temple-as-bank myth. It is true that the ancient temples and hierophants who inhabited them were entrusted with sacrificial gold and other precious materials, which may have included wheat. It was kept in the temple treasury and meted out by the priests for material needs in the community, to put it simplistically. Sometimes the temples were plundered for spoils, sometimes subjected to the raw will of political power and attended by wanton desecration. That temples contained and maintained treasuries from Ancient Greece up to and through the Middle Ages and beyond. Anyone who may have seen the 1982 traveling exhibition called the Vatican Collection: The Papacy and Art, billed as the most expensive art exhibition ever mounted, will understand the vast extent of riches accumulated by the Catholic church, as just one example.

As a contrasting example, the Templars, founded under the aegis of the Pope in the early 12th century, carried out studies such as the understanding of the sacred geometry of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem along with an emerging practical and service-based banking function. As part of protecting the treasures of religious pilgrims, they created reclaimable credit notes as equivalent value for the gold they received from travelers. Travelers could then exchange for gold along their journeys. The gold the Templars held was circulated through loan for capital projects. One might say that the money was always circulating to fulfill others’ initiatives, and it was a rule of the order that there be no private or personal ownership of its

assets. It may be that this particular founding impulse of the Order of the Templars constituted the last attempt to sacralize economic activity. With their demise came the end of that real and practiced nexus. But it was certainly not the end of the use of the temple edifice to cultivate the powers associated with it.

The rise of scientific materialism in the Renaissance, in parallel development with the migration of an anthropocentric world view into the primacy of self-interest, have both contributed to what has become an intensifying need for resource accumulation as the most coveted measure of worth. With this, human consciousness and its capacities for knowledge have shifted away from the ancient world in which the priesthood held the spirit and the gold. That physical and metaphysical reality has given way to more specialized forms as economic life has become increasingly disconnected from physical and natural resources; in short, economic life has become increasingly abstract. An important moment and indicator of this western cultural consciousness shift finds its archetype in the parable of the money lenders from the New Testament in which Jesus famously evicts the lenders and all the merchants from the temple. They had defiled and corrupted the temple by bringing the worst impulses of materialism into the sacred space. That event marked a significant change: the clear separation of temple and treasure. But the bankers did not want to give up the imagery. Simply put, they, or the heirs of their practices, built treasuries and banks that look like temples—columns, peristyles, stone—solid and impenetrable. Such it is to this day, even when money itself is nearly weightless.

I give this extremely condensed historical view because, while the imagery attached to older consciousness persists intentionally, consciousness has moved past the need for bricks and mortar. Banks now exist solely online, their exoskeleton nothing more than a brand and a promise, though of course they are registered and under regulation as is any other bank. Without physical presence they are instead newly devoted to the gods of convenience rather than the mythic gods of yesteryear. Clearly such virtual developments are a manifestation of the separation between temple and treasury. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? What is lost and what is gained?

Gained is the clarity between what is material and what is spiritual. The purview and governance of each of these domains is separately managed under different rules and purposes, and by people working out of different disciplines. Such specialization is characteristic of the modern age, and it has made possible some extraordinary advances in science and medicine, for example, and the evolution of sophisticated financial instruments. While money itself has always been a storehouse and a measure of material value, it has increasingly occupied that place in consciousness that rightfully belongs not to money but to capital. That is to say that capital which is where spirit—ideas, intelligence—shows up in economic life, has a purpose whose value is difficult to assess until it comes into practical implementation and circulation. The result of the application of that capital accrues an exchange value we call money, its measure. That which is deeply human and qualitative, the insight,—inspiration, imagination,—pretty much disappear at that moment, overshadowed by our conditioned attachment to quantification, or that which can be weighed and measured.

What is lost? The speed and convenience of financial transactions have obscured the human aspirational aspects of the economy. Imagine slowing down enough to recognize the phenomenal extent to which human intelligence, spirit, suffuses almost everything produced—from idea, to design, to labor, to marketing and distribution. We would see that natural resources are gifts that are transformed by work, that the clothes we wear are made possible by an organized system of human capacities even as that clothing makes it possible for us to go about our business. While we see or touch the material in economic life, we could be much more awake to and experiencing a sense of the spiritual—a whole realm of thought and intention—that gave rise to and permeates the material.

What I am proposing is the following: If we are to move into the future economy in a way that is healing and deeply human—the antithesis of where we are today—then we need to rekindle the awareness of what is so meaningfully spiritual and motivating in economic life. The temple and the treasury need to be integrated again, but with a new consciousness.

Modern science has intentionally relegated to secondclass “subjectivity” our recognition of how important inner experience is to how and what we know. This is in many ways the same mindset that wants to measure value solely by what a product or one’s capacities for work might sell for in the marketplace, without recognizing

that they are not the same in nature. Instead, we need to re-sensitize ourselves to the subtle but hugely transformative difference between what is gift, in this case human capacity, and what is produced as a result of that gift. We can rightfully make the product into a commodity tradeable in the marketplace; but we cannot put a marketplace value on the gift that made the product possible. The gift, the human capacity arises from a complex of factors much greater than can be encompassed from an economic perspective. Though the following might seem counterintuitive, you can put a box into a gift, but you cannot but a gift in a box. A gift is not bound by time and space in the same way as a box—it is instead connected to a whole human life, to circulation, to an emerging future.

I offer an imagination to activate this future: In ancient times the treasure was enclosed, protected within the temple. What if we now imagine that the treasure is everywhere circulating about the world and that the sacredness of the temple inhabits the treasure? Might our awareness of this human and spiritual reality change how we work with the treasure? Might we better understand what is material, what is gift, what is capital, and what is money? And do so in a way that holds us as accountable for our intentions and actions as we hold the accounting of our assets and liabilities? Accountancy, reconciliation, and redemption among other profound processes, might then include fuller understanding of those words’ double meanings and thus lead us to experience the intimate relationship between spirit and matter. This lived understanding is a part of our evolving consciousness. It will get us past the persistent myths, and support reengaging in economic life with renewed spirit.

John Bloom

john.bloom@anthroposophy.org

Secretary

(

) is General

of the Anthroposophical Society in America and vice president for corporate culture of RSF Social Finance in San Francisco.

IN THIS SECTION:

Meristem is a new program offering unique support for young people on the autism spectrum.

“Inclusive Social Development” is the new umbrella term for a wide range of Steinerinspired social initiatives.

Anthroposophic Prison Outreach celebrates 20 years of service.

At White Feather Ranch in California indigenous wisdom is honored, and truer stories of this continent are told.

Two “Sacred Gateway” conferences have been opening minds to a great transition.

Awakening the Possible

Meristem is a unique program dedicated to preparing young adults on the autism spectrum for a life of greater independence and fulfillment. Its flagship campus is located on 13 beautiful acres in Sacramento, California near the American River, integrated with Rudolf Steiner College. As Meristem enters into its fifth year of instruction, the question many still ask is, What was the inspiration behind this innovative program? Mackenzie Foy, a Meristem graduate student, talks to the founders to get an answer. Maureen Curran-Turtletaub is the Founder and Director of Orcas Institute. Marc Turtletaub is an Award-Winning Producer and Director. Aonghus Gordon is Founder and Executive Chair of Ruskin Mill Trust (RMT) in England.

Mackenzie Foy: What was the inspiration to create Meristem?

Maureen Curran-Turtletaub: I was inspired by a workshop I did with Aonghus. It focused on a therapeutic program through land and craft. During that workshop, a participant asked, “This is amazing! Why isn’t there something like this in the US?” That question was the spark.

Marc Turtletaub: It began with my wife who heard about Aonghus and the trust. I began to hear her experiences with the trust, how ASD is so prevalent and only increasing. I was intrigued by the way she described the method. I spoke with Aonghus and went over to see what they were doing. Meristem is an evolution of that.

Aonghus Gordon: I came to the US at age 24 and fell in love with the people and landscape. I always thought I would do something here, but I didn’t know what that meant. When I came back at age 58, I realized there were few facilities in the US for people who had different ways of learning, as there were in England. And when you meet people like Maureen and Marc, you think, well, everything is possible.

Mackenzie: How is Meristem similar to RMT?

Maureen: Emphasis is on connection with the natural world, outdoor workshops as much as possible. Craft is vital. Landwork is vital. Movement is vital. We strive to see students as whole persons, to engage the student and instructor so the student does not feel “taught at” or “taught down-to;” instead, it is a partnership and a symbiotic relationship.

Aonghus: Both centers have beauty around them, wonderful gardens and the world of nature. Students contribute to the beauty and productivity. The staff of Meristem have similar qualities—they are compassionate, kind, and informed about student needs; they always want to step in and help. Program development—one year is connected to the next. You graduate and can discuss challenges and gifts of the journey. And thank your parents! Without the parents, there is no Meristem, no RMT. Finally, Movement is the foundation at both.

Maureen Curran-Turtletaub

Marc Turtletaub

Aonghus Gordon

Mackenzie: How is Meristem different from RMT?

Marc: Having to thrive in an American economy and social system so students can get jobs and live independently. The heavier focus here on helping students become fully independent, and our foundation of spatial integration.

Aonghus: Climate—In England, 80 degrees is the hottest. In England, the central government pays the students 100% to come to RMT. In the U.S. you pay privately with some government help. That makes it challenging for parents to send a student. Those students are very fortunate.

Mackenzie: What have been the accomplishments since Meristem began?

Maureen: The Meristem experience has shaped an emergent and responsive leadership model. This model exists at all levels within the organism, from staff to students to parents to board. The curriculum is becoming more fine-tuned. Practitioners are part of a team, not siloed. The parents now have a place inside Meristem instead of being on the outside. They have a voice and feel supported.

Marc: Seeing how you graduates all thrive is incredibly satisfying; this is your accomplishment, not ours. Seeing the faculty grow. They may not have known what the program was getting at initially and now they are attuned to the vision of the program and development of themselves.

Aonghus: To help young people realize they can change and they have a potential future they did not know before they came. They had thought, before Meristem, “maybe this is how adulthood is.” Those who come to Meristem are given a new opportunity to imagine and do things they did not know are possible. Each has to find their pathway along with their reimagining of themselves.

Mackenzie: A lot of accomplishments have come through the students. For example, by planning weekend events together, students feel we have grown into a community and developed close friendships. We feel we can trust.

Mackenzie: What have been the challenges since Meristem began?

Maureen: Finding practitioners that have the resilience and skillset to work with youth holistically. The method we use at Meristem differs a lot from traditional methods of behavior analysis and modification. It can be a challenge to change their practice to see the whole

human being and not just change behavior. Because our method was new, it was also challenging to attract students. Trying to message who we are and what, why, and how we guide Meristem.

Marc: It is always a challenge starting a new nonprofit, communicating what you want to do and how you want to do it. It takes a while to hone your ability to say what it is that we do and being able to live up to that. Another challenge to make it the best nonprofit serving ASD requires a lot of teachers to a smaller number of students and that makes it expensive so there is a challenge to make it affordable to everyone. That is our goal.

Aonghus: How does Meristem get more widely supported by the community and those who want to find Meristem? Make a wider community of funders. For parents and youth to advocate a Meristem experience with politicians, psychologists and specialists in autism and convince them it is worth it.

Mackenzie: What intentions do you have for the future of Meristem?

Marc: To keep growing. To meet what students now need and students to come--independence, finding their voice, finding employment, using Breaking Barriers to achieve these things. Build out our food program from seed to table so students appreciate the land they live on, and the food they prepare, and eat a healthy diet. And to listen to you, the students, because it is very easy to assume we know what you need.

Aonghus: I would like to see developments for work training so that you have more experience of work so when you leave you are prepared for the culture of work and have the support structures to have that transition.

Maureen: Mackenzie, I now have a question for you, what in the program helped you the most?

Mackenzie: In my second year, I communicated with my student advisor that I wanted to master social communication, small talk. I used to just say, “Hi. How are you?” But now I keep the flow. At my country club job, I chat with regulars and co-workers all the time now. I feel comfortable. I also feel relaxed with my own family and extended family. At a recent family wedding, my family members came up one after another to my folks and exclaimed how impressed they are with how chatty and open I am. I also communicate with my peers and other tutors at my tutoring job at college.

Meristem is online at https://meristem.pro/

Anthroposophic Council for Inclusive Social Development

by Jan Göschel

The worldwide network of anthroposophic organizations in social care, social work, disabilities and education has a new name and presence. From October 8 to 12, 2018, the biannual conference of the worldwide movement for anthroposophic curative education and social therapy took place at the Goetheanum in Switzerland. About 650 people from around 40 different countries on all continents, including colleagues with and without support needs, gathered under the heading “Social Play Space: Making Room for Fulfilling Biographies.” Woven through with artistic experiences and encounters, the conference was a true celebration of the diversity and vibrant energy of this work around the world. Lectures (by Jan Göschel of the Council Leadership Team, Dan McKanan of Harvard Divinity School, Gerald Häfner of the Social Science Section of the School of Spiritual Science, Ha Vinh Tho of Eurasia Foundation and formerly of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Center, and Joan Sleigh of the Executive Council of the General Anthroposophical Society), workshops (many co-hosted by colleagues of different areas of expertise and ability), artistic activities, and panorama presentations of inspiring projects and initiatives all engaged with the question: How do we co-create a culture and society in which every human being can find their destiny and unfold their biography?

The organization hosting this conference and serving as umbrella for this network of organizations had been known as the “Curative Education and Social Therapy Council.” While supported by its own legal body in form of a small Swiss nonprofit association, it is also an organ of the School of Spiritual Science, representing the field of curative education, social therapy, social work, and related professions in the area of disabilities and support for marginalized groups in society. It has been linked to the School’s structure through representation in IKAM, the coordination circle of the Medical Section.

As the work represented by the Council grew and diversified across the globe, with a strong interdisciplinary character and activities that may be variously weighted more towards the pedagogical, the social, or the medical-

therapeutic in meeting different needs in a great variety of contexts, the name was more and more experienced as needing to evolve. The Council Leadership Team (Jan Göschel, USA; Sonja Zausch, Germany; and Bart Vanmechelen, Belgium), which took over the coordinating function in January 2017, initiated a search for a new name that could serve as an umbrella for this diversity while speaking to the core intent that brings this network of organizations together. In consultation with the circle of country delegates, a new name was developed: Anthroposophic Council for Inclusive Social Development.

A council is a space where we come together as a worldwide movement, consult with each other, build a picture of the movement, and develop initiative. The shared goal is inclusive social development : helping society evolve in ways that allow everyone to participate. In that goal, we have many colleagues in the world. What we can bring to the table for this work is anthroposophy.

To the name we added a new logo and a claim, consisting of three words. The logo shows the movement gesture of the Council—creating dynamic breathing between center and periphery. This makes worldwide colleagueship possible. It allows us to sense and impulsate. The Council includes all who work in our field. It builds a heart organ for this movement and places it into the space of the School of Spiritual Science.

The three words— education, well-being, community —speak to the three main focus areas for our work: How do we make education and lifelong learning possible for all? How do we allow everyone to find health

in dynamic balance? How do we build communities that make space for individual biographies? The words also speak to the links with the three sections of the School whose concerns intersect in our field of work. The Medical Section, concerned with health and well-being for all, has historically been the anchor for our movement in the School of Spiritual Science. The Pedagogical Section, the primary forum for those who teach children and adolescents, has also been a close partner, especially with the growing concerns about the developmental needs of all children and the rapid growth of inclusive models within the Waldorf movement around the world (albeit not yet in North America). The Social Science Section is where questions of community building and social, cultural and economic change live in a focused way. From the beginning, these questions have been at the center of the work of anthroposophic organizations in the disabilities field, and many initiatives have seen themselves as labs for practical experiments in building threefold social organisms.

In placing the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of our work into the foreground, our goal is to expand and deepen our collaboration with these three sections, as well as supporting the integration of all sections around multidimensional real-world challenges in general. Our new partnership with the World Social Initiative Forum is an example of this. Under the umbrella of the Social Science Section, the World Social Initiative Forum (socialinitiativeforum.org ) brings together diverse organizations with a social change mission. As many of our organizations belong squarely to into this network, the Council is building a partnership with the Forum that will allow us to stay actively engaged with each other’s projects and developments and thereby provide a practical and concrete link between the Council and the Social Science Section worldwide.

At the end of the conference in October, the Leadership Team presented the Council’s new name, logo, and website. We would like to invite you to visit our new website: inclusivesocial.org. It is available in German and English now, and we will be adding Spanish and Russian. Sign up for our quarterly newsletter on the website, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram (@inclusivesocial.org ).

Dr. Jan C. Göschel ( j.goeschel@inclusivesocial.org) is a member of the Leadership Team and Managing Director of the Anthroposophic Council for Inclusive Social Development.

Prison Outreach: 20 Years of Service

by Eileen Bristol

Note: the art work pictured has been shared with APO by inmates in the program.

Twenty years ago, Anthroposophical Prison Outreach was founded to serve a population of individuals who would otherwise not likely have access to the work of Rudolf Steiner! APO has reached about 4,000 individuals serving time in prison, helping them transforming their lives through the teachings of anthroposophy. Our library has circulated 20,000 books and placed 600 copies of How to Know Higher Worlds in prison libraries.

In sharing the story of APO, we would like to acknowledge those who were already active bringing anthroposophy into prison settings as early as the 1970’s, creating a seed for our work. These individuals include Truus Geraets and Fred Janney in Michigan, Jan Kibler in New York, Catherine Sneed in California, John Ehrlich in Maryland, Richard Dancy, David Schwartz, Louise Hill, Jean Yeager, Robert Logsdon, and many others in Pennsylvania.

The actual founding of the Society’s APO program has an interesting story. In 1997, I was talking with Blanche Price about the launching of a program to link “study buddies” around the country who did not have access to local study groups. She asked me if I was thinking of including prisoners. The idea was very interesting to me and she introduced me to Fred Janney and her hus-

band Stephen Price, D.C., the next time I was in Ann Arbor. Years later, she told me that in the filing cabinet was a folder “Eileen Prison Work” that she had never opened. She assumed that I was the Eileen in question and thus had raised the question to me about working with individuals in prison. In actual fact, the contents of the folder had to do with a different Eileen! It was one of those amazing “coincidences” that shape our lives.

The Spring 1998 News for Members included an invitation to people who had done anthroposophical work in a prison to contact me. We established a dialogue and agreed to gather in Ann Arbor for a planning meeting. Through the generosity of a bequest from Elise Casper, the Society had created a “New Initiatives Fund” and we applied for and received a grant of $3,000 to cover the cost of organizational meetings and initial start-up costs. That $3,000 launched a program that changed thousands of lives. Thank you Elise!

After two meetings at Rudolf Steiner House in Ann Arbor, with people coming from around the country (including Rick Ruffin who currently serves on the steering committee), it became clear that a national lending library with postage prepaid envelopes for returning the books was the best way to start. We formed a “recognized group” of the ASA. It was understood that APO would raise all funds required for the running of the program as the participants do not pay any tuition. The foundation for Rudolf Steiner Books funded our initial book purchases for the library and we were ready to launch the program. Advertisements were placed in prison newsletters around the country with the question: “Does your life have meaning?” and offering an introductory packet with a copy of Fred’s article Self Development in the Penitentiary, as well as a list of library books and general information. The letters of inquiry began arriving and they continue to this day.

Terri Rosatti served briefly as the original program director and Kathy Serafin took on the position soon af-

ter and has done an amazing job for all these years. Her warmth of soul and sincere interest in the progress of each student in the program radiates to all the participants. Each one of them feels her to be their personal friend.

Over the years, other aspects to the program were added including the newsletter Illuminating Anthroposophy, a mentorship program, and access to the EduCareDo, an Australia-based distance learning program. Looking to the future, we hope to develop a team of people around the country offering in-person classes in prison, similar to the work Kathy and Fred are doing now in some Michigan prisons. We would also love to place additional books in libraries around the country. There is such a need!

An anonymous donor provided a large percentage of the annual budget for some years and is no longer able to offer that support. Every day we receive inquiries from individuals who are in prison and want to change their lives through spiritual science. We are limited only by our ability to gather the funding necessary, both for sustaining and growing the program.

Please lend a hand. Donations (including monthly pledges) can be made through our Facebook page, through our website anthroposophyforprisoners.org , or by mail to APO, Anthroposophical Society in America, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Participation in our annual Walk/Bike-a-thon is a great way to gather funds as well. You can reach our program director at kathys@anthroposophy.org. Thank you!

Eileen Bristol has been an active member of the Society for many years, and serves on the advisory board of APO.

Bringing Indigenous Wisdom into Life and Education

ReCONNECTING Conference: October, 2018

by Nancy Jewel Poer

Beautiful circles, amazing timeless moments, deepest gratitude for life and our natural world was shared in many hearts as sixty five participants gathered at beautiful White Feather Ranch in the Sierra foothills for this conference. There were representatives from twelve Waldorf schools and teachers from as far away as Arizona, Oregon, and Georgia.

Our gifted native presenters, who are all well known artists, teachers, and Waldorf parents, shared the views and thinking of wise indigenous people today who carry the legacy of living in harmony with earth and life. James Marquez, Stan Padilla, Aiona Anderson, and Aaron Sumexheltza represented three native bio regions, the Great Plains (Lakota), Mexico (Yaqui), and Canada (Lower Nicola).

The focus was also to bring correction to truths of America’s history as taught in our schools. Their statements were firm. “Columbus did not ‘discover’ America. He came with papal bulls, the ‘doctrines of discovery’ originally designed for wars of conquest in Europe and then extended to new territories. Dum Diversas 1452 —an edict to claim title, in the name of the church at God’s command, to all lands not inhabited by Christians, described as ‘pagans and other enemies of Christ,’ and consign them to ‘perpetual slavery,’ including by military force, convert them for ‘use and profit.’” The devastat-

ing legacies of that doctrine are all too apparent. Surely the prominent enshrining of the statue of Queen Isabella sending Columbus forth in the California state capital is no longer appropriate in 2018.

Aiona’s story is representative of all the presenters’ ancestral experience. She told of her people living peacefully and sustainably in Canada, in a region accessible only by horseback, and how they were “discovered” by a white man who promptly named them after himself. When Aiona was young, the authorities came and gave her parents two choices: have their children removed and placed in different foster homes, or sent to residential school where it turned out they were also separated. They chose the church run boarding school hoping for educational opportunities. Instead, Aiona and the others experienced decidedly “un-Christian” punishing abuse, degradation, and the destruction of language and identity. The motto was “Kill the Indian to save the man.”

Aiona’s strong-spirited mother, who did not read or write, told the many graduate students who later sought her out, that she knew so much because she didn’t have their kind of education and told them that if a disaster occurred they would not survive but she certainly would as she

knew how to live with the land!

In recent native generations, hopes have lain in gaining power through education to effectively find justice in the face of these ongoing violations of human rights. Aiona’s son, Aaron, a Waldorf-educated tribal chief and attorney, has been able to do just that.

At one point during the healing medicine wheel ceremony, Aiona movingly sang for us and immediately a sudden wind came up in the center of the Peace circle that is surrounded by over arching oak trees. In impressive response, the leaves came raining down upon us like a blessing and affirmation from the ancestors and the natural world. The sunrise ceremony, and that of acknowledging those who had walked this land long before us, at the native grinding rocks nearby, were both healing and inspiring.

If our teachers cannot feel a reverent connection to the natural world as such native people can, they cannot share with the children they teach a deep love of the world and appreciation of all the gifts that plant, animal, and human relationships bring us. Thus, we all become ever further disconnected from reality, trading real life for a technological cy-

ber world, and increasingly entrapped by and dependent upon our electronic machines and gadgets. This gratitude and knowing is a primal soul condition for the educator if we are to keep our humanity and foster it in our children. “Heart thinking” was so beautifully expressed by all our presenters; an understanding of the laws of reciprocity with the natural world such as never taking more than you need and honoring and using all you take. Stan and James led us in these vital celebrations of life with moving rituals of deepening respect for everyone present, and shared their lives and views permeated with grateful and respectful inclusion of all life. James guided the group in native methods of beautiful jewelry creation with soapstone and pine nuts. Popular native story teller, Rick Adams, entertained all at the evening campfire, with animal “teaching stories,” lively tales from our local Miwok/ Maidu tribes.

Our materialistic, exploitive culture that promotes the greed of endless acquisition is not only destroying the earth but preventing us from the kind of thinking that will allow progress toward the economic brotherhood we desperately need. Rudolf Steiner outlines this in the laws of the threefold social order. We must first change our thinking to that of the “New Mind,” as the Great Iroquois Peacemaker brought nearly 1000 years ago when their spiritually-inspired democracy began.

We closed with the Iroquois Thanksgiving address giving thanks for all life given to us by the Creator of the Universe.

All school curriculum needs enriching and “truing” for our time This was a powerful beginning and we hope for further deepening work together in a “ReCONNECTING gathering in the coming year.

Nancy Jewel Poer, October, 2018, White Feather Ranch, Placerville, California; Co-Sponsor with Jack Petrash, Nova Institute

Reflections on the Sacred Gateway

SACRED GATEWAY CONFERENCE: Conscious Living, Conscious Dying, and the Journey Beyond. Harlemville NY, April 2019

Dennis and Marianne Dietzel and Linda Bergh

In November 1996 when our daughters Kirsten Bergh and Nina Dietzel, attending Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School in Harlemville, NY, died in a car accident, community members came forward to hold us all. A vigil held in a family home of a classmate and friend of the girls became the place where community could gather as sacred space to hold life and death in light and love during this most challenging and unknown time.

April 2019, twenty-two years later, at the Sacred Gateway Conference held in the same community, we, the parents of the girls, were asked to share this story as a way of showing what was created in that time as a deathcaring community. From the beginning we knew this story had to be told from the perspective of the whole community and with music. An early element that came to Linda was a drum beat that would move with the heart beat of the story. We chose to tell the story by having the actual community members involved write their remembrance. We then created a script that told the story so the conference audience could go on that journey. The speakers sat in the center of a theatre in the round, each standing to speak their remembrances of that time before and during the accident, and at the vigil. Drumming, saxophone, singing, and lyre music accompanied the story as it unfolded, like a tapestry being woven by a community of weavers.

It was through the re-telling of the “tragedy” in this way, that it became so clear how Love was a container that helped hold grief and transformed death into Light through the giving of each individual. Here is one person’s remembrance of the vigil:

Yet in all the awfulness of the moment of walking in to see Kirsten and Nina’s bodies what I found was a welcoming warm space. Grief and shock were everywhere in the room, but it was not a scary place. This community of people that I hardly knew created a space where I felt welcomed and simply allowed to be with my friends’ bodies with no expectations. I am so

grateful for the space that was created. Food, candles, gentle quiet, music, warm hugs, crying together. With the sudden nature of these deaths, the vigil gave me the space and time to say good-bye and be with Kirsten and Nina’s spirits.

I spent hours just being there next to the wooden coffins in the middle of the living room. I stroked their hair, sang to them, talked to them and I was made to feel that this was normal and okay, that grieving and death can be part of community life. I believe my grief process was greatly impacted by the way this community held space for the deaths of my dear friends. Thank you! — M.O.B

After this “Container of Community” presentation on Saturday morning of the conference, people shared

that this experience was life-opening for them and that it deepened their understanding of how this threshold can be held, even in a most challenging situation. People also shared that it opened up their understanding of their own life stories in new and surprising ways. This kind of lifestorytelling allowed a moment of being with an experience in such a deep and heartfelt way, that we want to further explore this way of learning from each other.

We are grateful to the Anthroposophical Society for supporting this conference on conscious dying, and to the planning committee for having the trust in us to attempt such a new form of sharing.

From Linda’s journal entry:

Love was the container created here twenty two years ago and re-created here last Saturday

We knew it began with a drum

We knew it had to be in the round with a center

L-R: Marianne and Dennis Dietzel and Linda Bergh

We knew it had to be the the words of the very people who were here and those who came

We knew there had to be a saxophone

Then a song came through Dennis and the Script came together

And the voices filled the space circled by a hundred plus witnesses to the deed of the sharing

Of holding light and space after the death of our girls

Responses of conference participants :

You have given me something real that helps me understand this sacred threshold

You have opened a door for me—beyond fear

I am changed by this and I don’t know how

It was the center of this weekend for me— it is what I take home

The heartbeat of love—I can still feel it beating.

Dwight Ebaugh

The second Sacred Gateway conference was held in Harlemville, NY, on the last weekend of April 2019. The first occurred one year ago in Sacramento. I was fortunate to be able to attend that first conference and it inspired me to attend this year’s conference. I look forward to a third conference next year in the midwest region.

The weather was gray, cold, windy, and rainy. In bright contrast to the gloomy weather, spring growth and colors were peeking out and the mood of the gathering was warm and upbeat. We came together in a positive spirit of exploration, of brotherhood/sisterhood, of contemplation, and of striving to understand the “sacred journey” from physical incarnation through death into the spiritual realm. I sensed no pall of fear surrounding this journey. Rather, there was an inner peace that we all seemed to draw from our anthroposophical foundations, our commitment to the wisdom of Rudolph Steiner. I have a distinct memory of Julia Polter’s opening keynote address containing words to the effect that “Rudolf Steiner is always in my thoughts.”

The conference consisted of presentations in which we all participated, and concurrent breakout sessions. Many of us lamented that we were unable to attend all of the compelling alternatives.

Far and away the most powerful full-group session

of the conference was a long Saturday morning session, “Container of Community,” led by Linda Bergh and Dennis and Marianne Dietzel, and described above: the recounting of the sudden and catastrophic death of Nina Dietzel, the daughter of Dennis and Marianne Dietzel, and Kirsten Bergh, the daughter of Linda Bergh. We all learned that the girls were best and inseparable friends in the Minneapolis area; that they chose to spend a high school year at the Hawthorne Valley Waldorf school in Harlemville; that they lived with a local family and were promptly befriended by the entire school; and that by Thanksgiving time when Linda Bergh came to visit, the girls were part of the close-knit community. On the Friday after Thanksgiving the girls died in an automobile accident as a result of “black ice” on the roadway being traveled by Kirsten, Nina, and Kirsten’s mother. The girls died instantly. Linda Bergh survived but required extensive surgery to repair her broken body.

We were all immersed in this event at the conference and the most remarkable thing emerged. While we could all feel the tragedy and while we all experienced the emotion of the loss with tears streaming from our eyes, we also found solace, redemption, and meaning in the tragedy. By Sunday morning’s plenum, this finding was openly shared and expressed.

After the “Container of Community,” I participated in a breakout session with Ben Matlock, “When Active Dying Begins—What To Do?” I came to the conference in search of practical information and it was abundant in this session. I had to forego “HandsOn Body Care,” “Biography and Social Art—Preparation for Dying and Beyond,” and “Befriending Death.” Later I enjoyed David Schwartz’s “Aging and Dying Well,” but had to forego “Vigil Room and Hearth-Holders,” “Journeying Between Death and Rebirth,” and “Creating Death Caring Communities.”

The striking thing about David’s presentation was the insight that our elder years as human beings are now being viewed as a developmental stage not merely as a period of degeneration following the productive years. This was good news to my sevety-three-year-old ears. “Reading for the Dead” with Joanna Carey was like paying a visit to someone else’s study group, an experience that I rarely have, and I picked up some pointers. On the final day I

L-R: Colleen Shetland, Marianne Dietzel, Joan Almon

experienced “The Enigma of Suffering: Meeting our Humanity at the Threshold” with Dr. Steven Johnson, but missed “Contemplation and Inner Development for Connecting with the Dead,” “Connecting with Our Loved Ones Through Nature and Art,” and “Green Burial: a Natural Return to the Earth.” Mornings there was the option of singing sessions with Meaghan Witri or eurythmy sessions with Karen Derreumaux. The singing sessions were a pure delight.

Sandra LaGrega

I felt from the beginning of the planning for the conference that we were being led by spiritual beings, especially Nina Dietzel and Kirsten Bergh. Trying to share the “pageant” with others, on my return home, I can only say that it was a deeply personal as well as cosmic event. As another participant said, “a deed was done.” Kirsten and Nina were so young when they died; their “unused forces” are still reverberating, showing us how the dead can be cared for in community by those who know threshold work. A rent in the fabric of life was torn at their deaths which gave an opening into the spiritual world. The veil was lifted between the physical and the spiritual through the sacred drama that Linda, Marianne, Dennis and those at Hawthorne Valley created.

… People are going back and forth across the door-sill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep. — Rumi

Eric Utne

Linda, Marianne, and Dennis—and Kirsten and Nina—gave us a true gift. Their presentation/performance was a healing ceremony, community ritual, and high art, all at once. I, like most of the people in the room, was in tears throughout. Afterwards I felt closer to everyone present, on this and the other side of the Threshold. It was a blessed event.

Jolie Luba

Last year I went to a conference called Sacred Gateway, and was amazed to see around a hundred and fifty people talking about death. Death and dying has been a topic dear to my heart since my early twenties, and I have been holding workshops and round tables, encouraging people to talk about the topic. I have also attended a number of Death Cafés at the Oakland Cemetery here in Atlanta. There’s so much connection with my work as an early childhood teacher as well.

At the Sacred Gateway conference, I met people advocating home funerals and green burials, not only honoring Mother Earth and considering ecological aspects, but also creating space for a meaningful grieving process.

I came back to Atlanta, sent a few emails, and a group was formed! We meet monthly, and during one of our initial gatherings, we met with a death midwife who works with a green burial site in Conyers, GA. We have been studying and looking actively at laws and regulations to find out what’s possible in our area in regards to both a green burial and home funeral. There was also a big impulse in the group for singing, and we have been working

on songs and other preparations for a memorial service and singing to the dead.

Some people have an interest in discussing ideas about the journey of the soul and spirit after the death of the physical body. Others are interested in preparing for dying, and looking at legalizing a will, or documents that outline advanced directives, such as the Five Wishes.

I just came back from the second Sacred Gateway conference, and again, there were around a hundred and fifty people gathered to discuss death and dying. Very few people attended both. This time, the emphasis was on forming communities and finding the people around you who could step forward in the event of a sudden death. People were happy to hear of our initiative in Georgia.

An interesting discussion centered on pain and suffering at the end of life: palliative care, music to sooth those moments, hospices who have people playing lyre. The other discussion was around control over death in our modern life, the life support equipment and the choices to make, what natural death really means.

arts & ideas

IN THIS SECTION:

“Art for the future” arrived for many this year, out of a Swedish woman’s deep commitment to higher realities, made over a century ago. Where does eurythmy come from, and where is it taking us?

From the Word, to the Word.

The remarkable impact of Shakespeare— does it emerge from rarelynoticed spiritual depths?

Conduit—Laura Summer cheers a book’s words and its images.

Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim Museum

A Significant Artistic Event in the Artworld by David Adams

The recent large exhibition of 168 of the paintings of Hilma af Klint (18621944) filling the Guggenheim Museum in New York City has been making huge waves in the mainstream and online artworld, waves that have been flowing ever since the first and still largest solo show of her work at the Moderna Museet (Modern Art Museum) in Stockholm in 2013. The latter show, “Hilma af Klint: Pioneer of Abstraction,” of 230 paintings was the most popular show the museum has ever held, deeply moving many visitors and traveling to seven further venues throughout Europe so that it was seen by more than a million people.

Likewise, the Guggenheim show is the most-visited in its sixty-year history (over 600,000 persons) and included many references to Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy (not all of them accurate) in its wall placards and sold-out catalog. Her work seems to be especially appealing today to younger persons, and many enthusiastic reviews one reads stray quite a bit from the usually more sober tone of professional art critics, art historians, and artists. A few brief samples:

“This is, without a doubt, one of the most extraordinary exhibitions I have ever seen.”

Jennifer Higgle, co-editor, Frieze (art magazine) 2013

“I can’t help but agree with all the praise being heaped on the Guggenheim’s big Hilma af Klint show. It’s great, great, beyond great.” “[Her] obsessions with secret signs and improbably all-connecting codes . . . return a sense of mystery and order to a world that seems dispiriting and beyond control.”

Ben Davis, ArtNet News, 2018

“When first visiting the exhibition “Hilma af Klint—a pioneer of abstraction,” it made me speechless: exuberant colour compositions in over-dimensional paintings that seemed very familiar. Why have they [been] kept from me so long?” Halina Dyrschka, German film director and producer, 2018

“Between 1906-1915, there followed 193 paintings—an astonishing outpouring . . . she worked as if possessed—in the grip of what can only be described as inspiration.”

Kate Kellaway, The Guardian, 2016

Born near Stockholm, Sweden, Hilma af Klint joined the first generation of women to receive a formal artistic training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1882 to 1887, mostly

Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest (1907-1908) “Pioneer of Abstraction” Exhibition, Moderna Museet, Stockholm 2013

Photograph of Hilma af Klint, ca. 1910

painting conventional naturalistic landscapes and portraits. But from childhood she seems to have had a degree of natural (atavistic) clairvoyance and began attending then-popular séances already in secondary school. This interest in spiritual matters was stimulated by her communications with a younger sister who died from influenza. In 1896 she formed with four other women “The Five,” a Christian spiritualist group that met weekly for ten years and received and recorded many communications from disembodied spirits, including passively creating various “automatic drawings.” In 1889 she joined the Theosophical Society, which she remained with until 1915/16, then joining the Anthroposophical Society in 1920.

From 1906 to 1908 she allowed the spirits (“High Masters”) from the séances (in which she had become the chief medium) to guide her artistic hand in undertaking to paint 111 of mostly abstract pictures involving spiritual content and symbolism. These included several thematic series, particularly ten large, unique paintings from 1907 to 1908, approximately 10’5” high by 8’ wide, on the theme of the four ages of human life, which evoke some of the strongest positive reactions from viewers today. I myself found experiencing their scale in person to be an almost overwhelming experience. She certainly produced large abstract paintings years before those men up to now hailed as the founders of abstract art (such as Kandinsky, Malevich,

Kupka,

and Mondrian).

In 1908 she persuaded Rudolf Steiner to visit her studio to see some of these. After quiet contemplation, he told her a few esoteric things about them, stated that only in fifty years might people be able to understand them, and objected to her method of working mediumistically and passively, encouraging her to develop her own conscious spiritual faculties as a more modern way to obtain and express spiritual knowledge.

From 1912 to 1915, still in contact with her spirit guides but working more independently, she continued her series called Paintings for the Temple, completing 193 paintings organized into 16 series. This series culminated in three large “altarpiece” paintings intended to summarize all her work to that point. She then continued with a variety of other series of paintings up to 1920. She felt her esoteric paintings originated from the astral world and she was working within the Rosicrucian stream of spirituality, including quietly incorporating a lot of background esoteric color and number symbolism.

From 1920 onward, when she became able to travel, she made regular visits to Dornach, observing the art of the first Goetheanum, speaking with and attending lectures by Steiner, studying the Goethean and anthroposophical color theories (including “painting out of the color”), and eventually joining the new First Class of the School of Spiritual Science. Starting in 1922 she changed her style to paint

Hilma af Klint, Primordial Chaos Series (part, 1906-07), at the Guggenheim Museum, NY

Hilma af Klint, Ten Largest (1907-8), at the Guggenheim Museum, New York

Hilma af Klint, Group 1, Primordial Chaos, No. 16 (1906-07), oil on canvas

Hilma af Klint, Group 1, Primordial Chaos, No. 12 (1906-07), oil on canvas; “medeltiden” = Middle Ages, “nutiden” = modern times

Hilma af Klint, Ten Largest, No. 3, Youth (1907), tempera on paper, mounted on canvas Hilma af Klint, Ten Largest, No. 7, Adulthood (1907), tempera on paper, mounted on canvas

Hilma af Klint, W Series: Tree of Knowledge, no. 1 (1913) watercolor, gouache, graphite, and metallic paint on paper

only in wet-on-wet watercolors, creating more than 200 watercolors in this style. Some seem to be based on meditative exercises from How to Know the Higher Worlds, while one of her largest late projects of these years were clairvoyant, meditative artistic botanical studies, annotated in German (often very esoterically or enigmatically), covering hundreds of plant species, and recorded in three notebooks that she donated to the Goetheanum.

Although she was able to exhibit and talk about her works at the World Conference of Spiritual Science in London in 1928, she became disenchanted with the power jockeying among Steiner’s successors after his death and never returned to Dornach after 1930 (although her notebooks claim she remained in contact with Steiner after his death in 1925). Much of her later life was occupied with organizing, documenting, and interpreting her life’s artistic work, looking to future generations that might be ready to understand them. She specified that her work should not be exhibited until twenty years after her death and should never be sold.

At her death in 1944 she left behind in the care of a nephew more than 1,300 paintings, sketchbooks, and 124 notebooks with more than 26,000 pages (mostly in Swedish and still largely untranslated). Her work remained largely unknown and unappreciated (except by a few, most of them Swedish anthroposophists like

Ake Fant and Arne Klingborg), until a few examples were exhibited in the 1986-87 revelatory show, “The Spirit in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985,” shown in Los Angeles, Chicago, and The Hague, 42 years after her death.

The dramatic reappearance of af Klint’s artwork in recent years like a kind of opened time capsule has been confounding mainstream art’s somewhat rigidified understanding of the history of modern art and providing an example of a groundbreaking early modern female artist who unusually practiced art purely as a selfless service to humanity and the spiritual world. Both the anthroposophical world and the mainstream artworld are struggling to re-evaluate and incorporate the inspiring example of her work. There were even some eurythmy “flash mob” events staged inside the Guggenheim before the exhibition closed on April 23, organized by Spring Valley eurythmist Alexandra Spadea.

My much longer discussion of Hilma af Klint’s life and work from an anthroposophical perspective is online at www.anthroposophy.org/afklint

David Adams, PhD (ctrarcht@nccn.net) edits the newsletter for the Art Section in North America and is a regular contributor to being human .

Note: All works shown on pages 28-34 are in the collection of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden [ www.hilmaafklint.se ].

Hilma af Klint, WUS/Seven-Pointed Star Series: Group VI, Evolution, No. 15 (1908) oil on canvas

Hilma af Klint, Flowers, Lichens, and Mosses (1919-20) pp. 24-25 ink, watercolor, and graphite on paper, HaK 586

Hilma af Klint, Untitled (1933), watercolor

Hilma af Klint, Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece (1915), oil and metal leaf on canvas

Hilma af Klint, On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees: Untitled (1922), watercolor

Hilma af Klint, On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees: Untitled (1922), watercolor on paper

Hilma af Klint, On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees: Wheat and Wormwood (1922), watercolor

Hilma af Klint, SUW/UW Series: Group IX/SUW, The Swan, No. 17 (1915), oil on canvas

Hilma af Klint, Untitled (1930), watercolor

Hilma af Klint, Untitled (1931), watercolor

Hilma af Klint, Untitled (1941), watercolor

Hilma af Klint, Untitled (1931), watercolor

A Path to the Word: Rudolf Steiner and the Art of Eurythmy

by Clifford Venho

The lily-of-the-valley produces the seed and the seed again the lily-of-the-valley; in like manner the divine creative Word created the mute human seed—and when this primeval creative Word glided into the human seed, in order to spring up again within it, it sounded forth in words.

—Rudolf Steiner (lecture in Hamburg, May 18, 1908)

In her memoirs, published under the title The Green Snake, the artist Margarita Woloschin describes a remarkable encounter with Rudolf Steiner, which took place in May of 1908, when he was giving the lecture quoted above on the Gospel of St. John:

On that first evening, he spoke about the Prologue to John’s Gospel. After the lecture, he came over to me and asked, “Could you dance that?” I was not surprised by this question, for ever since childhood I had desired to dance every deep experience, and I was convinced that Rudolf Steiner “knew everything.”

“I think one could dance everything that one feels,” I answered.

“But today it really does depend on the feeling!” He repeated this sentence and stood a while before me as if expecting a question. But I did not ask him.1

Woloschin later realized that Rudolf Steiner had been waiting for her to ask him the question that would afford him the opportunity to inaugurate a new art of movement out of the Word—the art of eurythmy. It is not mere happenstance that this first inkling of the new art of eurythmy came after a lecture on the doctrine of the Logos, the Word, as it appears in the profound depths of St. John’s Gospel. Indeed, when Rudolf Steiner gave his lectures on speech eurythmy some sixteen years later, in June and July of 1924—lectures that were a kind of synthesis of everything that had been given since the inception of eurythmy in 1911—he again returned in his opening lecture to the theme of the Word. He pointed once more to the tradition that stands behind the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel, a tradition that understands the Word as a spiritual reality and not merely a symbol. In the lecture, he draws attention to the fact that we tend

1 Steiner, Rudolf. Eurythmy: Its Birth and Development. Trans. Alan Stott, Anastasi Ltd., 2002, pg. 16.

to treat the concept underlying a word as more important than the word itself. He suggests that we even feel a certain sense of superiority in being able to devalue the word compared to the thought it expresses. But this understanding of the word is far removed from the one that prevailed in ancient times. As Steiner explains, “To primeval human understanding, the idea, the conception ‘the Word,’ comprised the whole human being as an etheric creation.”2 This understanding of the Word forms the basis for the development of speech eurythmy, which is, in essence, the making visible in artistic form of this etheric creation through gesture and movement.

In this first lecture of the speech eurythmy course, Steiner further characterizes the nature of the etheric body as an immensely complex organism that is constantly in movement. He describes how this activity of the etheric body goes over into the sounds of speech, so that when we speak, the forms and gestures of the etheric body are imprinted invisibly on the air. Each sound of the alphabet produces in the air its own particular form, which is in reality a picture of a movement in the human etheric body. Steiner explains that if one were to speak all of the sounds of the alphabet from “a” to “z” in succession, so that by the time “z” is reached “a” is still sounding, then one would have in the air a picture of the whole human etheric body.3

Steiner then goes further by describing how the human being actually arises out of the eurythmy of the gods, out of the divine movements of the gods, which then come to rest in the human form:

In eurythmy we are really going back to primordial movement. What does my Creator, working out of primeval, cosmic being, do in me as a human being?

If you would give an answer to this question you must make eurythmy movements. God eurythmises, and as the result of His eurythmy there arises the human form.4

This is one of the central tasks of eurythmy: to bring the human being into a direct relationship on earth to

2 Steiner, Rudolf. Eurythmy as Visible Speech. Trans. Alan Stott, Coralee Schmandt, and Maren Stott, 3rd ed., Anastasi Ltd., 2015, pg. 29.

3 Ibid., pg. 31.

4 Ibid., pg. 37.

the divine creative activity that fashions the human form and, indeed, all created forms. Rudolf Steiner lays out a path through which human beings can begin to experience themselves within the divine creative process—can begin to experience themselves as co-creators, as beings endowed with the Logos, the Word. In other places, he describes how in eurythmy the physical body is raised into the etheric realm, so that the body moves according to the flowing, weaving laws of the world of life. In eurythmy, we should feel as though we lift the body into the sphere of life, so that the body becomes an expression of these purely etheric laws.

In this first lecture, as mentioned above, Rudolf Steiner makes us conscious of the fact that we no longer have a feeling for the power of words—that we have become hardened, intellectual beings whose first impulse is to grasp the concept signified by a word, while disregarding the inner life of that word itself. In many ways, eurythmy seeks to awaken in the human soul a feeling for the life of the Word and for the inner qualities, moods, and gestures that live in words. When we begin to enter into these qualities, not only with the intellect, but through engaging our whole being—when we lift our hearts into our heads—we enter a world of creative activity, of movement and life.

This aspect of eurythmy’s task is described beautifully in an introductory lecture given in 1913 on the occasion of the first eurythmy performance.5 It should be mentioned that the birth of eurythmy is intimately bound up with the development and staging of Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas. Some of the very first indications for eurythmy were made in connection with the work on the dramas, especially in relation to the portrayal of spiritual beings on stage, such as Luciferic and Ahrimanic thought beings, as well as elemental beings. In this introductory lecture, Steiner begins by recounting a conversation between Professor Capesius and Frau Balde (two characters from the dramas). Frau Balde is a simple woman from the country who has a talent for storytelling, while Capesius is a learned professor.

In this discussion, she tells him quite bluntly that he is a bad listener, and that this makes her work quite difficult.

Capesius, believing himself to be an attentive listener, is somewhat taken aback, and asks, “what is missing in my listening?” At first, Frau Balde does not think he will understand what she has to say; but when Capesius persists in his question, she replies, “Well, you know, if you would listen properly, then your ether body would dance. But it doesn’t dance!” Capesius, in his typically intellectual fashion, retorts, “And why should my ether body dance? And how should I do this?” He wants to understand it through his head.

Frau Balde tells him that he first has to understand how she actually receives her fairytales, namely, from the spiritual world. Here Capesius balks and says, somewhat uncomfortably, that he does not see how these spiritual beings could speak to her in human language—that is, in German or English or French. Frau Balde replies, “That’s just it! On this point you have to become more intelligent. The beings do not relate in any language, but they move. And everything which with them is movement is what you have to understand.” Capesius asks how to do this, and Frau Balde replies:

Well, you see, you have to understand the art of letting the heart rise for a while into the head. Then one receives a remarkable feeling from all those movements which the elf-beings, fairytale princes and fairies carry out. And what one feels here, flows like streams into the larynx—and then one can tell the story. And if you would listen properly, then your ether body too would dance. But because you cannot do this, you can’t understand everything and much of what I tell is lost on you.6

Rudolf Steiner uses this example from the Mystery Dramas in order to emphasize the possibilities for concrete experience of the spiritual realms opened up by eurythmy. We usually listen only with our heads; we extract the thought content from words without heeding their inner movement, their hidden qualities. But, as Frau Balde tells Capesius, we have to learn to dance with our ether bodies in order to truly hear. When we do this, we experience not abstract thoughts or dead pictures, but the living, weaving life of the spiritual world.

In another of Steiner’s early introductory eurythmy

Eurythmy “O” form & color indications by R. Steiner

5 Steiner, Rudolf. Eurythmy: Its Birth and Development, pg. 52.

lectures, given on January 21, 1914, he describes the rigidity of modern thinking, and the potential source of renewal for thinking that can arise out of eurythmy. He describes a future where “our thoughts will also learn to move artistically,” and through this inner enlivening of the human thought world, “we shall see before us the redemption of humanity in this one realm.” 7 This redemption of thinking is also described in Steiner’s Letters to the Members, written at the end of his life for the members of the Anthroposophical Society. There he speaks about Michaelic thinking as one in which the heart feels the qualities of thoughts—their contours and shapes, their brightness or darkness.8 It is a thinking in which the heart rises up to meet the thought activity of the head in order to bring an artistic sensing and forming into the creative unfolding of the movements of thought. We are thereby able to wrest the power of intelligence from the clutches of Ahriman who wants to make our thinking into a tool for his aims of world-denial, of separation from the sphere of life and from the higher realms.

This artistic forming of thoughts is always the principle that underlies the composition of Rudolf Steiner’s written works. As he states in his preface to the revised English edition of Theosophy, “Inner truth, for descriptions of the spiritual world, can only be of that quality which is also expressed in mobile, flowing inner pictures.”9 And the reader must likewise be engaged in this experiential form of thinking. As he explains in another preface to Theosophy, “Whoever merely reads through it [the book] will not have read it at all. Its truths must be experienced. Only in this sense does spiritual science have any worth.”10 Eurythmy can be a guide toward experiencing the thoughts of anthroposophy in this way.

To take an example, also out of Theosophy, which illustrates how eurythmy can contribute to an enlivening of the thoughts of anthroposophy, we can consider the chapter on the human aura.11 There he describes the human aura as an interweaving of color. But he makes sure to clarify that he is not speaking about color as a physical

7 Ibid., pg. 56.

8 See Steiner, Rudolf. Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts. Trans. George and Mary Adams, Rudolf Steiner Press, 2007, pg. 97, “The World Thoughts in the Working of Michael and in the Working of Ahriman.”

9 Steiner, Rudolf. Theosophy: An Introduction to the Suprasensory Knowledge of the World and the Vocation of Man. Revised Translation by David Ecklund, Thomas O’Keefe, and Clifford Venho. Chadwick Library Edition, vol. 7, Anthroposophic Press, 2019, pp. 17-18.

10 Ibid., pg. 12.

11 Ibid., pp. 173-187.

phenomenon, but rather of the inner soul experience that one has when immersing oneself in color. In other words, one has to strip away the physical color, and live purely within the inner experience that arises out of that color— for example, the inwardness experienced while living in blue, or the radiance experienced in yellow. When he gave the indications for color in eurythmy in 1915, he brought them in connection with stretching and contracting: “Try to experience every stretching as a brightness. Try to experience every contraction as a darkness.”12

He then described how one can feel these qualities of brightness and darkness in the sounds of speech—for example, the vowel sound ee (as in “see”) should be felt as bright, while the sound oo (as in “you”) should be felt as dark. He then gave the indication for the colors themselves in the form of a stretching of the hand upward and a contracting of the hand downward, with a balance in the middle. Green, which is a balance of yellow and blue, is experienced with the hand held straight out. From there one can stretch the hand upwards, brightening to yellow and even farther to orange and finally, with the most tension, to red. Conversely, when one contracts the hand by closing it, one arrives at the experience of blue, indigo and violet.13

In this way, one can begin to embody the inner qualities of color, which can be extremely helpful for entering into Steiner’s descriptions of the human aura as they appear in Theosophy —that is, not as outer phenomena, but as inner experience. One can likewise enter in a living way into the descriptions of the spiritland in Theosophy through the help of eurythmy. As Steiner describes, in this spiritland we encounter the “archetypes” of everything we have come to know in the lower worlds (soul and physical). These archetypes are described as creative beings that are constantly active, producing form after form in a mobile, living process of creating. He describes how one can also experience a form of spiritual hearing through which these beings of the spiritland also sound in tones, rhythms, and harmonies. Upon entering the higher regions of the spiritland, the observer can experience how this sounding transforms itself into a spiritual language:

He begins to perceive the “spiritual word” so that the things and beings do not only make their nature known to him through music, but also express it in “words.” They tell him, as one may put it in spiritual

12 Steiner, Rudolf. Eurythmy: Its Birth and Development, pg. 81.

13 See Ibid., pg. 82.

science, their “eternal names.”14

Through such descriptions, one can begin to understand what Steiner means when he says, “God eurythmises, and as the result of His eurythmy there arises the human form.”15 Eurythmy in its highest form is the spiritual language of the higher worlds, which human beings can begin to cultivate during earthly incarnation as a remedy for the experience of separation from the divine world, a separation that lives as a wound in every human soul.

The first word ever carried out in eurythmy was Halleluiah, which, according to Rudolf Steiner, means,

14 Steiner, Rudolf. Theosophy: An Introduction to the Suprasensory Knowledge of the World and the Vocation of Man, pg. 140.

15 Steiner, Rudolf. Eurythmy as Visible Speech, pg. 37.

“I purify myself from everything which hinders me from beholding the Highest.”16 Through eurythmy we are able to sense a future in which humanity will one day speak and create out of the power of the Word, in which the flesh will become Word. For that reason, Rudolf Steiner planted the seeds of eurythmy into the hearts of human beings. It is our task to care for those seeds, so that what was sown a hundred years ago can bear ripe fruit for the future.

Clifford Venho is a member of the faculty and performing ensemble at Eurythmy Spring Valley. He also serves as a translator for the Chadwick Library Edition of Selected Written Works of Rudolf Steiner.

16 Steiner, Rudolf. Eurythmy: Its Birth and Development, pg. 41.

Spiritual Shakespeare

by Marek Bronislaw Majorek; Berliner Wissenschafts Verlag; 546 pages.

review by Gopi Krishna Vijaya

Occasionally, one comes across a gem of a book hidden away which makes one say “Why did I never hear of this before?” Marek B Majorek’s penetrating work Spiritual Shakespeare is one such contribution. It was originally published in March 2016 for the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Majorek lives in Switzerland and is a member of the Anthroposophical Society. He speaks to not just the literary value of Shakespeare’s enduring works, which has been a theme of an uncountable number of books by many authors across four centuries, but takes us “behind the scenes” in order to reveal the fount of Shakespeare’s wisdom, in the light of anthroposophy, or spiritual science, as revealed by Rudolf Steiner.

Spiritual Shakespeare begins with the question: Why are Shakespeare’s works so powerful and popular? How is it that one feels an impact from them four centuries later, even if the play is performed amateurishly or badly? Are the usual explanations for this potency satisfactory, or is there, as Majorek maintains, something more? Majorek examines the way we perceive a typical Shakespearean play, and leads us from the usual mode of sense perception and analytical thinking toward the importance of supersensible cognition—and thereby sheds light on

Shakespeare by means of the science of supersensible realities—anthroposophy.

What follows is a systematic and thorough examination of seven of Shakespeare’s plays: The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona , Titus Andronicus, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Romeo and Juliet, and, lastly, Hamlet. With each play, Majorek highlights the overall impact the play typically has on a viewer, and seeks to bring out the elements that are not easily understood. He begins a process, retained throughout the book, of inviting the reader to walk alongside him holding questions that arise for both, such as feeling deeply satisfied even if the play is tragic, seemingly confused “timing” in the play and apparently absurd behavior of particular characters. Majorek invites the reader not only to think with him, but to feel the struggle through these “knots” without sacrificing any nuance of the play, and to ask uncomfortable yet penetrating questions every step of the way, weighing the actual development of the play against what our present-day common sense would seem to dictate. He does not attempt intellectually to explain away any part of the play, but to hold the play and the questions in our souls, as a whole.

In the process, Majorek examines the usual explanations offered by previous authors about these puzzles, and points out their inadequacies, showing the need to evaluate them from a higher perspective. The use of prior literary prototypes, where Shakespeare is said to “borrow” the plays from this or that source, is dealt with by showing

how Shakespeare molded such earlier themes in very specific ways, not simply ‘rehashing’ a successful dramatic formula.

A good example of this is The Comedy of Errors —a story in which brothers and their respective manservants are long-separated identical twins. In comparing this story with its own apparent “twin”—an older story called Double Menaechmus or Menaechmi —several crucial differences are made clear. The moral character of women in The Comedy of Errors stands in stark contrast with that in Menaechmi, as does the ending of the two plays: Shakespeare brings about a reuniting of the whole family while there is a separation in Menaechmi. Such crucial differences take The Comedy of Errors into a completely different, and wholesome, direction. The travails of the family in coming together show the necessity and importance of knowing one’s true identity in a very real sense, and the working of the Christian impulse in human culture. In addition, Majorek indicates how the resolution of such a play actually hints at the reality of karma and reincarnation.

Issues of Shakespeare’s time, such as the social mores, the relation of the people to the Church and paganism, occult streams, and even geographical details, are evaluated thoroughly for their bearing on the play. Ideas from spiritual science pertinent to the same themes are also developed side by side. In the midst of these explorations, the landscape of the play gains clearer contours and relief, and in many instances, Majorek shows how spiritual science sheds light on the whole landscape like a strike of lightning. In some cases, the relationship between two aspects of a play, which might have been treated simply as a contradiction by commentators and critics, is resolved in a way that through that relationship, as though from the depths, the truths of spiritual science are directly revealed. It feels that at last one has touched upon the nerve center, or the very heart of the play, and has begun to understand what Shakespeare was disclosing through it.

For instance, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona (i.e. Proteus and Valentine), there are a series of events involving friendship, love, betrayal, honor, shifting identities, and romantic allegiances. Majorek shows that this play is “anything but a light comedy” and through the maze of events, especially love’s instinctual, erotic, and destructively aggressive forms, the mystery of true and false love

is found to be at the center. Love that is more than mere instinct but has become a form of an enhanced self-love is shown to be the danger that the character Proteus succumbs to, followed by an aggressive attachment under whose influence he even threatens to violate a lady in order to gain his objective. Majorek shows how the influence of the two major adversary powers described through spiritual science—Lucifer and Ahriman—sheds light on the details of all these aberrations of love in Proteus, and how, when love matures and metamorphoses in the right way, it results in the internal growth of the other gentleman, Valentine. Majorek then unravels the mystery of Valentine’s peculiar statement to Proteus that has been misunderstood so often: All that was mine in Silvia, I give thee. This statement points to the spiritual core of devotion and constancy that Valentine has towards Silvia that he transfers to Proteus, resulting in Proteus’ magical metamorphosis. This leads to a complete transformation of our view of the play. The questions and riddles we had examined with Majorek resolve themselves in surprising ways, which nonetheless appear obvious in hindsight, as riddles often do. However, unlike the case with ordinary riddles, these “solutions” are not ends in themselves, but only beginnings in plumbing the depths of Shakespeare’s work.

Seemingly common theatrical themes such as twins, lovers’ tiffs, disguises, enchantment, violence, and sacrifice serve not just the aims of entertainment, but connect to the very core issues of human life—the stage of consciousness mankind is at, the tasks that are to be taken up, and the transformations that are required for human evolution. In Romeo and Juliet, Majorek shows how the lovers’ travails are an expression of the clash between two eras: one in which the family bond reigned supreme following the older Mosaic law of restricting marriages to the bloodstream, and the newer Christian way of love between individuals, transcending nation, race, or family. For Juliet, Romeo is “love, husband, lord and friend .” Even the involvement of masks in the beginning of this story shows how it is an inner recognition that characterizes their eternal bond, which distinguishes it from a momentary passion. Romeo is masked when Juliet first sees him, and she falls in love with him based on his voice and inner individuality alone, and their mutual love is

Shakespeare, by William Blake (1800)

expressed in a way that becomes holy (“If I profane with my unworthiest hand / This holy shrine.”) rather than passionate. Majorek shows thereby how the play reveals a spiritual or cosmic love (“star-crossed lovers”) between individuals—where love takes the form of a sacrificial free deed with no selfish streak, dramatized through the lovers’ suicides.

Especially in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Majorek shows how Shakespeare sheds light on the development of individuality, the character of the adverse spiritual powers, the value of human spiritual development and the participation of the spiritual worlds in human affairs. In the descriptions of the world of fairies in the Dream , Shakespeare seems to be depicting an intertwining of the spiritual and human worlds intermediate between that of the Greek myths and that of the Old and New Testaments. In addition, the very act of entering a forest in the play shows that the threshold has been crossed, and the activities that occur among the spiritual beings there precede the activities between the humans in the play. Even the term “behind the wood” and the play’s discrepancies in time point to a specific region of a spiritual world, beyond the Moon Sphere as Majorek identifies it. Thus, Majorek points to the presence of ancient Mystery knowledge in Shakespeare’s plays and shows us the signatures of Initiate consciousness in them. He effectively shows that the source of Shakespeare’s knowledge had to be from the same elevated sphere in order to provide such clear details.

My personal favorites in Spiritual Shakespeare are two: the chapters on Titus Andronicus and Hamlet Titus Andronicus always had been something of a thorn in my side, since I could not perceive how a play with so much gratuitous violence could ever carry something meaningful. But Majorek shows how, in the context of the ancient Roman law of the absolute power of the father of a family, the reason for the violence and “gore” becomes clear: it is the necessary result of the clash of this legalized form of extreme power over family and citizenry with the moral sense that took root in Roman times with the advent of Christianity. Only through this evolved moral sense can bloody revenge be transformed into compassion and mercy, and the structures and forces of the Old Testament be superseded by that of the New Testament. It is only by depicting this contrast in an extreme form in his drama that Shakespeare could touch his viewers at the necessary depth. In this context, I found the portrayal of Marcus’s lament of compassion over the mutilated Lavinia to be deeply moving. At the end of that chapter, one sees a

moral seriousness and occult depth that stand in complete contrast with the violence for the sake of violence that we are accustomed to see in plays and movies today. Majorek’s treatment of the resolution of this play actually “unknotted” something that helped me appreciate the rest of Shakespeare with a clear heart.

The chapter on Hamlet c ontains an ingenious resolution to the vexing question asked over the centuries: “Is Hamlet an indecisive and wavering hero?” Without revealing any spoilers, I can assure the readers that the resolution to that is deeply satisfying and revealing at the same time!

Spiritual Shakespeare will be enlightening for any English speaker, and particularly so for those who are familiar with anthroposophy. Since the allusions to spiritual science are not presented in a dogmatic way, but are revealed gradually by gently unweaving the plays themselves, this book also serves as a superb introduction to spiritual science itself. It will also provide educators in theater and drama as well as Waldorf School teachers ample material to prepare themselves for truly grasping the plays which they are teaching students. As Rudolf Steiner said in his lecture on Shakespeare, held in Stratfordupon-Avon (Shakespeare’s birthplace) on the occasion of Shakespeare’s birthday) on April 23, 1922:

Something transcending ordinary human life lives in drama. Shakespeare entered deeply into this. He was inspired by that ancient dramatic power which, to a certain extent, was still felt by his contemporaries. And he worked in such a way that we feel in Shakespeare that more than a single human personality is at work: the spirit of his century is at work and, with it, the spirit of the whole of human evolution.

It is a glimpse into this very spirit that Marek Majorek has offered through his work Spiritual Shakespeare. It is indeed a gift from the culture of the heart of Europe to the English speaking world, and I hope you will appreciate this work and strive to expand it into the widest circles possible.

Note: The book, which is in English, has been made expensive by its German publisher in conformity with the custom of making “academic” books with very low print runs expensive. This does not benefit the author in any way. It is available online from outside the US: www.bwv-verlag.de/detailview?no=3571

www.amazon.co.uk/Spiritual-Shakespeare/dp/3830535716/

Gopi Krishna Vijaya, PhD is a member of the Anthroposophical Society. He has been active in meetings of the Natural Science Section and in workshops on the challenges of technology.

Conduit

Conduit by Leif Garbisch (Alkion Press, 2017); 516 p.

review by Laura Summer

Conduit, Leif Garbisch’s newest book, is a testament to Leif’s unusual and endlessly unexpected use of language. I could skim through the pages to give you examples but I get lost in the pictures, I don’t know which to choose.

We all began together from a wish of god, Mama once said. Out of a wish grows a world. “Why would God wish for a world?” I asked. “Why would God wish for me?”

Yes, thought Games. The way to make a difference is to be as much like creation as possible. The more like creation, the closer I am to everything. And the closer I am, the closer I can move my thinking, right up against this storm for example, deep into any situation, even to the brink of despair, then the more likely I can break through and make room for— He stopped his thought, but it would not be finished. For love, he concluded.

When the night reigns over the world with its darkness, or the cherry sweet stars curve across the heavens and sing— I’m home.

But not all of the words are lovely, many pictures are filled with the painful qualities of life.

The thing about marriage, though. Anyone can get married, but to stick with it takes practice.

Practice? Games did not like the word.

Work, then.

Like a job, work? Like toil ?

Not a job. A joy, said Ri. Marriage takes joy. A joint? Games asked, though he knew what she’d said.

No drugs for me, said Rio.

You’re my drug, he teased. Your drudge?

My adage, he corrected. The be all and end all. The buck stops here.

It seems unusual to me for not only the main character in a novel to transform but for the surrounding qualities and the surrounding characters to transform in a way that is complex and in concert but in each case individual. It is in this transforming, in a way unpredictable but so palpable, that Conduit excels. In the beginning of the book we are expected to traverse a mood of chaotic despair. If we give up and put the book away we miss a series of deep transformations. But many may indeed put the book aside as we are so used to being entertained in an understandable, perhaps superficial, way in a novel. But what if the novel begins in a post modern landscape, barren of meaning, and little by little transforms, in such a way that the reader is only aware of the progress of transformation because of a subtle feeling of deep interest where previously there was monotony? Where a sudden quiet singing appears where there had been an uneasy drone.

And as the main characters, Games and Rianna explore the progression of stories that make up the book, we realize why the book is called Conduit. It is a conduit, an instrument of change and as the book transforms, the reader transforms. The subjects are profound, life, death, love and despair, treated in a way and a language unusual, unprecedented and uplifting.

Conduit is available at www.leifgarbisch.com and from Amazon.

Laura Summer is co-founder of the anthroposophical social and art intiative Free Columbia.

research & reviews

IN THIS SECTION:

Greeting a “breakout” book on science and medicine...

“Iscador” is not only a significant treatement for cancer, it is a marker for an expansion of the healing arts. When a technology insider adds the holistic insights of anthroposophy to his resources, what can he tell us?

Reclaiming Hearts & Minds

Hearts and Minds (Reclaiming the soul of science and medicine) by Walter Alexander; (Lindisfarne Books, 2019), 335 pages.

review by Frederick Dennehy

Years ago, when I was on the board of Steiner Books, there were repeated discussions about what it would take to have a “breakout” book, one that would sell multiple thousands of print copies and make Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy household names. One suggestion that came up often was a personalized, intimate, “warts and all” non-hagiographic biography of Rudolf Steiner, preferably by a well-known and non-anthroposophist author—someone who could draw in the readers who very much wanted to hear about Steiner and what he had to say but didn’t yet know it.

Others said that you had to break open the hard anthroposophical ground first—crack the shell— or the audience in waiting would not be prepared to listen. Owen Barfield had done something like that in academic circles in the latter part of the twentieth century, with Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, the reissued Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning, and a host of other elegantly reasoned works. They had been widely respected in American universities, often assigned as reading in English departments. Barfield’s acknowledged purpose in writing Saving the Appearances had been precisely to remove the obstacles to a contemporary appreciation of Steiner and his teachings.

The biographies that have appeared since that time—excellent ones by Lindemann, Selg, Lachman—have done little to move the needle in this country. Barfield is now largely forgotten on campuses, and even among many anthroposophists his writings are considered too “difficult,” “stylized” or “off-putting” to generate much interest. Removing the obstacles to an appreciation of Rudolf Steiner’s teaching has become tougher and trickier, precisely because those obstacles—the prevalence of reductionism and the shrinking sense of an inner life that follows from it—are more embedded than ever, both in in academia and in popular culture. Their removal today requires a deeper reach.

Walter Alexander, in his Hearts and Minds (reclaiming the soul of science and medicine), does more than reach deep. In his engaging, user-friendly and penetrating study of the thinking that underlies orthodox science and medicine, he invites, coaxes and finally persuades his readers to come to their own awareness of the clear and present danger of reductionism, to prepare ground in which spiritual science might flourish.

Reductionism is dangerous because at best it makes no room for, and at worst it outright denies, the willed activity of thinking. If we lose the understanding of the place of our own thinking, we have lost ourselves. Without a tenable experience of that self, an authentic questioning of our place in the social, political, economic, or communal world is meaningless. Hearts and Minds is a book about the possibility of restoration —restoration of the soul that orthodox science has estranged from us as well as from itself. That restoration, Mr. Alexander makes clear, depends not only on the arts and humanities, but on the victims/victimizers themselves, on the peripheral precincts of science and medicine.

Mr. Alexander has no special training in medicine or any of the sciences he discusses in this book. He is, however, a freelance medical journalist of long standing—as he puts it, an expert at talking to experts —and, we should add, at decoding technical jargon into accessible prose and reformulating unfamiliar concepts on multiple levels. He introduces “Sound Check” sections that raise the reader’s level of focus in order to begin to connect at a higher level the disparate stories, interviews, and surveys that weave their way through the chapters. And there are the many “Trash Talk” digressions, where two of New York City’s sanitation workers attempt to make workaday sense of the scientific expositions and conundrums that have come before in the text.

More than half a century ago, Sir Isaiah Berlin famously divided the world of thinkers and writers into “hedgehogs” and “foxes.” Hedgehogs view the world in terms of a single idea. They know “one big thing.” Foxes draw on a variety of unrelated, even contradictory ideas and experiences, without reaching after a unifying principle. Berlin is reported to have coined the distinction as a kind of intellectual parlor game, but it is an unusually intriguing one, and has not lost traction over the years. Mr. Alexander is a writer with an unusually wide variety of interests, including medicine, science, the arts, philosophy, political issues, and human behavior. He draws on a wealth of disparate information, and writes with the wit and humor that is born of experience layered with tolerance, manifested in cascades of unexpected metaphors and analogies. He has, in short, all the characteristics one would expect in a fox.

Mr. Alexander, however, is a hedgehog in disguise, because he knows one very big thing. It remains in the afterglow of every interview, anecdote, exploration, illustration, and question that permeates this delightful book. That one big thing might be capsuled in a phrase coined by Owen Barfield in his novel, Unancestral Voice : “Interior is anterior,” or, phrased differently, thinking is the silent partner in every perception, idea, or discovery we have.1 Far from being an “epiphenomenon,” or a peripheral nuisance to experience and fact, it is, as Sherlock Holmes once described Doctor Watson, “the one fixed point in a changing world.” It is the substance that underlies our medicine, our physics and the way we see the world. And if we want to understand these or any other phenomena of our experience, thinking is the place where we have to start.

1 Other concepts in Hearts and Minds extended from their origins in Barfield are the evolution of consciousness, as distinct from the history of ideas, which posits that because consciousness is correlative to phenomenon, the evolution of the earth and various aspects of it is at the same time an evolution of consciousness. Thus, as Mr. Alexander points out in Chapter 4, the facile assumption that history tracks only our changing ideas about the same “world” ignores the fact that our “world,” or our perception of the world, may change even more fundamentally than our thoughts about it. To use Mr. Alexander’s own imaginative and useful vocabulary, our “worlding” changes. “Worlding,” or our inner contribution to the construction of the world we experience, is itself expanded from Barfield’s figuration.

Ours is an age of general distrust of expertise and, in the battle zone of choices we have been thrust into by modern health care schemes, a particular distrust of medical expertise. For that reason, Mr. Alexander’s dispatches from the front lines of today’s medical research and pharmacological trials will be of close interest to every reader.

The news, for the most part, is not good. At least as far as medical research is concerned, the notion of science as a discipline of open-minded inquiry seems quaint at best. The experimental evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy, for instance, is impressive, and unquestionably is deserving of further research and robust debate. That is unlikely to happen in today’s academic climate, with its reflex “circle the wagons” reaction to whatever cautious suggestion is made at readjusting , even slightly, the way of looking at things and ideas that have achieved the emblem of orthodoxy. Ideology, it seems, trumps test results, and to challenge that ideology, even implicitly, may place prestige and even livelihood at risk. Mr. Alexander details the downfall of Jacques Benveniste, a worldwide respected author of hundreds of scientific papers, who in 1988 published in Nature a series of tests purporting to show that certain immunoglobulin antibodies preserved their efficacy after multiple repeated dilutions, suggesting the plausibility of homeopathic methods. What followed was an unleashing of the wrath of scientific orthodoxy, including a “peer-review” by a group including James Randi, the stage magician with delusions of philosophical grandeur. The “review,” replete with a “trial” held amidst a spontaneous display of card tricks by Mr. Randi, might have qualified as the stuff of comic opera had it not resulted in the tragic loss of Benveniste’s laboratory, academic position, and reputation.

Mr. Alexander traces the avoidance of a similar fall from professional grace by Dr. Bruce Pomerantz, known in the early part of this century as “the father of alternative medicine,” who, observing Benveniste’s downfall, exercised extreme caution and turned from researching homeopathy (from which all research funding had evaporated, anyhow). Alternative medicine itself, now gathered into the fold of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), while increasingly

popular, is hounded by calls for its remedies to be subjected to the same high testing standards as conventional ones, and is watched warily for unsubstantiated claims. Paltry research funds for its generally non-patentable strategies and substances, as if by design, preclude testing proportional to the high public interest. Mr. Alexander interviewed at some length Dr. Barrie R. Cassileth, at the time the Director of Integrative Medical Services at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, about the future of alternative medicine’s various therapies. While hospitable to acupuncture as a therapy that helps patients endure the side effects of chemotherapy, Dr. Cassileth drew a line in the sand separating remedies to be considered from those to be avoided. Her litmus test was the “rational basis” test, by which she meant those procedures that yield to a “plausible” mechanistic explanation. Homeopathy was far over that sand line, foundering somewhere in the froth of the surf.

“Rational basis” in contemporary science seems to be whatever conforms to the materialist/reductionist paradigm, or shows a fair chance of doing so in time. It does not appear presently to welcome rational self-criticism. But the materialist/reductionist paradigm has recently been attacked by one of the most widely respected philosophers alive today, Thomas Nagel, a self-confessed atheist “without a religious bone in my body,” who in 2012 wrote Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. As the title suggests, Mr. Nagel is not one to mince words, and his argument, as deliciously worded by Frederick Amrine in his recent compendium of essays, Thresholds, is that “materialist reductionism can explain everything except life, consciousness, human reason, the lawfulness of the universe, and moral values.” The publication of Nagel’s book occasioned cries of betrayal, heresy and, if not a flat out motion to suppress, a kind of fond nostalgia for the days of hard line censorship. Perhaps peer pressure will accomplish that same end. His critics will certainly not succeed through one-on-one debate.

Fortunately, there is ample hope provided in this book for the “reclamation” alluded to in the full title. Quantum physics, long seen as at least an enemy-of-my-enemy champion of some form of Geisteswissenschaft (literally “spirit knowledge”) against billiard ball reductionism, has been very much around for nearly a century, and has at the least extended the boundaries of what is thinkable, by making it blindingly clear how little of the world is yet understood by science. Also, exhaustive studies of placebo

effects have demonstrated beyond question the fundamental effect of mind on body. There is hope, too, in the open entertainment in peer reviewed journals of Branko Furst’s picture of the heart not as a propulsion pump but a ram pump, not as a cause, but as a restrainer and regulator of prior blood flow—an idea first put forward by Rudolf Steiner in 1920. But perhaps the most comprehensively hopeful development is the theory of emergence as articulated by Dr. Peter Heusser, who views complex phenomena not as Lego-like assemblages of lower parts, but as interactive systems of “levels,” the lower levels “sublated” to fully independent realities, primary phenomena to be dealt with not in terms of what lies beneath, but as selfsubsistent entities.

At the outset of this review, I suggested that Hearts and Minds has the potential to open hearts and minds to the worldview of spiritual science. It is not just the subject matter, the first hand reportage, the concise reasoning, or the author’s natural eloquence that prompt this expectation. More than anything, it is the style. This is above all a friendly book. Where many, if not most anthroposophists would be inclined to be argumentative, intense in their defense of what they most fervently believe, Mr. Alexander invariably shows restraint. There is always more than one point of view in a controversy. Questions regularly take the place of killingly formulated answers. Humor, including self-deprecating humor, is everywhere. Without summarizing it, I direct the reader’s attention to the star character of Chapter Thirteen, Herr Professor Doktor Isador Harrumfen, for an object lesson on how to release a reader from an embedded preconception without hurting the patient.

The author’s technique throughout this book is centrifugal , allowing a hitherto untried idea or image to rise out of the reader, rather than centripetal , bearing down and in, upon cherished beliefs. More minds and hearts are turned by schmoozing than by lecturing, and Mr. Alexander knows it. Hearts and Minds may prove to be the breakout book for which we have been hoping.

Frederick Dennehy is a retired lawyer, author, and actor, as well as a classholder of the School for Spiritual Science, member of the Section for the Humanities and Literary Arts, and associate editor of being human

Walter Alexander has served on the council of the New York City branch for twenty-five years. A former public and Waldorf teacher, he has been a professional writer about medicine and science and a frequent contributor to being human .

Mistletoe “Best Practices” Training

Steven M. Johnson, DO

Mistletoe therapy came out of anthroposphic medicine through indications and research by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). It was never intended as an “alternative” therapy but rather a rational approach to cancer therapy heralding a new concept in therapy. Mistletoe has remained unique in its ability to both enhance immune properties in the body as well as affect the “soul” and physical symptoms important for quality of life in a positive way. Numerous studies have shown this to be true and now there are clinics and physicians using mistletoe therapy all over the world. In America, the landscape of mistletoe therapy is presently changing as organizations such as Believe Big have introduced this therapy to a wider circle of patients and clinicians. This has prompted the need for better education for practioners.

There will be the first best practices “mistletoe training” course in Baltimore June 21, 2019. This is a special event with phase one of the nearbye John Hopkins School of Medicine Mistletoe Trial approaching completion. The course was originally going to be only 50 clinicians but opened to 70 due to very high demand. The course will also have a mentoring component which will take place over the following year. The course is approved by the Medical Section at the Goetheanum and is a special offering of Physicians Association for Anthroposophical Medicine (PAAM) educational efforts.

Mistletoe use has increased fourfold over the last two years, creating a demand for training and the need to expand a community of clinicians holding a high standard of practice. It is also important for Anthroposophic Medicine (AM) that training and standards keep a vibrant connection to the anthroposophical medical work as the prescribers of this important medicine expands beyond anthroposphic-trained physicians. It is also an opportunity to introduce AM to a new group clinicians.

This course is an attempt to bridge and discuss the

role mistletoe has within both the academic and integrative circles of oncology practice. Both the participants and faculty represent academic, integrative, and anthroposphic practitioners. This is an exciting attempt to expand cooperation of Anthroposphic Medicine within a diverse group of practitioners. PAAM members have tried to be active within other organizations since the recent creation of our five-year development plan. This has taken us into relationships with the American Institute of Homeopathy as well as legislation to preserve homeopathic medicines, Academy for Integrative Health and Medicine and Health as well as the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health. Others have been independently involved with Physicians for Informed Choice and their efforts. Faculty of the course include Dr. Marion Debus MD, Dr. Peter Hinderberger MD, Steven Johnson DO, Nasha Winters ND, and Paul Faust ND.

PAAM has also recently supported the translation of the anthroposphic oncology vademecum into English and is currently constructing a website project to support education and research about mistletoe. This will be located on PAAM’s newly revised and reconstructed international website anthromed-library (https://www.anthromed.org/). We hope these efforts will support the healthy understanding of the potential for mistletoe use into the field of oncology.

Please look at what is going on in PAAM by visiting our new website at (https://paam.wildapricot.org/). Take a look at our educational efforts and PAAM Friends initiative (https://paam.wildapricot.org/Friends-of-PAAM). We appreciate your goodwill and support as we try to bring Anthroposphic Medicine to the next stage.

Dr. Steven Johnson is president of PAAM, the Physicians Association for Anthroposophic Medicine, and coordinator of the mistletoe training course.

Sunless Light & Wordless Logic

by Boyd R. Collins

Jaron Lanier, a founding father of virtual reality, recently wrote an insightful book called You Are Not a Gadget, in which he describes the transition currently taking place in Silicon Valley culture. “Since implementation speaks louder than words, ideas can be spread in the designs of software. If you believe the distinction between the roles of people and computers are starting to dissolve, you might express that—as some friends of mine at Microsoft once did—by designing features for a word processor that are supposed to know what you want, such as when you want to start an outline within your document.”

(Lanier, 2011, p. loc. 564). Software has become so successful at supporting human objectives that many are now convinced it should formulate the objectives themselves.

Because of this, software design often seems based on an invisible ideology. The effectiveness of its hidden agenda comes from its pretense to neutrality and the fact that it is now the default means for accomplishing most of our work. Its unstated assumptions can therefore be smuggled in under the cover of “practicality.” On the surface, it appears to enable the most efficient way of interacting with a process to achieve a defined goal. But if we pay careful attention, we can see that it incorporates assumptions about the nature of our tasks that we thoughtlessly accept.

We have been conditioned to expect software suggestions that will enable improvements to our work which will be automatically implemented. An outline will be started for our document whether we thought about it or not, so we either play along and assume that Word knows our document better than we do or we learn to manipulate the software’s expectations. This default behavior accustoms users to accept such suggestions without consideration, while covertly embedding an assumption of machine superiority into our own mental software. By becoming ever more thoughtless, our work incorporating software suggestions seemingly improves and we receive the rewards of that “higher quality.”

In addition, our software conditions us to believe that the most significant human achievement is to enable incremental improvements in existing processes rather than re-thinking them from the ground up. Gradually, we are losing the ability to rethink what already exists, weakened

as we are through increasing dependence on software that trivializes our thought processes. The easier our lives become, the more the inner freedom necessary to break out of our continually reinforced limitations wanes.

Better than the real thing?

As another example, consider how social media such as Facebook molds its users. According to media critics like Siva Vaidhyanathan in his book, Anti-Social Media (Vaidhyanathan, 2018), Facebook is consciously designed to generate addictive behavior. The platform’s algorithms constantly push users into extremes of identity performance. Users gain friends and likes by manufacturing popular tribal identities in which the tribe is defined ever more narrowly. For instance, by embracing greater and greater ideological extremes in an alt-right grouping, one enhances his or her popularity ratings. It is an instance of what Guy Debord named “The Society of the Spectacle”—in this case manufacturing a consumable identity that partakes in the spectacle. Facebook is designed to promote caricatures of our human potential, illusions we are conditioned to accept as if they were real persons. It is a stage for imitating value commitments and fulfilling life activities which frees us from actually having to live the values espoused in the virtual medium.

On a global level, the lords of the computing clouds are rapidly integrating humanity into a transhuman matrix. By pretending that machines can be conscious persons, they hope to enforce new goals enabled by artificial intelligence. Software is now being built with the assumption that it knows what we want better than we do ourselves, as AI proponents such as Yuval Harari incessantly proclaim. Rather than formulating the best path to achieve human-directed purposes, AI-generated algorithms are beginning to override the purposes of the mass of humanity with those of the few in dominating positions of corporate power. And most of us will gladly surrender to the software’s expectations of us because the rewards will come mainly to those who are the fastest to submit. Eventually we may lose the capacity to perform anything but what our software makes easy.

Turing’s Test for Humanity

Alan Turing, often considered the father of computer science, proposed a test for humanity called the “Turing

Test.” The point of it is to determine if the computer can generate conversational responses indistinguishable from those a human being might make. If an objective evaluator cannot distinguish the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. However, as Jaron Lanier suggested, “… the Turing test cuts both ways. You can’t tell if a machine has gotten smarter or if you’ve just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you’ve let your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you?” (Lanier, 2011, p. loc. 635). In many ways, we are being trained by our software to imperceptibly degrade our idea of what constitutes a conscious person. It would seem that the capacities of software belong to a different order than what lives in the human soul no matter how clever their speech imitation algorithms might be.

Science without understanding?

In Silicon Valley, some even believe that machine learning can replace scientific understanding. In a recent article in Singularity Hub, Amar Vutha asks the question, “Could Machine Learning Mean the End of Understanding in Science?” (Vutha, 2018). Citing the example of Alpha Zero, a machine-learning based program that taught itself chess in about a day and then beat the world’s leading chess playing programs, he speculates on the potential of machine learning to replace the need for scientific understanding. This rapidly evolving technique “… allows computational models that are composed of multiple processing layers to learn representations of data with multiple levels of abstraction.” (LeCun, 2015). It has been used with spectacular success in the areas of speech and visual object recognition, drug discovery, and many other domains. Instead of understanding physical phenomena through mathematical theories, deep learning “… discovers intricate structure in large data sets by using the backpropagation algorithm to indicate how a machine should change its internal parameters that are used to compute the representation in each layer from the representation in the previous layer.” (Ibid.). In other words, through the use of statistical methods based on large data sets, predictions can be made about how phenomena will behave—without the need for a scientific theory that actually explains their behavior.

Making successful predictions has long been considered a primary goal of science. But throughout the

scientific revolution, understanding the phenomena in question through mathematical modeling has been considered the most reliable means of achieving this goal. If backpropagation algorithms can deliver predictions as accurate as those based on mathematical models, what are the implications for the future of science? Many computer scientists now recognize that deep learning can provide accurate predictions even though their statistical basis cannot be reduced to a humanly conceivable theory of how the universe works. If this acceptance becomes widespread, science as the search for understanding might soon be considered a relic of biology-based computing. At that point, AI would become the Delphic oracle which dispenses indisputable knowledge on the basis of faith in statistical algorithms, compelling us bio-computers to accept the pronouncements of the data-driven gods. While this is likely to be an outlier fantasy for the time being, it epitomizes the worshipful attitude which is being cultivated toward Artificial Intelligence, while neglecting the potential of our own thought processes.

Ease or striving

One possible definition of the human is embodied in the words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, “People have (with the help of convention) found the solution of everything in ease and the easiest side of easy; but it is clear that we must hold to the difficult; everything living holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself according to its own character and is an individual in its own right, strives to be so at any cost and against all opposition.” (Rilke, 2012, p. loc. 462). By directly facing our human challenges without reaching immediately for a quick technical solution, we build new forces within ourselves. These are our untapped potentials, the human powers that technology can only imitate.

For most of us, the temptation to accept the AI vision will be overwhelming due to our desire for a life without labor, filled with all the pleasures of virtual reality, perhaps with an electronic form of clairvoyance thrown in as a bonus. But in the discovery of the difficult mission which has been given to us, a mission that implies a level of human dignity which few today are willing to embrace, we may forge a vision of humanity that will permanently awaken us to “the difference of man and the difference it makes” as Mortimer Adler put it so well.

The antidote to dataism

The code programmers write is executed using binary logic gates which form the basis for modern computing. It also incorporates the limits of its non-conscious logic. As Dr. Gopi Krishna demonstrated in his paper, Technology and the Laws of Thought, “This conversion of all logical statements into algebraic form is thus seen to remove everything that could not be quantified or mechanized and retain only that which could. It is not an extension, as Boole believed, but a reduction, or a filtration.” (Vijaya, 2015). Cyber-filtered reality represents a reduction of human faculties, not an updated version of our bio-computers. The detailed analysis behind this statement is laid out clearly in Dr. Krishna’s paper [found at www.rudolfsteiner.org/articles ].

A primary limitation of artificial intelligence is that it is not capable of “living thinking”, which Rudolf Steiner, the great Austrian epistemologist, described as follows: “In the world of living things, everything develops from within … Things that grow and wane develop from within, and so it is also in the case of living thinking.” (Steiner, Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy, Lecture 10, 1921). In other words, thinking evolves within us through the entire process of life, not through a logic which is often merely the anatomy of dead thoughts. The reason we can so easily believe that human thinking is just an inferior version of what goes on in integrated circuits is that we no longer experience the life within our own thinking. What happens in computers is truly lifeless, the result of precisely defined algorithms incapable of inner evolution. Since our thought has for the most part become a library of dead abstractions, turning it into something that can be manipulated by super computers is easily implemented. But the human mind which has awakened to itself is capable of far more than manipulating congealed forms from the past.

Will we be tricked into giving away this power?

Steiner expresses the life of thinking as follows:

… One who really penetrates to the life within thinking will reach the insight that to experience existence merely in feeling or in will cannot in any way be compared with the inner richness, the inwardly-atrest yet at the same time alive experience, of the life within thinking, and no longer will he say that the other could be ranked above this. It is just because of this richness, because of this inner fullness of living experience, that its reflection in the ordinary

life of soul appears lifeless and abstract (Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity : The Factors of Life).

The main message of this passage is that our ordinary experience of thought as lifeless and abstract is due precisely to the richness of its actual inner reality. These observations demonstrate why thought seems so easy to computerize. Our thinking for the most part has become a series of abstractions ordered according to the rules of logic (if we’re lucky). But the logical operations of the human mind can never be carried out with the speed and accuracy of a digital computer. To the extent that we remain within the “Dead Zone” of dried-out thought-corpses, we might as well merge with our avatars, those perfectly uploaded cloud versions of ourselves promised by the transhumanists. If we accept the definition of the human mind as a poorly designed biologically-based computer, then the sooner we do this, the sooner we can get free from the stupidity and evil inherent in the inferior devices referred to as “human beings.”

But thinking can be the root of a spirituality deeper than either feeling or will can provide.

No other human soul-activity is so easily underestimated as thinking. Will and feeling warm the human soul even when experienced only in recollection. Thinking all too easily leaves the soul cold in recollection; the soul-life then appears to have dried out. But this is only the strong shadow cast by its warm luminous reality, which dives down into the phenomena of the world. This diving down is done by a power that flows within the thinking activity itself, the power of spiritual love.” (Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity : The Factors of Life).

It is precisely this living thinking that would be submerged beneath the presumed superiority of artificial intelligence. But how can we experience the zest of life by emulating an embalmed thought-corpse?

Yet this is all that artificial intelligence can offer us. In Steiner’s analysis, our knowledge is built from two elements: perception and thinking. Perception provides us the “Given” which are the elements of the real. Our minds then operate on the “Given” through the process of active thought in the process called “living thinking.” The interactions of these two human capacities lead to new knowledge and the forms of artistic imagination. Translated into the computer, perception and thought are reduced to data and algorithms. In Nicanor Perlas’ book, Humanity’s Last Stand (Perlas, 2018), he presents an incisive analysis of how artificial intelligence fails to sub -

stitute for the living capacities of the human mind, “This Living Thinking or deep creativity of real humans has the power to learn from the future. Sophisticated AI cannot do this. It is the power that enables humans to make really new beginnings in freedom and love. In AI, on the other hand, the human being is trapped in the infinity of the ‘Given’ and the finished ‘thought’, the algorithm.” (Perlas, 2018, p. loc. 1442). Artificial intelligence is an end-product of a long history of intellectual exploration and creativity. While it could provide professional packaging for the finished artifacts of that history, those artifacts would remain icons of a life that had fled its makers.

The modus operandi of evil

Artifical intelligence proposes an enticing deal to humanity: instead of the hard labor of developing our spiritual capacities, we can have the technological equivalent of those powers right now. In place of living thought which provides access to spiritual realities, AI will give us the illusion of intuition through the combination of big data and advanced algorithms. This is the modus operandi of evil—to subvert the higher human capacities waiting to be born by providing a distorted substitute requiring no inner effort. AI lures us into fantastic worlds of power and pleasure and even tosses in spiritual visions for a nominal charge. All we need to do to live in the world of magic is slide our credit cards.

Data and algorithms can be randomly re-ordered into billions of new combinations at subsecond speeds, but they remain completely lifeless. Even the fastest supercomputer will always lack the essential element—the creative spirit in each of us which is called to expand beyond the limits of the “Given.” The Singularity prophesized by Ray Kurzweil (see Kurzweil, 2006) is based on a fundamental delusion—that the world we inhabit as physical human beings is simply a more primitive version of what artificial intelligence will soon make possible. The truth is the opposite—artificial intelligence offers only a tiny sliver of the colors that flow through the human rainbow.

The alternative to the Singularity is Steiner’s “living thinking” which is activated when we refuse to surrender to the habits instilled by software. Life begins with the discovery of the “I”, not the little ego which is so easily hacked as our mental traffic flows through nodes in the computing cloud. This small ego can be manipulated such that, “… given enough biometric data and enough computing power, it might be possible to hack love, hate, boredom and joy…” (Harari, 2017). Our higher self can-

not be exploited in this way because it emerges from a core of identity untouched by the outer world. Instead of depending on computers to order our feelings and thoughts, we can embrace the heaven above the heavens, about which Plato wrote,

“There abides the very being itself with which true knowledge is concerned; the colorless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. The divine intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at beholding reality, and once more gazing upon truth, is replenished and made glad, until the revolution of the worlds brings her round again to the same place. In the revolution she beholds justice, and temperance, and knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation or of relation, which men call existence, but of knowledge absolute in existence absolute; and beholding the other true existences in like manner, and feasting upon them, she passes down into the interior of the heavens and returns home.” (Plato, 2011, p. loc. 16368).

Boyd R. Collins (boydcster@gmail.com) is a web application architect for a large multi-national corporation. He has been developing software for companies large and small for over 20 years. As an environmental activist, he contributed articles to the influential Dark Mountain Project (http://dark-mountain.net) in the U.K., “… a network of writers, artists and thinkers who have stopped believing the stories our civilization tells itself.” Feeling the need for a spiritual foundation for his ecological efforts, he began an intensive study of the works of Rudolf Steiner. In these works, he discovered an inspiring vision of spiritual evolution that provides a solid foundation for hope. He currently resides near Dallas, Texas with his family.

Works Cited

Harari, Y. N. (2017, 5 3). The Mozart in the Machine. From Bloomberg View: www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-03/the-mozart-in-the-machine Kurzweil, R. (2006). The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology New York: Penguin Books.

Lanier, J. (2011). You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. New York: Vintage Books. LeCun, Y. B. (2015, 05 27). Deep learning. Nature, online. From doi.org/10.1038/nature14539

Perlas, N. (2018). Humanity’s Last Stand. Forest Row, England: Temple Lodge. Plato. (2011). The Complete Works of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowett.

Steiner, R. (1918). The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: The Factors of Life.

Steiner, R. (1921, 04 29). Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy : Lecture 10. Vaidhyanathan, S. (2018). Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Vijaya, G. K. (2015). Technology and the Laws of Thought. From www.anthroposophy.org/articles

Vutha, A. (2018, 08 10). Could Machine Learning Mean the End of Understanding in Science? From Singularity Hub: singularityhub.com/2018/08/10/couldmachine-learning-mean-the-end-of-understanding-in-science/

news for members & friends

of the Anthroposophical Society in America

Meet Us in Atlanta!

by Angela and Patrick Foster

SAVE THE DATE! October 11-13

ASA Annual Conference: Facing Each Other: Freedom, Responsibility, and Love Atlanta, GA; registration opens 6/24!

Have you heard?! Our annual conference and AGM is coming to Georgia this fall! The individuals of the conference planning committee and Anthroposophy Atlanta are in big-time planning mode to get the practicalities taken care of so that we can all be together in a fun and festive atmosphere. It will be such an honor to host you. Our conference theme will be “Facing Each Other: Freedom, Responsibility and Love.” You are invited to join us in October to meet again, or meet for the first time, and to meet in a new way.

We will be gathering in Decatur, Georgia, a small city just six miles east of downtown Atlanta. Decatur is a regional destination for arts, education, dining and shopping, and is the unofficial seat of anthroposophy in Georgia. Weaving in our strong regional connections with anthroposophical communities in North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida, you are bound to experience “southern hospitality” at this year’s conference!

Decatur serves as home to our branch, Anthroposophy Atlanta, as well as the Waldorf School of Atlanta and Academe of the Oaks, our local K-12 Waldorf schools. Decatur hosts the Martin Clinic for Anthroposophical Medicine, the Anthroposophical Resource Center (ARC) and Anthroposophical Lending Library of Atlanta (ALLA), as well as the Christian Community affiliate.

Decatur is an official “Bicycle Friendly Community” which means that you can easily walk, bike, or wheelchair to many of locations throughout the city. The adventurous can even travel beyond to Stone Mountain, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and the Martin Luther King Historic Site, without ever getting in a car! Public transit is easily accessible from Decatur to those sites and more, including Downtown Atlanta and the Atlanta BeltLine, Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, and the suburbs.

Let us join our thoughts and intentions now, so that in the coming months we can do the collective work to come prepared for what we manifest in conference in the Michelmas season. Watch your inbox for updates and registration materials!

Hear from our amazing keynote speakers and presenters as they work with our theme of Facing Each Other : Andrea De La Cruz from the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, Rev. Patrick Kennedy from the Christian Community, Alex Tuchman from Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary, Joaquin Munoz from Augsberg University, Patti Smith and Chris Burke from the Center for Biography and Social Art, and many more!

One of the questions we are holding is, How do the ideals of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. relate to the work of the Anthroposophical Society in America? The planning group and a small working group is entering into this question by working with “The Mountaintop Speech,” the final public address given by Dr. King on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated.

On the spring equinox “Living in the Branches” Zoom call several of us read aloud the first four paragraphs, in which Dr King gives a brief recapitulation of human evolution. Then on the evening of April 3, a group of six people (from CA, Portland, Oregon, and Atlanta) met online to read aloud together and mark the anniversary of the speech. When read in its entirety, the speech has a profound message for us as anthroposophists working in America. Especially for those of us born after 1968, reading, listening to, working with this speech can help us better understand the task of our time. As we continue to meditate on it through the months leading up to our annual conference, we may approach a better understanding of what it is that the spiritual world is asking of us here and now.

From the wall at the ML King Center in Atlanta

Spring, Community, Youth, Courage

by Deb Abrahams-Dematte

It’s been a busy spring. In March more than thirty members and friends from around New England gathered at the House of Peace in Ipswich, MA for a regional gathering. We moved, studied, and engaged with one another, sharing our stories and deepening our connections. I never fail to be inspired and energized when we are able to come together in curiosity and interest in one another and the world around us.

The human being becomes ever more human as they become the expression of the world; they find themselves not by seeking themselves, but by uniting themselves voluntarily with the world.

— Rudolf Steiner, Letter, 16 Nov 1924

In May, the Anthroposophical Society in New Hampshire hosted a visit by Joan Sleigh, member of the Executive Council at the Goetheanum, and John Bloom, General Secretary of the ASA, in Wilton, NH, my hometown. They spoke at a public event on “Meeting the Challenges of Our Time.” Over forty people came from all over to hear from Joan and John and share conversation with one another. It was a great feeling to be together!

Joan reflected on how we can unite ourselves with the world and become an expression of it. She offered three possible ways, along with some challenges:

• As an individual striving to bring a contribution , based on taking initiative and practicing self-reflection; this can bring a sense of isolation and limitation in its wake, encouraging the recognition that I need others in my life.

• As a participant in the communit y, aware of common goals and even shared destiny; this can bring a sense of comfort but also competition and challenge.

• Through integration into the greater society. How do we develop spiritual companionship, grounded in our own authenticity, yet able to recognize and empathize with others?

John Bloom followed with a perspective on Rudolf Steiner’s “Six Basic Exercises.” His approach was first to establish the correlation between the outer and inner “climate,” and then to set the exercises as a way to work with the inner conditions. A community of practice working in this way can cultivate the community resilience needed to support us in our many tasks into the future.

Theo Groh, a Waldorf grad and young member from

the local area, said that the geographic diversity of the people who attended really stood out. John’s presentation was especially meaningful to him, and he “hopes that this gathering and this picture of inward and outward action will spark continued conversation across New England about meeting the issues of our times.”

In other news, we are excited to announce that we’ve recently reprinted the “Foundation Stone Meditation” brochure, with beautiful artwork by Ella Lapointe and new introductory insights from René Querido and Daisy Alden. We are grateful to the Rudolf Steiner Charitable Trust for their generous funding of this project.

Nearly 100 years after Rudolf Steiner inaugurated “The Foundation Stone Meditation,” it remains essential to the experience of anthroposophists who seek to deepen their meditative experience and connect with one another and the spiritual work. We look forward to sharing this resource with members and friends around the English-speaking world. Please contact me (deb@anthroposophy.org ) if you’d like more information.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. — e.e. cummings

The 2019 ASA Spring Appeal, “Courage and Hope for the Future” is wrapping up soon. If you would like to make a gift, it’s not too late! Many thanks to the friends who have made a gift in support of this deep and essential work. As we went to press we had received 147 gifts totaling $14,693. Gifts of any amount are much appreciated and will be put to good use! Please make a gift today online, at www.anthroposophy.org/youth or call the office in Ann Arbor.

Proceeds of the appeal support youth work across the US, particularly in connection with the upcoming North American Youth Conference “Questions of Courage” for people ages 16-35, August 11-13, in Spring Valley, NY. See www.anthroposophy.org/springvalley for information.

Thank you for your interest and care for anthroposophy in the world. Together we can make a difference.

News & Notes from the Regions

Anthroposophy is active all across our continent. Regional representatives report.

Central Region, Marianne Fieber

The Karma Project: A Western Approach to Reincarnation & Karma

The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America hosts an ongoing study conversation on Karma through the online platform ZOOM. We are using the collection of lectures under the title The Karma of Anthroposophy. Special guest presenters are invited to speak at regular intervals on the topic of karma from out of their field of study, research and life work, including David Tresemer and Dr. Roberta Nelson, Dr. Ross Rentea, and Linda Bergh. Book Studies and online presentations are recorded and available at your leisure from the Central Region webpage [ anthroposophy.org/centralregion ]. Members and friends from other regions are invited to participate. Contact Alberto Loya (aloyavaca@peoplepc.com) to be included on our email list announcing the next call. Here is a sampling of local activity in our region.

Emmaus Branch, Milwaukee, WI

Finding the Christ in and through One Another, May 11, 2019

An Emmaus Arts Offering exploring the theme of the “Emmaus experience” through eurythmy, storytelling and conscious conversation. Artistic Leaders: Corinne Horan, eurythmist and Jane Sustar, storytelling. Conversation facilitator: Robert Karp. *Emmaus Arts is loose knit group of artists and educators working out of anthroposophy who find inspiration in the Emmaus story described in the Gospel of Luke and whose collaborative work is facilitated by the Emmaus Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in Southeastern Wisconsin. — Emmaus Branch is in a new planning phase and this is their first event which may be seen as a model for the future events.

Rudolf Steiner Branch, Chicago, IL

Head, Hands & Heart at work at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago! Recent workshops included a weekend with David Taulbee Anderson (“Planets, Rounds and Globes—The Symmetry between Past and Future”) and

Goethe’s “Urpflanze” with Victoria Martin. We have taken on the “Easter Paradox” experiment with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, including “Kaspar Hauser & the Double” with Paulette Arnold. We had John Beck bring “The Poisoning of America”; Fred Janney, “Anthroposophical Society What Ails Thee.” We received a generous bequest of books for our library from the estate of Jerry Haslett. And we host many events in the Elderberries space. Come visit, we have guest rooms for out-of-town folks. Festivals and Program Coordinator: Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Viroqua, WI, Mary Christenson

Gary Lamb visited the Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School in late April where he made two excellent presentations each followed by a lengthy conversation session:

» The Prophetic Future is Now: Rudolf Steiner’s Perspectives on Technology and Human Evolution

» From Egoism to Love: Doing the Good with the Guidance of the Fundamental Social Law, Social Threefolding, and the Reverse Ritual

The attendance was robust, including current and former parents, alumni, and even some travelers from Winona and Minneapolis. Attendees appreciated Gary’s clear presentation of deep philosophical ideas and his well-honed teaching skills. His visit was to enliven community conversation around social threefolding and bring new school parents and board members into dialogue. We are grateful to the Mid-states Shared Gifting Group of RSF Social Finance for support for his visit.

Great Lakes Branch: serving Ann Arbor, Detroit and Southeastern Michigan

The First Tuesday lecture series hosted the following recent speakers: March, Mary Stewart Adams; April, Robert Thibodeaux; May, Hazel Archer Ginsberg. Weekend Event June 14/15 with Nicanor Perlas, lecture and full day workshop at the Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor Lower School.

St. Louis, MO: Laura Iturralde

The Waldorf School of St. Louis has recently purchased new buildings which are being refurbished for classroom space which is developing into a unified cam-

pus located across from a park providing ample green space. — The School for Spiritual Science is completing a cycle of class lessons; members come from as far away as Little Rock, AK. This has been very enriching to our community.

New Orleans, LA: Margaret Runyon

In the southernmost part of the region, Waldorf School of New Orleans and Raphael Village are flourishing. Now with over 150 students, the Waldorf School will spend summer “vacation” moving into their beautifully renovated permanent home: the former St Rose de Lima school building, part of the Rose Collaborative, an arts and cultural hub along Bayou Road, the region’s most ancient roadway. In addition to Nursery-Grade 8 classrooms at the St. Rose campus, WSNO owns the building in Uptown New Orleans that houses the Waldorf Early

Eastern Region, Dave Mansur

The past year has been one of re-imagining the structure of the Eastern Region. We now have three active and engaged sub-regions for people work ing out of anthroposophy to meet each other and share their experience and research: the North east, which consists of the New England States; the Mid-Atlantic, from New York through Maryland and DC; and the Southeast, from Virginia to Florida. Each area is working au tonomously to find communication vehicles that work best for them. The Northeast area has published page on the society web site which we encourage every one to visit [ anthroposophy.org/easternregion-ne all three areas have held face-to-face meetings. There is a growing impulse to formalize an Eastern Regional Council as a communication link between the three areas and the national organization. We hope to have a recommendation to members in time for the AGM in October in Atlanta.

New England Area Gathering, March 16 House of Peace, Ipswich, MA

It was almost spring and time to break out of our winter dens. The House of Peace welcomed about 40 participants into its beautiful, warm space to explore the The Foundation Stone Meditation together. We were for-

Childhood Center, where alongside a nursery and kindergarten, a Lifeways class will be offered starting in August. These two locations give Waldorf accessibility, visibility, and room to grow to nearly 300 students!

Pioneering an urban Camphill model, Raphael Village opened a kindergarten this year, and now serves 36 individuals age five to adult. New Orleans mayor Latoya Cantrell spoke at Raphael’s Town Center ground-breaking in January. Projected to open in Spring 2020, the Town Center will house a Cafe, vocational workshops, classrooms, and meeting space, with gardens on the grounds. In the meantime, Raphael Academy will expand into the classrooms vacated by Waldorf’s move to St. Rose. Raphael’s adult program, The Guild, will maintain a presence where it is currently housed, First Grace United Methodist Church, which hosted the ASA’s 2018 conference.

tunate, indeed, to have eurythmists Barbara Richardson and Marke Levene lead us in Foundation Stone eurythmy. We also learned a bit more about Steiner’s indications for the daily rhythm of the Foundation Stone meditation as given at the Christmas Conference of 1923.

Following a hearty and delicious lunch together, we broke into smaller groups to speak about ways in which Rudolf Steiner’s gift of the Foundation Stone Meditation connected with our personal situations and the world situation. We could have easily shared a few more hours together in sharing our mutual interests and

Mid-Atlantic Regional Representative Call March 25, 2019

Eileen King (Greater Washington, DC Branch), Franz Eilers (Berkshire/Taconic Branch), Virginia Hermann and Melissa Lyons (Threefold Branch in Spring Valley); Marta Stemberger (NYC Branch), and Sherry Wildfeuer (SE PA Branch) were on the call. We each shared from our local Branch.

Marta has recently taken on responsibility for event planning and outreach for the NYC Branch. They just had their first Spring Fair with many vendors and good attendance. Their building (15th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues) has a bookstore, managed by Joshua Kelberman, and a beautiful hall which seats about 75. Jonathan

Hilton is the new president of the branch. Weekly eNews goes out via email to over 900 recipients, but often less than twenty people attend events. A goals is to make anthroposophy better-known in the city. There are several strong weekly study groups, including the St. Mark’s Group, the oldest in the country. The council, members group, and First Class meet monthly.

The Threefold Branch carries on with a devoted group of 12-20 people who meet weekly. It is embedded in a cluster of anthroposophical institutions, and hosts talks, festivals, and festive conversations. For the last three years, representatives from local institutions contributed on a common theme at Michaelmas Community Conversations. Last fall they each shared how they each work with specific verses, and this was very rich and powerful. They plan a branch initiative group, and to coordinate with Christa Lynch who books the events at the Threefold Auditorium.

The Greater Washington Branch includes Washington, DC, Maryland, and northern Virginia. It feels scattered and fragmented because activities are spread at distances from one another in an area where traffic makes travel slow. They usually meet at one of the three Waldorf Schools. Eileen observed that everyone in the area lives enveloped in an atmosphere of stress, anxiety, and discomfort, due to the concentration of political forces. The active Branch members are all busy; nevertheless, the Festivals Group and Branch Planning Group feel sensitive to what is coming from the future and to what is happening in the broader anthroposophical movement. An older member, Portia Imle, had carried a strong impulse to prepare for 2023 with work on the Foundation Stone Meditation. When she died, the group she had worked with ended, but the other two groups feel that this impulse has become incorporated into their work. Eileen hosts a listserv group, the main way of communicating events. They feel meetings and events are well-attended when there are 15-20 people. A recent beautiful performance by Eurythmy Spring Valley is still resonating with the many who experienced it. They look forward to more coordination between the branch and the Waldorf schools.

The Berkshire/Taconic Branch possibly comprises the largest concentration of anthroposophical activity in America. [See the Wisdom Working notice in the front pages. —Ed.] The Initiative Group of about eight people meets twice a month at Windy Hill Painting Studio; they produce Chanticleer, a regional newsletter. This group does not carry a strong, shared vision of the Society. The

legal status of the branch still needs resolution; there is a question of taking a different name, and perhaps creating a re-founding event to bring people back together again. A possible vision for the future could be that the branch serves as a sense organ for anthroposophical life in the region to help people become aware of one another. Should it also become a face for the general public, for people new to anthroposophy? A habitual way of doing things will need to change in order for there to be renewal.

The Southeast Pennsylvania Branch is focused through a branch initiative group which meets every six weeks to sustain the common cultural life. The local priest of the Christian Community serves on the initiative group and is an active member of the Society. The branch sends a monthly newsletter and weekly emails. Donations are received in the fall, and money is taken in at events, to help fund events that don’t break even. The branch has recently decided to pay a quarterly rent in appreciation for the frequent use of Rose Hall in Kimberton Hills. The branch also hosts a quarterly networking dinner for representatives from the many initiatives in the area who share what has been going on, their challenges, and what they are looking forward to. The notes from this sharing go into the newsletter so all can know more about each other’s endeavors. There are many active study groups. Ideas Bookstore hosts a potluck monthly, an opportunity to meet socially in a lovely setting. The main challenge facing the branch is generational. The middle generation is accustomed to having the older generation create the branch life, and younger people don’t yet feel called to take up the more over-arching anthroposophical activities. Individual institutions have taken up the question of succession, and a lot of anthroposophical activity is going on between the generations, but not within the branch itself. One of the things Sherry is looking forward to is a series of four talks by Eugene Schwartz on the year 1919. The branch will host Eurythmy Spring Valley’s post graduate group performance, and recently hosted the Pennsylvania Eurythmy Ensemble.

From the Southeast: Angela Foster, Atlanta

I hold the hope and imagination that in future this subregion can be more connected! North Carolina has lots going on and our friends in Florida hosted their annual conference in April, but for now, I can only offer some recent activities in Atlanta.

Preparing the spiritual vessel for the national fall meeting and AGM in October is described above. Laura

Scappaticci made a visit to Decatur and Atlanta in March to walk parts of the town, meet people, and visit possible venues. Hazel Archer Ginsberg visited in March to lead weekend talks on “Karma and Destiny” and “The Rose Cross Meditation.” Well attended and very stimulating! Patti Smith has visited three times this year as part of a Biography project to build community in Waldorf Schools. Helen Lubin was in town in April to work at the Waldorf School of Atlanta and held an evening for the branch; we approached Dr King’s final speech through the consciousness of Creative Speech! Something powerful is living there and meeting us in the work.

The branch, Anthroposophy Atlanta, has been considering how to be true to our mission statement, especially this sentence: “Our branch supports the individual path of self-development and the community path of social health and renewal in the light of anthroposophy.” We have decided to offer financial support when possible for individuals to attend out-of-town workshops and conferences and bring back reports. Most recently, we sponsored sending Jolie Luba to the Sacred Gateway conference in April; see her notes on page 25. She is giving two talks as a result, on Memorial Day and at St John’s. This is a perfect example of the-branch-fostering-individual-growthfostering-community-life. Anthroposophy at work!

Finally, something very special has been flowing in the region recently regarding the School for Spiritual Sci-

Western Region, Micky Leach

Engaging the Younger Generations

Over the last few years the Western Regional Council has been working with the importance of engaging the Younger Generations. Thanks to the generosity of the Rudolf Steiner Charitable Trust, the WRC received a grant of $2,000 which was used to support youth in the Western Region to attend the 2018 Annual Conference and AGM in New Orleans, “Here and Now: Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World,” preceded by a day-long National Youth Gathering. The WRC received eight requests: two were forwarded to the Eastern Region which granted funds for these individuals. One withdrew her request for personal reasons.

Funds of varying amounts were allocated to five people. We requested that the participants submit a report or other offering of their experiences at the conference. What follows are their experiences.

ence. Atlanta seems never to have had a Classholder living locally, so for many years class members from Atlanta and other cities in the region have driven to Chattanooga to hear lessons read by Maria St Goar, and then led by her son, Edward St Goar. Folks from all over Georgia and Tennessee would gather in Chattanooga at the St Goar home. Chattanooga is a two hour drive each way, so this was pretty much an all day event every third Sunday of the month. Edward talked about coming to Atlanta to give lessons, but as Maria’s health declined he was unable to leave her for more than an hour or two at a time. Maria crossed the threshold last fall and her life was celebrated by many people in the region and in our Society. After a few conversations and some details worked through, on March 10, 2019, Edward St Goar and his wife Rebecca, were able to make the trip to Atlanta and give the inaugural lesson of the School for Spiritual Science in Atlanta. The weather was a beautiful and the hearts were warm! Edward also made the trip to Auburn, Alabama and gave the inaugural lesson there at the home of Helene Burkart. These monthly excursions are in addition to holding the rhythm of the monthly class lessons in Chattanooga. All the students in the region are extremely grateful to Edward and Rebecca for their stamina and willingness to hold classes in multiple cities. The timing of this work is an affirmation to us that the spirit of Michael and Anthroposophia are alive and growing in the Southeast.

Daniel Evaeus, Los Angeles, CA and Sweden

The youth conference time together was rich with love, connection and inspiration. We were a good-sized group of about twenty young adults; many faces familiar to me, several new. Our gathering was titled “Our Heart’s Vocation” from the poem:

I have a cause.

We need those don’t we?

Otherwise the darkness and the cold gets in and everything starts to ache.

My soul has a purpose, it is to love; if I do not fulfill my heart’s vocation, I suffer.

– St. Thomas Aquinas

On our first and main day together we shared time with Lisa Romero, Bart Eddy and Orland Bishop. With Lisa we explored the question of human freedom through discerning the voices that speak through us, and how meditative practice can support this process. A growing clarity that can help us better hear our heart.

During the AGM I experienced a warm sense of community and good intention. I was deeply inspired by the city of New Orleans itself and the rich culture there. One of the highlights was the Saturday night pageant. It was inspiring to experience it being brought to life together in community with so much fun—an important reminder of the sincerity with which Rudolf Steiner and his students committed themselves in service of world evolution.

Renata Heberton, Denver CO

I was in a pretty tough spot right before going and was actually questioning so many things on so many levels. The conference ended up being an unintended and powerful response to my rather dark condition and gave me the light and strength needed to reorient and reconnect myself with the important and urgent work of our time. It was amazing to be with such an incredible group of people and I felt so acutely that all who attended the conference are doing this same important work I am striving to do in so many varied and beautiful ways in their own lives and communities. This in addition to the lectures, workshops and gatherings made this gathering for me just so powerful.

Matt Burns, Portland, OR

The certainty with which I knew I must attend, was well met by my experiences there. In addition to getting a lot from the content and presence of the presenters, I had the opportunity to significantly deepen my connection to some old and close friends, as well as to open new connections that are sure to be lasting and bear good fruit. I am now looking forward to attending Lisa’s weekend workshop here in Portland after Thanksgiving, which she generously made financially feasible. There are more fruits ripening on the tree, but hopefully this little bit I’ve shared shines some light on the many ripple effects that can flow from encouraging and supporting people to join with their friends and colleagues at such events. I am so very glad I had the privilege and good fortune to attend.

Tess Parker, Los Angeles CA

Gathering in New Orleans felt very significant to the overall impressions and mood of the conference. The

warmth and hospitality of the city, mixed with knowing of the deep and significant traumas that have been experienced by this community and by African Americans especially, added a level of poignant reflection to the entire experience. Orland Bishop’s discussion of the African American experience vis-a-vis the destiny and soul of America was particularly moving. I felt the depth of his wisdom in sharing about the power of forgiveness, and that to forgive another makes futures possible: it holds open the door and hosts more possibilities for the individual, for whole communities. His picture definitely presents a way forward, and not to ignore the grief and pain, but to move into the Sun forces of the future...

Overall it was a beautiful experience! The highlight for me was the ritual on Friday evening. I had performed it twice before, and this was the most powerful experience I had. I think it has something to do with the sacredness and strength that had been generated in the sanctuary years prior to us arriving. Everyone brought such beautiful energy and I could truly feel the ancestors joining us for this amazing soul moment. I am very glad I was in attendance and I look forward to next year’s AGM!

Krista Smith, Denver CO

I was blown away by the depth of relationship, insight, and spiritual growth I was able to experience in the five days I spent in New Orleans. Many of the speeches had life-altering insights that I will carry with me in my mind and spirit... The Annual General Meeting was also unbelievably valuable in content and connection. A unique highlight was being able to participate in a pageant portraying the life of a member of the Anthroposophical Society from New Orleans who had recently passed away. The fun, love, and beauty of this experience was bonding, educational, and inspirational for everyone involved.

There were many magical moments such as seeing the incredibly diverse, historical city on the walking tour and songtrail. Attending these conferences was a gift of the Western Region and I feel so blessed to be a recipient of their scholarship. I would highly recommend going for anyone seeking inspiration, connection, healing or an overall good experience. I know if I get the chance I will be back for more!

To hear the heartfelt experiences of the younger generation articulated so clearly gives rise to a number of questions. What are the impulses that the younger gener-

ations are bringing from the spiritual world? Are not these impulses the next step in the evolution of humanity? Am I able to listen and help bring them to fruition? Can we work together to make the Anthroposophical Society a living reflection of the spiritual world for our time? —ML

Kirk Mills

New Western Regional Council Member

Kirk grew up in a small logging/mining town in northwest Montana. As a youth, he felt something more spiritual outdoors than in church. Thus began a spiritual search that continued as he got an environmental degree. He then worked in the environmental field for the next 35 years. In Minnesota, he encountered Anthroposophy and eventually knew he had found his spiritual stream. Kirk became active in local anthroposophical activities and a Class member.

Kirk then took Goethean Studies with Dennis Klocek and BioDynamics (BD) with Harald Hoven at Rudolph Steiner College. Moving to Denver, Kirk resumed his environmental career, and became active in the Denver Branch and Class Lessons. Kirk has also been the Waldorf High School science teacher of “last resort”.

In 2015, Kirk retired from his environmental job. He then attended a Depollution (Environmental Clean-up) workshop of Enzo Nastati, an Italian BD and spiritual science researcher. Kirk was impressed and continues to study with him when he comes to Colorado. Kirk also serves on the board of Viva La Vida, a non-profit supporting the Nastati work in America.

Kirk enjoys time with his daughter, Michele, and two granddaughters, Kate and Grace, who live in Montana. He is also an avid cyclist and skier.

Kirk is excited to serve on the Western Regional Council and looks forward to strengthening society activity and connection in the region.

Facing Future

A conversation in Greater Washington with Joan Sleigh and John Bloom

by Nancy Foster

On May 8, sixteen members and friends from as far away as Richmond and Baltimore gathered in the library of Washington Waldorf School to address the future of anthroposophy—to ask how we can move into the future in a way that is healthy and healing, for both the older and younger generation of those who find their way to anthroposophy, and for humanity in general.

Joan Sleigh, a member of the Executive Council in Dornach, spoke of the need to place human relationships at the center of our thoughts, feelings, and deeds. She observed that we—humanity—seem to develop from crisis to crisis, with a sense of separateness and isolation. The sense of a disconnect between outer and inner life seems greater than ever before; yet she noted that pain is the birthplace of the move into a new stage, to the next level, and that free love cannot develop unless we are conscious of being separate individualities.

Offering the picture of plant development, Joan characterized our “rootedness” as our inherited physical body, embedded in our particular culture and history. The “stem” of our individuality we create ourself out of our surroundings. We “flower” in that our I bridges between our self and other human beings; and the “fruit” with its seed is formed for those who are to come after.

A deeply important training ground or path for the I is the Foundation Stone Meditation, and Joan led us through the four panels, considering how they may serve as a real foundation for our inner and outer work.

John Bloom, General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America, pointed out that anthroposophy needs to have a voice in the world, where there is talk about mindfulness and meditation. We need to consider making visible what is unique about anthroposophical meditation, and we need to develop a practice of conversation on a meditative level.

John spoke about the six-month (subsidiary or, as one participant suggested, foundational) exercises, observing that these are not specifically anthroposophical but rather are universal and may even serve as a point of contact for those not yet acquainted with anthroposophy.

These exercises may help to balance the relationship between self and world. We may ask ourself: “What is our inner climate?” This is something we can work on. We may also ask: “Where are the islands of health in the world around us? Can we work with others to create an island of health?” This is our work, which we wish to do on behalf of the spiritual world. The subsidiary exercises

are tools of initiative which can create resilience in our inner work, needed in order to take part in forming communities of health. They relate to inner qualities which we may bring into group work.

There was some time for conversation, but I believe many participants sensed a need for more opportunity to share thoughts and work together.

Our Help in Fulfilling The Mission

The work of anthroposophy in the USA is carried very broadly. Its large impact is surely achieved by the many thousands of individuals who have taken inspiration from Rudolf Steiner into their lives and work in the world. The Anthroposophical Society in America is a catalyst and core resource for this “cloud” of a movement. It is remarkably small in staff and budget for a national organization with such a large mission. (How large do missions get?)

Readers of being human are familiar with the volunteers who serve as the ASA General Council, with General Secretary John Bloom, and with the staff directors of the Leadership Team: Laura Scappaticci, programs, Deb Abrahams-Dematte, development, and Katherine Thivierge, operations. You may have spoken or corresponded with Cynthia Chelius and Linda Leonard, who have been part of the team in Ann Arbor for many years.

Here we want to introduce three other people who serve as part-time assistants to the Leadership Team. Diana Carlen has been working in New Hampshire as Development Assistant for Deb Abrahams-Dematte for almost five years. She understatedly “helps keep track of things,” and enjoys thanking our donors, sending out letters all over the county and internationally. A former Waldorf parent,

Diana has three children to keep her busy. In her spare time she enjoys reading, cooking, thrift shop hunting, and starting knitting projects. She is very fond of wool.

Tess Parker, originally from New Hampshire, found the stream of anthroposophy through her work with biodynamics. She co-founded and managed Common Hands Farm in upstate New York, where she hosted both a biodynamic CSA and an educational apprentice program. As Programs Assistant since 2018, Tess supports ASA conferences, online education, and social media, and is excited to help contribute to the work of the Youth Section. In addition to the Society, Tess works at Pasadena Waldorf School in Southern California, as a gardener and garden teacher, as well as Camp Director.

Eddie Lederman is based at the Ann Arbor office and fills our need for financial expertise and support for the work of Katherine Thivierge, Director of Operations. Eddie has degrees in finance, German, and a Masters of Business Administration. He will be working as a parttime accountant and has taken on oversight of our financial operations and reporting, and will be assisting with audit preparation. In addition to his ASA work, Eddie is a registered investment advisor, particularly interested in sustainable and responsible investment, and has his own firm, Whale Shark Financial LLC.

Diana Carlen

Tess Parker

Eddie Lederman

Two Voices by Annelies Davidson

Resistance — where does it come from that urge not to reach?

Pain — is it the self slowburning a hole at the center Duty — is it circumstance pushing me around Apart — not feeling the connections This — is it telling me to disown it Go — the gods say do only what you can.

New Members

Conscience — it is my own feeling its voice is everyone's Compassion — it lames frustration forward moving Interest — it is leading me on — essence of love Alert — I hear the song it says everything That — it is what IS as true as now Stay — feel that you are able today.

Anthroposophical Society in America, 2/28/2019 to 6/6/2019

Aaron Abell, Salt Lake City UT

Peter Beckmann, Watsonville CA

Lenya Bloom, San Francisco CA

Cheryl Chan, Oakland CA

Megan Coleman, Oakland CA

Arlene Cornier, Southfield MI

Colleen Corrigan, Lake Placid NY

Erin Corrigan, Remsen NY

Monique Datnova, Brooklyn NY

Kamil Dostalik, Union MO

Nicole Falanga, Chestnut Ridge NY

Gray Glenn, Kempton PA

Mayra Gomez, Seattle WA

Elizabeth Hamilton, Havertown PA

Kelly Hanks, Portsmouth RI

Thomas Hartmann, Havertown PA

Niko Hilgerdt, Austin TX

Mary Kelly, San Diego CA

Jesse Kiracofe, Cedar Rapids IA

Cody Lee, Flagstaff AZ

Ashley Martinez, Folsom CA

Laura Mason, Issaquah WA

William McClain, West Lafayette IN

Heather McKelvey, Spring TX

Meaghan McKenna, Philmont NY

Koushik Mondal, Memphis TN

Maria Morales, San Diego CA

Simome Morin, Placerville CA

Sumithra Nadarajah, Hadley MA

Theresa Nichols, Henderson NV

Joshua Novak, Worth IL

Elmer Orobio, Sheffield MA

Johannes Otter, Montpelier VT

Ginny Parker, Edgewater FL

Moira Payne, Ypsilanti MI

Lynda Powell, Hoover AL

Jessica Prentice, Richmond CA

Peter Prutzman, Fredrick MD

Victoria Seeley, Carmichael CA

Joseph Seserman, Philmont NY

Carole Shoaf, Asheville NC

Tiffany Trice, Wasilla AK

William Valdez, Perris CA

Nicola Valeur, Newton MA

Craig Wallace, Renton WA

Robert Wallace, Memphis TN

Maria Wolff, Sheffield MA

The ASA invites you to join the

Michael Support Circle

our major donor circle. THANK YOU to the 47 individual members, and to these organizations, whose gifts provide generous and on-going support to bring Rudolf Steiner’s vision more fully into the world, for the future of the world.

Anthroposophical Society of Cape Ann

Anthroposophy NYC

Association of Waldorf Schools of North America

Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training

Biodynamic Association

Camphill Special School—Beaver Run

Cedarwood Waldorf School

Center for Anthroposophy in NH

Council of Anthroposophical Organizations

Elderberries Café

GRADALIS Waldorf Consulting & Services

Great Lakes Branch

Heartbeet Lifesharing

High Mowing School

House of Peace

Monadnock Waldorf School

Oakwood Lifesharing

Research Institute for Waldorf Education

RSF Social Finance

Rudolf Steiner College

Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Foundation

Shining Mountain Waldorf School

SteinerBooks

Michael Support Circle members pledge gifts of between $500 and $5000 per year for five or more years. They help the Society to grow in capacity and viability— the basis for increased membership, new learning opportunities, and greater community engagement.

To learn more about how you can support the strength and sustainability of our movement, contact Deb at deb@anthroposophy.org or visit online at www.anthroposophy.org/msc

Wilhelm Müller

January 26, 1927—February 16, 2018

by Eric G. Müller

Wilhelm Müller’s life is marked by the profound inner and outer distances he traversed.

He was born in Reckingen, next to the wild and rushing Rhone River high up in the Swiss Alps. He loved to reminisce about his childhood, growing up in that small medieval village in the upper Valais of the Goms Valley with his four brothers and one older sister, working the fields, helping in the flour and sawmills built by his father and uncle, looking after the cows up on the Alp during the summers, making cheese, cleaning the stables, and all the other sundry chores of farm life. Often he looked up at the clouds and birds, wishing he too could fly into the distances and see foreign lands.

Wilhelm, who served as an altar boy, was deeply impressed with the beauty of the Catholic ceremonies and the splendor of the rituals, which included the smell of incense, the grand sound of the organ, and the singing. Once, when white robed Dominicans came and preached about the need for missionaries in Africa, his idealism was fired. It appealed to his sense of adventure, his yearning to travel and be of service to the world. He knew with certainty that one day he would follow the clouds, birds, and rivers and venture out into the world.

Wilhelm had considered becoming a priest, as it would have guaranteed him an education, which otherwise, being poor, was unavailable to him. But he had begun to have doubts about the church, and he chose a different path, which also took him to Africa and beyond. In 1945, when the “peace bells” were tolling, he started his watchmaker apprenticeship at the age of eighteen. He had initially been rejected, but his perseverance paid off. It became an important theme in his life: never give up if you really want something that you feel is important. After passing the rigorous Meisterprüfung, he worked for a prominent Swiss watchmaking business. It offered a threeyear program abroad, which gave him the opportunity to travel to Africa.

Stepping off the boat in Durban, South Africa, he was introduced to the Roloff family at the Foreign Affairs department by the employee of the firm who had come to meet Willi and who happened to be a close friend of the Roloffs. Christa Roloff was getting papers to travel to Europe to study music in Salzburg, Austria. That serendipitous meeting led to a dinner invitation, after which din-

ners at the Roloffs became a regular affair. Christa and Willi fell in love and married in 1953. Their first son, Georg, was born in 1954, followed by Eric two years later.

In 1957, the family moved back to Switzerland, first to Lausanne, and then to Basel, where Willi opened up his own jewelry store, fitted with a workshop in the back where he repaired watches. Willi, pursuing his education, enrolled in night classes for the university entrance exam (Matura). It was during this time that Willi first heard about anthroposophy and Waldorf education. Occasionally anthroposophists entered his shop wearing unusual jewelry and clothing. He enjoyed talking to them and found them intriguing. One of them invited him to attend the Paradise Play at the Waldorf School in Basel—his first encounter with Waldorf. And in the evenings, on his way to night school he would pass a bookshop displaying Rudolf Steiner books. His interest in esoteric knowledge had been sparked in Durban, and he’d already read works by Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and other theosophists. He was determined to read Steiner after completing his studies.

However, his dream of studying

at the university never transpired as he succumbed to tuberculosis, aged 33. Checking into a sanatorium in Davos he underwent a life threatening operation where they removed most of his left lung and some ribs. After about two years he was stable enough to leave the sanatorium. To avoid a relapse he made arrangements for the family to join him in Davos where they stayed for almost three more years. Again he opened up a jewelry store and repaired watches.

Since leaving the Catholic Church he had never ceased searching for spiritual insights. For a while it had been yoga, and now he had joined the Aetherius Society, founded by Dr. George King, an Englishman—another stage of his spiritual quest.

In 1965, the decision was made to return to South Africa. Initially, Willi and Christa wanted to immigrate to Australia, but his visa was denied due to his TB. After spending one year in Cape Town the family moved to Empangeni, Zululand [KwaZulu-Natal], where Willi entered into a partnership with another watchmaker.

Willi and Christa both involved themselves in the cultural life of Empangeni. Willi joined the Rotary and Lions Club, and Christa taught singing, gave piano lessons, performed, and led an African choir. Together they spearheaded an Eisteddfod , a performing arts festival and competition that involved all the schools. Working with these initiatives inspired Willi to turn to education. The time was at hand. He remembered the anthro-

Members Who Have Died

Murielle Brigouleix Lancaster PA joined 1972 died 04/19/2019

Marilou Coats Chattanooga TN joined 1984 died 12/17/2018

Nigel J A Harrison Katonah NY joined 1997 died 02/20/2019

Jared Haslett Bangor ME joined 1971 died 03/12/2018

Marlyn Merchant N San Juan CA joined 1993 died 09/20/2018

Barbara Moore Pasadena CA joined 1960 died 01/22/2019

Frank Perkins

Ypsilanti MI joined 1992 died 01/06/2019

Robert Rearick

Mc Donald PA joined 1969 died 11/26/2018

Jean Taffs Madison WI joined 1978 died 01/22/2019

Jeannette Van Wiemeersch Novi MI joined 1980 died 01/27/2019

posophists from Basel and his visit to the Waldorf School. Willi had always known that something more was in store for him. During a family vacation he visited the Waldorf School in Cape Town, talked to teachers, and decided to enroll in the Teacher Training in Stuttgart. It came as a shock when they rejected him twice ! They suggested he was too old to embark on a teaching path, especially considering his having had TB. Again he persisted, and was accepted the third time around.

After a year in Stuttgart, Germany, he was asked by Ernst Wegerif to help pioneer the Michael Mount School in Johannesburg, South Africa, which he accepted, taking on a first grade, which he saw through the eight-year cycle. He put all his energy into building up the school, even leveling the ground for the sports field with a bulldozer, helping with the plans for the building projects, sitting on many committees, and generally taking on a leadership role.

During his sabbatical, he and Christa travelled to America to look at Waldorf Schools, both on the east and west coast. Important connections were formed that would prove

to be of great significance in the future. Though he was asked to teach at a school in the States, he chose to take on a first grade in Schwenningen, Germany. The school was in its infancy and he was the lead teacher. However, three years later, after some irreconcilable differences with some of the colleagues, Willi, together with Christa, immigrated to Eugene, Oregon, where he became the advisor of the fledgling Waldorf initiative, taking over from Irene Ellis, a former colleague in Johannesburg, who had guided the school up to that point.

In many ways he had now found his community, his true home on earth, both within and without. The two of them were welcomed with open arms by a very committed group of parents, which included LeeAnn Ernandes, Tricia O’Neill, Lourdes Smyth—all of whom would end up teaching in the school, sharing in the leadership. From the second year on he took on the responsibility of two classes, as one teacher left the school, plus teaching many skills classes and guiding the school forward according to Waldorf ideals. Unfortunately, Christa, whose health had deteriorat-

ed, died in 1985, only a few years after arriving in Eugene.

After the successful graduation of two 8th grades, back to back, Willi focused all his attention on the founding the Eugene Teacher Education program, together with a small group of committed colleagues from the Eugene Waldorf School. Right from the start it flourished, attracting many students throughout America and beyond. He was able to pour all his experiences as a teacher and student of anthroposophy into the training. Willi led the training for almost two decades, eventually giving over many of the responsibilities to others.

Willi was the consummate student of anthroposophy, his studies always accompanied by copious notes. His daily routine included many hours meticulously poring over Steiner books in his library, which was stocked with Steiner’s complete works and an impressive collection of diverse esoteric literature. Willi’s house was always open to anybody who wanted or needed to talk to him. For many years the study groups were held at his house, as were the first class readings, which he inaugurated and held. And many people sought out his advice, to help them with their teaching or their personal questions. People felt encouraged, seen, and grateful for what they had received from him.

But most grateful of all was Willi himself. He loved people, he loved life, he loved music and nature, and he was utterly devoted to spiritual pursuits. To his dying days he studied, thought, felt, and breathed anthroposophy. He passed the threshold peacefully on Friday morning, February 16, 2018, three weeks after celebrating his 91st birthday.

Linde deRis

November 22, 1939—March 25, 2018

from the eulogy by

Rev. Liza Joy Marcato

We gather to celebrate the life of Linde deRis, cherished therapeutic eurythmist, singer, wife, mother, and grandmother. Sooner than expected, and in her own quiet, graceful way, Linde deRis left this world after 78 years midday on Palm Sunday.

Linde was born with big round eyes into a strongly idealistic German family in Breslau, Germany, now part of Poland. She was the third child, after brothers Peter and Christoph. Her parent were anthroposophists and artists. Her father Herbert Weiss was a musician and piano teacher, and her mother Mona Weiss a eurythmist. Linde had a strong, fiery temperament like her father, but was also, like her mother, a gentle soul.

Near the end of the war, her father was conscripted into the military, as a choral director to inspire the troops. When she was four or five years old, while father was away, her mother, carrying the household, heard that bombings and Russians were on their way, and with her own mother, her grandmother, the children, and two older aunts, had to pack quickly from their beautiful townhouse and grand

piano in Breslau, taking only a few essentials. Linde carried only a backpack as they fled to her Uncle Siegfried Pickert and his family in NordRhein Westphalen, where Siegfried had started one of the first anthroposophical curative homes, Landschulheim Schloss Hamborn, a center of anthroposophical education and healing thriving still today.

Being a very musical family, they all played instruments, no doubt held to a rigorous practice schedule by their father. Brother Peter followed in his parents’ footsteps and made music his life. Christoph, a skilled cabinetmaker and woodworker, meticulously and anthroposophically built the family’s home in Schloss Hamborn, but died of cancer at the age of 22, a blow for the whole family. Linde honored and revered him her whole life.

Linde studied music, the flute, in Kassel, Germany, before going on to study eurythmy in Dornach under Lea van der Pals. In the training she met her dear friend Danya Betteridge, Jonitha Hasse’s older sister; this was a life changing friendship.

After her training, she joined the Friedhelm Gillert Stage Group, and Danya took a job in Hawaii at the Mohala Pua School. The two had a plan that Linde would follow her there soon after, but Danya became ill and died at the age of 24, leaving behind her new husband Owen deRis after only a year of marriage.

The following year, the first Goetheanum conference bringing together eurythmists from all over took place. Linde attended, as did Owen, who was spending a year at Emerson College in England. Owen saw Linde perform beautiful, pure Eurythmy. Linde wanted to meet this man who had been married to her dear friend.

They instantly found a deep connection—and began their way together: he did the talking, she the listening. Walking up the hill in Dornach, a beautiful bow of color surrounded the full moon over the Goetheanum and seemed a portent. Linde soon joined Owen at Emerson, and the two married mid-December, the first big wedding celebrated at Emerson, attendees banging pots and pans as the pair walked into the sunset.

Linde decided she would stick to her original plan to follow Danya to the school in Hawaii. The newlyweds moved to Hawaii for a time, even living in the house Owen had lived in with Danya, but they returned to Owen’s parents in New Jersey. Soon it was decided Owen would train as a eurythmist with Gillert in Munich while Linde joined the Stage Group. After this they moved to Dornach, where Linde worked at Sonnehopf as a Curative Eurythmist while Owen trained with Lea van der Pals. After this time, they loaded their VW bus and headed to Schloss Hamborn so Linde’s mother Mona could retire and Linde take her place as eurythmy teacher.

In 1973 on Easter Sunday, their first child Fiona arrived, and a year later they moved back to America and with Owen’s parents, Margaret and George deRis, moved to the place at Jug End, which has become the family homestead.

Iovan arrived in 1975 and Mario in 1977. Owen built the Tower House in this time, and Linde took up her work in Camphill Village and also became the first therapeutic eurythmist at the Great Barrington Steiner School. As a teacher, Linde was old school, austere, serious, strict, proper—but also utterly devoted to

the work and the children, and wellloved. Adults still talk about what she did for them as children.

In 1983, Linde began a period of twenty years of raising the children on her own. Owen had other life questions to pursue, and so they parted ways, even later divorcing so he could remarry. Linde held steady on her course, caring for the children with a clarity and devotion that they especially now as adults and parents themselves deeply appreciate. When Owen’s mother was dying of cancer in Spring Valley, Linde also took care of her.

Her own parents now too aged to travel, Linde made the commitment to bring the children to Germany every summer to spend time with their grandparents. She found a couple to rent their house in Jug End for the three months they were away, which subsidized the trip.

And Linde discovered a new passion. During the summers in Germany, the children would stay a few weeks alone with the grandparents and Linde would allow herself to go off and take part in the IDRIART

festivals begun by Miha Pogacnik, the Slovenian violinist. She was totally inspired by these cultural festivals trying to meet the needs of Eastern Europe’s awakening and liberation. It is one of the only things her children remember her doing for herself over the many years of solo parenting. At IDRIART she taught eurythmy and made connections and friends that she kept up over many years, caring deeply and reaching out to help those affected by the war in Bosnia.

Life during the school years was not always easy at Jug End. Fiona decided to go to Germany for high school, and live with her grandmother. When she returned home in 1989 unexpectedly pregnant with Toby, and soon got her own place, things were still not so easy, but when Toby was born, Linde could help. This was cut short when Linde’s mother Mona had a stroke, and Linde decided to move to Germany with the boys to care for her. She stayed 12 years!

While living in Germany with the boys, she also got involved in helping the Native American community at the Pine Ridge Reservation to found their Waldorf School, bringing speakers to Germany and garnering support for the new school.

After graduating high school each of the boys returned to the States, but Linde stayed on. As new grandchildren came into the picture, Linde always returned to help out for a time, cementing her deep bond to each of her grandchildren.

In 2001, Owen and Linde decided to rejoin their lives. They remarried in North Carolina where he was living and then moved back to Schloss Hamborn to care for her mother in her final years.

In 2004, they returned to Jug End, and Linde threw herself com-

pletely into being a grandmother, taking her grandchildren to pick raspberries, singing with them, teaching them to cook, showing them the elemental beings on Jug End Mountain.

The grandchildren all have special memories of her loving care and attention and the wise simplicity that she taught them. Mareika shared: “All my memories with her are special, from her bear mush that I use to devour, to her funky little sprouts cakes and colorful carrot salad. She smeared cream on my cheeks in the winter, so the nasty cold winds wouldn’t nip me. She taught me piano and each morning she would sing to wake me up!”

Everyone wanted to gather around Grandmother Linde, especially at Jug End. The annual Easter walk or Christmas eve walk… or the birthday celebration on the mountaintop to which some elves had already brought a cake and blankets, all prepared when they arrived there. She was the anchor for the family traditions, a master of making the simple into the festive.

The friendships she cultivated over the years were close. One always did something with her—took a hike in nature, planted something or picked something. She was an important mirror and inspiration for her friends. Invited over for dinner, it might just be a pot of dry millet, but it was great! She turned the simple into the celebratory.

For years, she also dedicatedly picked up vegetables at Indian Line Farm for the Peoples’ Pantry. This was simply part of the weekly plan for at least ten years—not something to do when it was easy or convenient. It was a commitment she had made.

Being a World War II survivor, she also had that classic German post-war conscience: nothing shall go

to waste, and was happy to take the kids into the fields after the harvest had been done and find the leftover carrots. She was a genius at stretching every dollar, enteromg every gallon of gas into a book in the car. She could buy a month’s worth of food for $40.

Locally, she kept up with eurythmy in the performance group led by Nancy Root, and later with Karin Derreumaux. She gave many private therapeutic sessions at Jug End. Many mothers remember the quiet impact her work brought their children, help that really stayed and went deep.

One of Linde’s greatest loves was singing. Her children recall it as the rare thing she did for her own joy and delight. She sang in the Crescendo Chorus and in the Stockbridge Chorus. She was appreciated for her confident and strong singing; new singers could be placed next to her if they needed someone solid to sing next to. She really soared when she sang, the most expressive anyone ever saw her—Who is that? She was suddenly radiant, beaming with joy.

In the last few months, her body went on strike, and the only thing doctors came up with was a “failure to thrive.” She began to diminish and withdraw. She moved in with Fiona, and the two began a special time together, gifted by her illness. As often happens, mother and daughter reversed roles to some extent. Fiona sang to Linde now as daily tasks were done, making jokes, climbing into bed for a cuddle and getting Linde to tell her life stories. And Linde could now open in new ways—to soften, and receive, and be close, and even to learn to want more specifically things for herself in a way she had never voiced. Like a newborn learning a new language, she now had to find out who she was without responding

to others’ needs.

In the early 1970s Linde had begun a deeply devotional path of prayerful meditation, which she worked with three times a day her whole life. She cultivated seeds for the future in this way, some which have already ripened, some still to come! She crossed the threshold not insignificantly on Palm Sunday, the day on which Jesus Christ enters into Jerusalem and on his journey to the Cross and to death. He takes that path not as a giving in, but as a surrendering to the necessity of offering himself up completely so that a great transformation could take place: the hope that comes anew each year at Easter, that human beings will be able to rise up and become the full noble creation that God created us to become: his divine-earthly co-creators for the future of the cosmos. Linde, too, served this great impulse with her whole life.

As her teacher Rudolf Steiner wrote: “We will not find the inner strength to evolve to a higher level if we do not inwardly develop this profound feeling that there is something higher than ourselves.”

Linde deRis embodied and offered herself to this ideal and task in all she did as a therapist, artist, mother, and grandmother, and as a person earnestly treading a spiritual path, with “modesty, resourcefulness, idealism and always kindness.”

I would like to close by dedicating to Linde a Celtic prayer offered by Andrew Keith in the journal for the Association of Therapeutic Eurythmy in North America:

Christ, King of the Elements, Hear me! Earth bear me. Air, lift me. Fire, cleanse me. Water, quicken me.

Christ, King of the Elements, Hear me! I will bear the burden of earth with You,

I will lift my heart through the Air to You, I will cleanse my desire for love of You. I will offer my life renewed to You.

Christ, King of the Elements! Water, Fire, Air and Earth: Weave within my heart this day, A cradle for Your birth.

Yes, so be it.

Helen Holloran

February 18, 1919 – November 30,2017

Helen (Betsy) Nolan Holloran, was a lifelong resident of Rochester, eldest daughter of Helen S. Nolan and James A. Nolan. Betsy attended Number 1 School, Sacred Heart Academy and Monroe High. She graduated from the Katherine Gibbs School in Boston and had a long career as a secretary including various positions in the Administrative offices of the University of Rochester. She worked for a number of physicians, for the Rochester Bicentennial and was a private care-giver for children well into her 70s. Betsy was active in local peace, environment, and anthroposophy groups

and was a unique spirit to all who knew her. She lived in Browncroft for over 50 years and traveled widely. Formerly married to Walter J Holloran, Betsy is survived by her daughter Susan Holloran and her husband, Richard N. Blue of Bluemont Virginia, her niece Ann Menihan, nephew Jerry Menihan as well as her extended family Peter Holloran of Rochester, and Stephanie Holloran of Charleston, SC.