being human - winter-spring 2020

being human personal and cultural renewal in the 21st century

anthroposophy.org rudolfsteiner.org

The Alchemy of Gift (p.18) Uriel Pharmacy – Why an Archangel? (p.20) The M.C. Richards Program (p.22) Time to Grow in Nature (p.27) Eco-Alchemy: The Water is Wide (p.28) Ninetta Sombart (p.32) Facing Each Other & Ourselves (p.37) Re-Imagining America (p.40) Twelve Ways of Seeing the World (p.42) Form, Life, & Consciousness (p.44) The New Story & The Great Work (p.48)

a quarterly publication of the Anthroposophical Society in America winter-spring issue 2020

Ninetta Sombart, The Walking on the Sea

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Morning Lectures and the Art of the Child Study Christof Wiechert will offer daily lectures to all participants, and child study insights to Grades 1-5 The Joy of Blackboard Drawing and Curriculum Painting in the Upper Elementary Grades with David Newbatt Grade 1: Once Upon A Time with Christopher Sblendorio

The Heart of our Spiritual Mission: Healing Impulses and the Call of Destiny with Michaela Glöckler

Welcome to Renewal 2020!

__________________________________________ __________________________________________ For Waldorf teachers and administrators— along with parents, trustees, artists, and thinkers seeking to deepen their lives through Anthroposophy

Biography Life Cycle Work in the Time of Consciousness Soul with Linda Bergh and Jennifer Fox

Grade 2: From Form to Solid Foundation with Michael Gannon

The Inner Path to Living Knowledge of Earth & Humanity in Light of Climate Change with Karsten Massei

Grade 3: Becoming a Steward of the Earth: Awakening to Self and Surroundings with Kris Ritz

Curative Education: Meeting and Understanding Every Child in our Care with Robyn Brown

Grade 4: Celebrating the Earth: Hearing the Voices of our Elders, Reclaiming the Sacred with Angela Lindstrom

The Human Encounter and Community Building: Waldorf School Administration and Governance with Torin Finser and Carla Comey

Grade 5: The Golden Age: Feet upon the Ground, Gaze toward the Heavens with Monica Lander

Anthroposophy 101: A Course for Early Childhood/Grades Assistants, Parents, Grandparents, Board Members and Friends of Waldorf Education with Signe Motter and CfA Staff

Grade 6: From Romans to Romance with Lynn Thurrell Grade 7: A Year of Awakening and Exploring with Alison Henry Grade 8: From Revolutions to a Free Society with Heather Handy

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Painting by Karine Munk Finser

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centerforanthroposophy.org

• Movement with Gerry LoDolce (Week 1)

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• Singing with Meg Chittenden (Weeks 1 and 2)

Explorations: Workshops in the Arts and Contemplative Practices Clusters available on demand around the U.S.

• Eurythmy with Cezary Ciaglo (Weeks 1 and 2)

Puppetry to Enliven Community: Dry Felting Techniques for Storytelling with Bronia Evers and Melody Brink

Teaching Students in Mixed or Looping Grades with Angela Lindstrom and Natasha Zimmerman

Renewal Courses sponsored by Center for Anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy of Wilton, New Hampshire Freedom and Metal Work Karine Munk Finser, Director with Michael D'Aleo 603-654-2566, info@centerforanthroposophy.org

• Science with Roberto Trostli (Week 1)

• Drawing, Painting, or Clay with Elizabeth Auer (Weeks 1 and 2)

Five-Day Symposium: Financing Waldorf Education: A Practical-Solutions-Based Session with John Bloom, Alice Groh, & Ryder Daniels and Advancing Equity and Diversity in Waldorf Schools with Linda Williams, J. Bloom, et al.

Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program July 5 - August 1, 2020 Three-summers program specializing in Arts/Art History Biology • English • History • Math • Physics & Chemistry

Veilpainting out of the Imagery of Goethe’s Fairy Tale with David Newbatt Projective Geometry with Jamie York Embroidery: Stitching Inspired

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Italy Odyssey June 30 - July 17, 2020 with Orazio LoPresti and Gillian Schoemaker Free bursary place available

Consider a profession in eurythmy, the stunning movement art that supports

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Healthy development in the child The inner work of the adult Therapeutic steps toward wellness

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Egypt Odyssey – Dec 29, 2020 - Jan 4, 2021 THE PEDAGOGICAL POTENTIAL OF CRAFTWORK

craft as a tool for human education and development Mon 13 - Thurs 16 July 2020, Ruskin Mill Trust sites | United Kingdom This intensive craft course combines theory with practice, inviting participants to undertake craft activities and practical skills, and to reflect on their lived experience through action research. The course works with Ruskin Mill Trust’s method of Practical Skills Therapeutic Education and is underpinned by Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogy. It is aimed at individuals wishing to work within a therapeutic and educational context. thefieldcentre.org.uk

NEUROdiversitY a living conference CRAFTING CONNECTIONS

Fri 17 and Sat 18 July 2020, Ruskin Mill College | United Kingdom In partnership with Hay Festival, this conference explores neurodiversity in an atmosphere of creativity, social inclusion, lively cultural exchange and research. Come and experience the transformative power of craft alongside Ruskin Mill Trust students, and listen to the many voices of neurodiversity with Steve Silberman and other guest speakers. Thought provoking panel talks and performances, and delicious biodynamic food. rmlt.org.uk

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8 • being human

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ANTHROPOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN AMERICA

1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 734.662.9355 | info@anthroposophy.org

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

www.anthroposophy.org

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): Deana Darby, Karen Van Vuuren, Lisa Romero

EXPLORE HUMANITY’S PATH

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

AND YOUR OWN. BECOME A MEMBER TODAY! WELCOME! We look forward to meeting you!

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The Society relies on the support of members and friends to carry out its work. Membership is not dependent on one’s financial circumstances and contributions are based on a sliding scale. Please choose the level which is right for you. Suggested rates:

Benefits of mem • Connecting with • The print edition initiatives, arts, id • Membership in t community foun Switzerland • Borrowing and r the Society’s nati • Discounts on the and store items • After two years o

for Spiritual Scien

Are there require Steiner’s work in th

The Challenge of Evil (three-part) with Rev. Bastiaan Baan

ANTHROPOSOPHICAL

e and wide dorf ne, eutic

Essential Webinars

WE INVITE YOU TO

e

t.

a variety of opp sharing the pos

2019 Atlanta Keynotes: Patrick Kennedy, Andrea De La Cruz 2018 New Orleans 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 Hazel Archer-Ginsberg: The Origin of All Souls 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 Stewart Adams: The Story in Our Stars; The 7th Night of the 7th Moon Dr. Adam Blanning: Building a Space for Rest: helping children release anxiety Lisa Romero: Working Holistically with Gender & Sexuality

anthroposophy.org/webinars

Questions? Cont

Contents

12 15 18

from the editors book notes from the general secretary: “The Alchemy of Gift”

20

initiative!

20 22 25 27

28

arts & ideas

28 31 32 37 39 39

40

research & reviews

Uriel Pharmacy — Why an Archangel? by Mark McKibben The M.C. Richards Program A Conference for Florida, by Barbara Beddingfield Time to Grow in Nature, by Meg Pelose The Water is Wide, an appreciation by David Gershan of Dan McKanan’s Eco-Alchemy “Throw Yourself Like Seed,” by Tess Parker Gallery: Ninetta Sombart (1925-2019), a brief appreciation by her son Peter Bruckner Facing Each Other and Ourselves, by Patti Smith and Chris Burke ASK2020ATLANTA, by Craig Giddens Health of an Octagenarian Student of Anthroposophy, by Daniel Bittleston

40 Re-Imagining America, review by Douglas Sloan of the book by Christopher Schaefer 42 Twelve Ways of Seeing the World, foreword by Robert McDermott & Matthew T. Segall to the book by Mario Betti 44 Form, Life, & Consciousness, a review by C.T. Roszell of the book by Armin J. Husemann, MD

48 The New Story & The Great Work, review by Robert McDermott of Thomas Berry: A Biography

51 Two Poems by John Urban

51 Michael Support Circle

52

news for members & friends

52 53 55 56 59 58 59 60 61 61 62 63

Sharing the Holy Nights with the World, by Laura Scappaticci A Wonderful Gathering in Georgia, by Tess Parker Karma Work in the Central Region, by Marianne Fieber Light & Water, by Deb Abrahams-Dematte New Council Members, Ann Arbor Staff Youth Section Worldwide: Building Bridges Beyond Borders Questions of Courage: reflections on the conference by Odin Esty and Karen Walton New Members of the Anthroposophical Society in America Members Who Have Died Louis John Aventuro, by Michael Ronall George V. Rose, by Kathy Bossuk Roberta Van Schilfgaarde

from the editors Dear 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 L. Fieber (Central Region) David Mansur (Eastern Region) Helen-Ann Ireland (at large) Hannah Schwartz (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 4/30/2020. 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. ©2020 The Anthroposophical Society in America. Responsibility for the content of articles is the authors’.

Breakthroughs? Did someone mention breakthroughs?

Beth Usher, a noted eurythmist living with her husband Steve in Austin, Texas, emailed me a while back about the English translation of work that brings Rudolf Steiner’s view of the movements of our solar system (think spiralling lemniscates) into relationship with the current standard picture (think ellipses that are left mentally static because, “for simplicity’s sake,” the known, rapid movement of the sun through space is ignored).

Beth and I did a little quick exchange about breakthroughs, and it occurs to me that there are many happening in the anthroposophical world. They may be just in time, perhaps, to help us face some staggering and not altogether desirable breakthroughs in technology and social relations.

Chaos seems to be involved in birth pictures, and this technology change that can’t be grasped gives an experience of chaos. Europe, after tramping out across the rest of the world, turned back a hundred years ago and blew itself up. Anthroposophy wasn’t able to take hold at that time. Where we stand just now, in the new chaos of human competition with hyperactive mechanical “intelligence” (AI), isn’t clear, and we have no Rudolf Steiner pouring out new insights. But we have a growing number of individuals in whom his insights have taken root,—people who are now producing new organisms of thought well-suited for the 21st century. Some examples: Steve Talbott’s technology work, moved into biology at The Nature Institute. The Mystery Drama festival with all the plays in English at Threefold.

Peter Heusser’s now-translated work on Anthroposophy & Science. Nicanor Perlas’ Humanity’s Last Stand on the AI challenge. The art and social impulses in the Taconic-Berkshires area (Free Columbia, Lightforms Art Center, the M.C. Richards Program). Moving into the etheric with Yeshayahu BenAharon’s Cognitive Yoga. The taking hold of Biography & Social Art, and of Anthroposophic Psychology. Growing strength in Anthroposophic Medicine (cardiology, understanding the placebo effect, public health).

Breakthrough presences of Waldorf schools, biodynamic farms, Camphill communities—and the qualitative growth and collaborations of these movements. Yes, and Otto Scharmer and Theory U. Dan McKanan’s “outsider” book. Elderberries. Peter Selg. Sergei Prokofieff. SteinerBooks. Orland Bishop. ReGeneration. Inner Fire. Meristem. Anthroposophy at CIIS in San Francisco. Multiple ventures in moral, mystical, and social technology.

Webinars! Conferences of warmth as well as light. Youth gatherings.

“The Sacred Gateway.” Steiner’s Twelve Ways of Seeing the World, explained.

RSF Social Finance. We’ve mentioned all of these in these pages, or will soon.

And surely I’m omitting some (send me a note at editor@anthroposophy.org).

And consider in your contemplations that as we approach 2023 and the hundredth anniversary of the “new” Anthroposophical Society, what we are seeing—a culmination of sorts? Or just a lot of breakthroughs, including hundreds of “small” and intimate ones. Are they giving birth to a new culture?

For this issue we asked Mark McKibben to talk about the founding of Uriel Pharmacy, one of the essential resources for Anthroposophic Medicine in this country; we see the willingness of one person to do what’s needed.

It’s the same with the “initiatives” in every issue. A needed conference in the long state of Florida. A forest preschool in Silicon Valley. The spirit of the BD conferences. Dan McKanan’s Eco-Alchemy, a non-anthroposophist’s lengthy tribute to the movement’s breadth of accomplishment. And a new learning program from Free Columbia, named for the remarkable M.C. Richards.

On the cover and in the middle gallery a few works of the remarkable Ninetta Sombart (to which printing cannot do full justice). Biography & Social Art was at our recent conference: what were these interstitial sessions offered for? The Christian Community in 2020 gathers to share consciously in profound experiences. One of our many wonderful octagenarians pays tribute to the healing powers of the Christmas Foundation Meditation.

Significant new books: Re-Imagining America, by Christopher Schaefer; Twelve Ways of Seeing the World,

by Mario Betti; Form, Life, and Consciousness, by Armin Husemann, MD; and Thomas Berry: A Biography, by Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim, and Andrew Angyal.

The last details the life of a well-known spiritual thinker and ecologist, the sort of significant figure near to us we need to be aware of. Ted Roszell’s Husemann review gives me a sense of a musical-imaginative-intuitive training underlying Anthroposophic Medicine. The twelve ways of seeing that Mario Betti has been teaching for many years are from Steiner’s Human & Cosmic Thought, a favorite short lecture cycle that proposes no less than a compass for the world of the mind. And Chris Schaefer has been observing this country keenly for fifty years, seeking its deeper realities and mission, its tragedies and hopes.

Our final section gives a sense of the vitality of the Anthroposophical Society in America. We are building very actively, enthusiastically, toward 2023 which is our own centenary year.

This, too, is a breakthrough, in my experience, and we need to share it. Perhaps you know someone who is truly involved, but not a member? Often they have never been asked. Please invite them to join us!

Leaving a Legacy of Will

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 Legacy Circle members, who support the Society’s future by informing us of an intended bequest or planned gift, and to those who have made bequests over past years. www.anthroposophy.org/legacy

John Beck winter-spring issue 2020 • 13

www.anthroposophy.org/legacy

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 generosity of these dear friends since 1992:

Betty Baldwin J. Leonard Benson* Susannah Berlin* Hiram Anthony Bingham* Mrs. Hiram A. Bingham Virginia Blutau* Iana Questara Boyce* Marion Bruce* Helen Ann Dinklage* Irmgard Dodegge* Raymond Elliott* Lotte K. Emde* Hazel Ferguson* Marie S. Fetzer Linda C. Folsom* Gerda Gaertner* Susanna Gaertner Ray German Ruth H. Geiger* Harriet S. Gilliam* Chuck Ginsberg Hazel Archer-Ginsberg Alice Groh Agnes B. Granberg* Bruce L. Henry* Ruth Heuscher* Christine Huston Ernst Katz* Cecilia Leigh Anna Lord* Seymour Lubin* Gregg Martens* Barbara Martin Beverly Martin Helvi McClelland Robert S. Miller* Ralph Neuman* Carolyn Oates Mary Lee Plumb-Mentjes Norman Pritchard* Paul Riesen* Mary A. Rubach* Margaret Runyon Ray Schlieben* Lillian C. Scott* Fairchild Smith* Doris E. Stitzer* Katherine Thivierge Gertrude O. Teutsch* Catherina Vanden Broek* Randall Wadsworth Anonymous (18) * indicates past legacy gift

Please contact Deb Abrahams-Dematte at deb@anthroposophy.org or (603) 801-6584 for information about planned giving & the Legacy Circle.

14 • being human

Rudolf Steiner Library

The Rudolf Steiner Library (RSL) is alive and working under new management! Following our communication this past summer of 2019 ,announcing the completion of a twoyear process of negotiations between a new not-for-profit entity called, The Rudolf Steiner Cultural Foundation (RSCF), and the Anthroposophical Society in America (ASA), the small board of trustees for the new RSCF has been working to ensure steady payroll for our two stalwart employees, Kathleen Bradley and Martin Miller. Without these two there would be no RSL! Judith Kiely has recently been volunteering on Fridays to complete a cataloguing project she left behind when her health took her away from RSL work for a time.

Other tasks include gathering, consolidating, and amending mailing lists from both the ASA and the Rudolf Steiner Library Circle of Friends, the steadfast group that bridged the time between the selling of the property that housed the RSL, and through the inauguration of the RSCF. The current members of the board of the RSCF have also continued to pursue additional members of the board, opened bank accounts, developed bookkeeping systems, worked on new signage, developed a web site, received donations of books from bequests and downsizing endeavors, sorted through these book donations, framed art treasures that come from some of these sources, and have met regularly.

Progress on a number of fronts isn’t always as visible as it will be when the whole foundation of this new endeavor to preserve the RSL is more solidly in place. We have been grateful for the donations we have received without solicitation, and for the patience of those who are interested in this work.

The vision of the RSL and the RSCF, as new managers, is to enhance the RSL collection with those donations of books from our fellow anthroposophists that prove valuable to RSL and to establish a vehicle online for selling copies of the books not needed by the RSL, to contribute books to the Anthroposophical Prison Outreach program, and to offer cultural events featuring authors’ work and individuals’ research. We will be writing to everyone soon, asking for contributions of both financial support and volunteer support to help in sustaining and building the RSL and its contribution to our current culture. Please contact us at rudolfsteinerlibrary@gmail.com for more information or to join our mailing list, volunteer, or to donate. You will hear from us before too long!

The Rudolf Steiner Library is open Wednesday through Saturday each week from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Kathleen and Martin manage brisk by-mail and inter-library loan practice through a regional library association, as well as in-person visitors and researchers at the RSL. Rudolf Steiner Library, 351 Fairview Avenue, Suite, 610 Hudson, NY 12534 rudolfsteinerlibrary@gmail.com (518) 944-7007

Book Notes Space permits only a few book reviews in each issue, so this page lists some of the many others we encounter. Except as specified, the notes are from the publishers. — Editor

SteinerBooks steiner.presswarehouse.com The Mystery of Emerging Form: Imma von Eckardstein’s Drawins of the Constellations, A Biological Perspective, by Yvan Rioux, 196 pp. (Temple Lodge 2017)

“With the goal of bridging science and spirit, Rioux helps revive the old intuitive awareness of an intimate communion between the outer perceptible life of nature, the inner life ADVANCE INFORMATION of the soul and the majestic spiritual formative forces that preside as architects—an organic whole where all levels coevolve.

“The earth, nesting in its solar system, is connected with the of Milky Way and the kardstein’s Drawings the Constellations twelve constellations. The imPerspective pact of the stars as an influence on human behaviour has been known for millennia. In the asoriginal editionspeck of ofRudolf ence views our planet an insignificant dust in Steiner’sasCalendar of the Soul, ce, with its four kingdoms a random assemblage of x presents a radically different perspective,of demonstrating twelve illustrations the conationship between Heaven and Earth. Over aeons of exisstellations, made by Imma von gdoms have manifested a creative power that perpetually werescience published for xpressions. With Eckardstein, the goal of bridging and spirit, the old intuitive the awareness of an intimate communion first time.

These intuitive drawings differ greatly from the perceptible life of nature, the inner life of the soul and April 2017 for our traditional ones, but Steiner stressed their 24 importance ual formative forces that preside as architects – an organic modern consciousness.

The images invite us to comprehend vels co-evolve.

stery of Emerging Form

Temple Lodge Publishing

in its solar system, is connected with the Milky Way and ISBN 978 1 912230 02 0 ations. The impact of the stars as an influence on human n known for millennia. In the original edition of Rudolf 23.5 x 15.5 mm of the Soul, twelve illustrations of the constellations, made rdstein, were published for the first time. These intuitive 196 pp atly from the traditional ones, but Steiner stressed their r modern consciousness. The images invite us to compre£16.99 rces in their various guises in the kingdoms of nature. By of each constellation, the author uses Imma’s drawings Paperback Original ucidate the emergence of twelve basic forms as the coms of all creatures, leading eventually towards the human form.

the zodiac constellations represent actual experiences connected with the waking and sleeping of pargs. In these images we have a knowledge that needs to be renewed at this time…’ – Rudolf Steiner

OUX was already a keen naturalist as a boy, taught by Christian Brothers and Franciscans. He studied biology al University, but it left him cold as it didn’t touch anything that was alive. Working for ten years as a biodymer in Quebec, however, he encountered living ecosystems. Later, in Montreal, he taught on the relationship uman physiology and nature. In 1992 he moved to England with his two boys and joined a family of two girls mother, Gabriel Millar, who became his muse. Retiring ten years ago, he decided to write about his knowlears’ of teaching experience, culminating in the publication of The Mystery of Emerging Form.

From all good booksellers or direct from: e, 50 Cambuslang Road, Glasgow, G32 8NB. Tel. 0141 643 3961; E-mail. orders@booksource.net

formative forces in their various guises in the kingdoms of nature. By exploring the gifts of each constellation, the author uses Imma’s drawings as a template to elucidate the emergence of twelve basic forms as the common denominators of all creatures, leading eventually towards the human form.”

The Seat of the Soul: Rudolf Steiner’s Seven Planetary Seals, by Yvan Rioux, 228 pp. (Temple Lodge 2019) “The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.” – Novalis “How are the internal and external forms of the human organism shaped? How does human consciousness emerge?

These are questions to which conventional science has no answers. In The Seat of the Soul, Yvan Rioux invites us to consider new concepts that can explain these phenomena. His exposition is based on the existence of external ‘formative forces’—or morphic fields— which, he argues, create the human body or organism in conjunction with forces that resonate within us from the living solar system. The psyche— or soul—emerges progressively as an inner world of faculties that in time learns to apprehend and understand the outer world.

“In his previous book The Mystery of Emerging Form, Rioux explored the formative forces of the twelve zodiacal constellations. In this absorbing sequel, he investigates how such activity from the planetary spheres works within us, as ‘life stages’ or metabolic processes. Through seven chapters, he explores the impact of each of these planetary spheres on our complex organic make-up and psychic activity. The link between organs and tissues, he says, produces five specific ‘inner landscapes’ in relation to the external rhythmic environment. https://www.bluepearlarts.com

Anthroposophically based

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winter-spring issue 2020 • 15

Book Notes Rioux also gives a description of Rudolf Steiner’s seven ‘planetary seals’ from a biological perspective. According to Steiner, these seals are: ‘…occult scripts, meaning that, as hidden signatures, they show their ongoing etheric impacts on the seven stages of our metabolism.’

“Between Steiner’s indications concerning human physiology and the ancient Chinese view on the subject, there is a convergence of ideas—as synthesized here—that breaks through the boundaries of modern reductionist science, offering exciting perspectives for understanding the human being.”

The Maria Thun Biodynamic Almanac 2020: North American Edition, by Mathias Thun; 64 pp. (Floris Books 2019) “With Eastern Standard Time dates and times, now in its 58th year of helping biodynamic farmers and gardeners get the most out of their farms and gardens. This useful guide shows the optimum days for sowing, pruning, and harvesting various plants and crops, as well as working with bees. It includes Thun’s unique insights, which go above and beyond the

standard information presented in some other lunar calendars. It is presented in colour with clear symbols and explanations. The almanac includes a pullout wallchart that can be pinned up in a barn, workshop or garage as a handy quick reference. Biodynamics is a holistic, ecological, and ethical approach to gardening and farming. Used by both backyard gardeners and professional farmers.”

Bobby Matherne, 7/20/1940-11/24/2019 Publisher, Good Mountain Press; Digestworld email blog

An electronic pioneer, Bobby Matherne gave the world from 2000 to 2019 a treasure of reviews of Rudolf Steiner’s books—among many of life’s other pleasures—online at www.doyletics.com/digest “I am a lifelong student. I have read and reviewed over 193 books by Rudolf Steiner and plan to finish the rest of his oeurvre. I write about what I am studying at any point in time, so my monthly issues of DIGESTWORLD are a ready reference to my past and current interests, including logs of my travels, cartoons, cajun jokes, interesting quotations, news on developments in the science of doyletics, how dolphins communicate by speaking visual images, and much more.”

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news. Isaiah 52:7 Hail and fare well, Bobby!

Goetheanum Anthroposophical Studies The School of Spiritual Science as a place for research and teaching offers a wide range of study and further education opportunities in English.

Find out more at www.studium-goetheanum.org

Goetheanum

Anthroposophy Studies

16 • being human

Goetheanum

Adult Education Programme

Goetheanum

Leadership Course

Book Notes Rilke: “Sonnets to Orpheus”; a new translation by Christiane Marks; Open Letter publishers, 130 pages

This ever-popular 55-poem cycle by beloved poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) has been translated into English many times since English poet J.B. Leishman’s rendering was first published in 1936, fourteen years after they were written, by a wide variety of translators or simply avid readers wanting to relate to the poems more closely. However, though women were always drawn to Rilke for his sensitive and intuitive nature and accounted for most of his friends, there are hardly any of them among his translators; there are even fewer native speakers of German—and no anthroposophists at all! I am filling all these gaps, though I did not set out to do so; I simply got involved through sharing my son’s college translation assignment back in the 1990’s and getting more and more intrigued. I lived with the sonnets, learning them by heart and reading all of the letters and other materials pertaining to them. Translating them from one of my beloved languages into the other followed naturally, since I am a translator.

Two of my main goals were to preserve the meter, which few translators do, and that direct, often colloquial style—that “spoken-to” quality. I also tried to recapture their beautiful sound. We know that they came to him in spoken form and that he wanted them read out loud whenever possible—experienced as sound.

These sonnets are Rilke’s breakthrough to renewed creativity after the destruction and turmoil of World War I which paralyzed him inwardly, sensitive to all suffering as he was. They are an inner rebirth that made possible his other most highly regarded work, the ten Duino Elegies—made it possible, indeed, for him to again believe in any future worth living for.

A note on Rilke and anthroposophy: In the newly republished correspondence between Rilke and his long-time friend, Goetheanum actress Elya Maria Nevar (“Dichter und Prinzessin”, ed. Rene Madeleyn, “Das Goetheanum, 6/14/19) we are told that, according to Rudolf Steiner, Rilke did not need anthroposophy, because he was a poet. And Elya never spoke of it to him because she, too, knew that his way to the spiritual world was direct, through his poetry, and that science and philosophy—systems of any sort—were foreign to his nature. Yet these sonnets acquire a whole new dimension when you take seriously his references to presence of the dead, the cycle of death and rebirth, even of death as the rejuvenator rather than the end, when you know he is not simply using beautiful images but speaking of realities. I believe he is popular largely because he presents these spiritual realities in a beautiful, non-dogmatic way to readers who deeply (though perhaps unconsciously) long for them, but don’t quite have the courage to believe. My anthroposophically-grounded beliefs certainly helped me in translating them with the proper reverence and care.

This translation, nurtured along over decades, has now been published by Open Letter Press. It has been available on Amazon and on the general market since early December.

I include a sample translation of a sonnet illustrating Rilke’s love of old and traditional things like the fountain and water jug and one of the Sonnets’ main messages: Everything is connected and we must move carefully so as not to disturb this precious flow and wholeness, even to the point of imagining how the cycle of water must feel when we interrupt it in filling our jug.

— Christiane Marks

2:15 O Brunnen-Mund, du gebender, du Mund, der unerschöpflich Eines, Reines spricht, – du, vor des Wassers fliessendem Gesicht, marmorne Maske. Und im Hintergrund

2:15 Oh, giving, overflowing fountain mouth, that inexhaustibly the same pure message brings – you are a marble mask held up before the water’s flowing face. Behind you lie

der Aquädukte Herkunft. Weither an Gräbern vorbei, vom Hang des Apennins tragen sie dir dein Sagen zu, das dann am schwarzen Altern deines Kinns

the aqueducts where you originated.

Past graves and down the sloping Apennines, they send your sayings to you; which then flow along the blackened aging of your chin,

vorüberfällt in das Gefäss davor.

Dies ist das schlafend hingelegte Ohr, das Marmor-Ohr, in das du immer sprichst.

into the vessel standing there before you.

This is the sleeping, the recumbent ear, the marble ear you always speak into.

Ein Ohr der Erde. Nur mit sich allein redet sie also. Schiebt ein Krug sich ein, so scheint es ihr, dass du sie unterbrichst.

One of the earth’s ears. Only with herself she speaks, therefore. And when a jug intrudes, it seems to her that you are interrupting.

winter-spring issue 2020 • 17

from the general secretary

The Alchemy of Gift

by John Bloom What might an analysis of gift streams tell us about the development of human consciousness in the twenty-first century in the United States? The experience of giving and receiving makes it clear that gifting has profound meaning in and through human connections; these connections constitute culture. Thus, the health of culture would be an indicator of the quality rather than quantity of the gift stream. What may be less clear and equally important is how necessary and meaningful gift is to the quality of real economic life in the US as it has evolved in our time, in the context of capitalism. This latter is evidenced in growing wealth disparity.

The value of gift, how a gift shows up in the economy, is future-centric; that is, it represents potential and appreciation rather than transactions, depreciation, and outcomes. While a gift may be measured in money, that measurement is momentary and transitional from the perspective of accounting and taxation. However, such measurement bears little relationship to the lasting value of the gift. This delocalized relationship between measure and value of gift is where the alchemy of transformation happens. Past is connected to future through the present, and cultural and economic life are entwined in the flow between time and space.

What is a gift? While a gift may have a physical or measurable presence, for example an object, time, talent, or money, its meaning lies in the intention of the giver to recognize the potential of the receiver to make value of the gift, and for the giver to relinquish control. At that moment of release one more element of the alchemy of gift emerges, namely the liberation of the gift as capital.

This assumes a certain openness on the part of the receiver to participate in a process of renewal that has both cultural and economic components. Of all the kinds of financial transactions, the gifting process has a unique capacity to link past, present, and future. Let’s use a monetary gift as an example. The giver has enough to give, likely accrued from past activity, and gives as a transaction at a particular moment to another who uses it into the future. So, in order for a gift to be a true gift it must carry time as a unity in continuity. Further, all parties to the gift are participating in a process that transcends 18 • being human

ownership. From this perspective, a gift circulates into the future connected to and by human intentions, but liberated from predicted outcomes. This is one aspect of the alchemy of gift and taps deeply into a level of community consciousness that eclipses the material and measurable.

Gifting is as natural to the human condition as a sense of caring, unless we are conditioned to think and behave otherwise. All movement in nature flows in reciprocity, in space and counterspace. Gravity has its levity; magnetic fields are animated by opposite poles. This concept is as relevant to giving as it is to the currency of water. To some degree double entry bookkeeping recognizes this process in debits and credits. From a spatial perspective, we live in a one-world economy, a closed system in which every supply has a demand and every demand

Save the Date: July 12-17 A new summer opportunity at the Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center in the Pocono Mountains (Bangor, PA) to explore the relevance of Steiner’s work for our lives. The guiding group is Angela and Patrick Foster, Patti Smith, John Bloom, & Robert McDermott.

Work on nearby Josie Porter biodynamic farm, hike the Appalachian trail, work in art studios.

Guided conversations will be centered on • working with money for an equitable world, • working toward healthy living and a healthy Earth, • nurturing the soul in the face of technological pressures.

Children’s programs will be available. Bring your family or come by yourself and meet new friends.

More information will be available at kirkridge.org

has a supply, exchanges of goods and services are linked in circulation accounted for in money which in itself ages and is renewed. Life processes are everywhere. Reciprocity is a first principle rarely considered and not always immediately visible, especially in the mindset of scientific materialism.

Where the metaphysical nature of gifting operates in organic time, its transactional nature operates in the same conventional industrial time that renders interest, amortization, and depreciation schedules. Since gifts function outside of normative time, they also do not figure much in the context of economic discipline or finance. After all, circulation in space is harder to measure than accumulation over time. The convention is that if one accumulates or extracts enough, then gifting becomes possible. Historically, this convention has arisen from a painful injustice in the system—the value and profit which arises out of the economic activity carried out by the working world community accrues primarily to individuals. There is no natural reciprocity in this structure, and therefore there really is no way to right the injustice without a radical shift in the whole system. It isn’t just a matter of more gift.

First and foremost, I would like to propose that the conventional “transactional” framework that ignores gift needs revision. Economic life simply would not exist without gift. Without the circulation of gift, including the flow of healing intentions, care, and love, economies will not innovate or flourish anew. Instead, the system of debt burden and extractive investment will draw resources away from community as has been the case in the past.

A true gift contributes to repairing and preventing

tears in the tapestry of social life, and we know that a stitch in time is what matters most. Such action results from one human being recognizing the needs and capacities of another. A gift does not judge the causes of the tears, but rather is a response to its presence. The giver is moved out of recognition of the consequences of the tear on wholeness and integrity—both their own and the world as it appears. The judgment that the giver makes is to relinquish the right to own capital. This is an imagination of the liberation of capital so that it can be renewed, and of healing service into the future.

I would say that the degree to which a culture values and circulates gift, moves money out of private control to be active in the creative, inclusive commons and civil society, is a measure of the health of the soul of that culture.

Despite the reality that the US is one of the most philanthropic cultures in the world, such generosity masks a tremendous residual injustice between that which is privately controlled and that which flows as gift toward cultural renewal. This is not an argument over individual rights versus social rights. Rather it is an argument for centering gift and gifting at the heart of economic life, and, further, sounding and re-sounding the true value of gifting for much needed cultural renewal. Celebrating and enacting gift as the beginning rather than the end of the economic regeneration will move toward a more just and reciprocal world. And in the reciprocity lies the alchemy.

John Bloom (john.bloom@anthroposophy.org) is General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America (US) and vice president for organizational culture of RSF Social Finance in San Francisco.

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working towards health, not away from illness. steinerhealth.org/BeingHuman Intensive retreats • Supervised Fasting • Liver Detox winter-spring issue 2020 • 19

initiative!

IN THIS SECTION: The story of Uriel Pharmacy is almost archetypal in its simplicity.

Something needs doing, and I am here to do it.

M.C. Richards was a remarkable creative artist, teacher, and seeker. A new learning program for young people looks worthy to bear her name.

Across the big state of Florida, scattered schools and initiatives; this calls for a yearly gathering.

After a childhood in Hawai’i’s natural beauty, and years sharing nature with your children, perhaps you’d like to offer it to others, Silicon Valley?

Uriel Pharmacy – Why an Archangel?

by Mark McKibben It is a curious thing, but begins to make sense when examined more closely. The outer facts are that Uriel started 23 years ago in rural Wisconsin and now employs 15-20 people to produce and supply over 1000 anthroposophic remedies to doctors and patients throughout the United States.

What does Uriel do? We start with biodynamic plants, with metals and minerals, and take them through processes of etherealization and potentization, exposure to sunrise and sunset, then combine them according to formulas created by doctors. We make ampules, oral pellets and liquids, oils, creams, gels and ointments, eyedrops, suppositories, capsules, tablets, powders, suspensions, sprays, eardrops, body care products—you name it! We also regularly make custom orders for specific patients and situations. If you stop to think about it, it’s quite fascinating! If you don’t stop to think about it, but just live in it, it feels like working in a beehive, busy, warm, quietly focused, but relaxed.

We haven’t done much marketing because we grew by word of mouth and the emphasis has been on meeting demand. Our most effective marketing has been to support the educational efforts of PAAM to train new doctors (www.paam.net) and the patient outreach of organizations like Believe Big (www.believebig.org). Now I see new opportunities, so we are changing to reach out to a wider audience.

The inside or biographical story is that the whole enterprise has been an extraordinary, even daring attempt to meet a need, with a willingness to adapt to changing demands while remaining quietly under the radar.

In what follows I will share something personal because Uriel is at a point where something new must happen, and in order to engage the new, you will need to know something of the Uriel story. I became a pharmacist many years ago at the request of an anthroposophic physician who initially suggested I become a doctor. At the time I was in university and my grades weren’t going to get me into medical school, so he then told me they needed a pharmacist to provide the medicines. It was a destiny moment. I had the therapeutic temperament to be a doctor, but the biggest need was for a medicine maker. My life had already been touched by anthroposophy as a former Waldorf student who began reading Steiner at 19. I was here to help and liked

Uriel production buildings in East Troy, Wisconsin: “the Pharmacy” and the Barn

20 • being human

Uriel Garden, left, chamomile in bloom; center two: ampule filling equipment; right, pharmacy stock room, Stephanie.

the idea that there was practical work in anthroposophy. looking down on the errors of human beings and comI went to pharmacy school, working at Standard Hoparing them with the regular, lawful growth of crystals in meopathic, Weleda USA, then WALA in Germany and a judicial manner. the Ita Wegman Klinik pharmacy in Switzerland (now You can’t answer an archangel with B.S. No T-shirts Klinik Arlesheim) before opening Raphael Pharmacy in that say “Jesus is Coming—Look Busy!” Reality sandwichCalifornia and, finally, starting Uriel at age 40. Frankly, es are always on the menu. Our job is to meet needs and I don’t know anyone else who would have done it. I had further our mission to help keep anthroposophic medicine a young family, the financial prospects were not promisalive and available in the US. ing, and I knew little about business, but I saw a need and The decision to name a trusted destiny. pharmacy after this high beThe fact that Uriel has grown this large is nothing ing may be akin to the scene short of amazing. Uriel grew organically over the years in the Chymical Wedding of and then in 2017 and 2018 we grew over 50% each year!

Christian Rosenkreutz where Although growth was more modest in 2019, it has given he is on the way to the Royal us a chance to implement a business management system Wedding and reaches a cross(www.eosworldwide.com) that will lay the foundation for roads. He reviews the road sustainable future growth. signs and after realizing that I’m now 63 and have always looked for colleagues. once a single step is taken on a I need a business manager and eventual successor to path he cannot turn back on help write the next chapter of Uriel’s story. If you know pain of death, he decides to stop for lunch. (As a good someone, I want to hear from you. We are also looking friend of mine once said, “When the going gets tough, for a Production Manager to apprentice with me and a I’m going shopping!”) A dove alights and he shares some Marketing/ Customer Service Manager. Write me at bread crumbs with it, but then a hawk flies down and mark@urielpharmacy.com for detailed job descriptions or attacks the dove. Christian Rosenkreutz chases after the to discuss your ideas for Uriel. hawk only to realize he has thereSo, why an archangel? We by embarked on one of the paths, don’t have a lot to go on with Urileaving his hat and lunch behind. el. He appears in the Book of Enoch It may happen in life that as one of the beings that evict the we make a decision whose conserebellious angels from heaven, and quences cannot be foreseen and again in Steiner’s Four Seasons which will take a long time to fully and the Archangels as the summer comprehend. In the meantime, we regent who prepares Michael’s keep showing up for the work. garment. A few things from Karl Mark McKibben (mark@urielpharKoenig and that’s about it. He is macy.com) is founder of Uriel Pharmacy. described as exceedingly stern, Customer service, Tracy winter-spring issue 2020 • 21

initiative!

The M.C. Richards Program About M.C. Richards

What is the M.C. Richards Program?

The launching of a new program from the Free Columbia initiative is an occasion to recall the remarkable M.C. [Mary Caroline] Richards. The New York Times obituary in 1999 called her “an artist who wrote poems about pottery and made pots inspired by her reading,” and noted that “Centering in Pottery, Poetry and the Person, a book of essays published in the middle of the tumultuous 1960’s ... was impressive for its synthesis of thought, plain speech and incantatory momentum, ... an underground classic [that] pulled together ideas about perception, craft, education, creativity, religion and spirituality, arguing for the richness of daily experience if carefully attended to, and the creativity of the average person. ‘Poets are not the only poets,’ Ms. Richards wrote.” From the book:

The M. C. Richards Program is a one year, full-time course in transdisciplinary learning. The program is one contribution toward her question:

As you go out, you come in, you always come into center, bringing the clay into center; you press down, squeeze up, press one hand into the other, bringing your material into center. . . . We bring our self into a centering function, which brings it into union with all other elements. This is love. This is destruction of ego, in that its partialities are sacrificed to wholeness. Then the miracle happens: when on center, the self feels different: one feels warm ... , in touch, the power of life a substance like an air in which one lives and has one’s being with all other things, drinking it in and giving it off, at the same time quiet and at rest within it.

Richards became interested in Rudolf Steiner, according to an interview in The Sun, “because of her belief that education shouldn’t sacrifice the imagination or a sense of the sacred.” She spent her last fifteen years at Camphill Kimberton, where a film was made, M.C. Richards: The Fire Within.

Her books include Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America. A centenary exhibit was given in 2016 at Black Mountain College; view the exhibit book online at issuu.com/bmcmac/docs/mc_richardsbk_issuu What follows is from the announcement of the new program. — Editor

22 • being human

What are some practices to strengthen and enliven living images, in contrast to mechanical and lifedestroying images? And how may thinking itself be taught in ways that promote life, rather than estrange us from it?

What kind of learning centers do we need to cultivate in a century of unprecedented environmental and social challenges, globalization and digital revolution? One spokesperson from the rising generation recently said: Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.

The urgency expressed by Greta Thunberg reflects our best knowledge of the current pressures on the finite planet. There is an urgent need for economic and technological change to meet today’s environmental challenges.

There is also a much more fundamental demand to understand why current ways of learning and thinking can prove impervious and destructive in the world in which we live.

Are there ways of cultivating understanding that connect us to the rich particularity of the world and that does not blur its limits? Are ways of learning that support sensibilities of interdependence and connection? There are, and these knowledge practices are at the center of the M.C. Richards Program.

The program will begin in the fall of 2020 with the first cohort of 20 students. Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis since September 2019.

Who is the program for?

People looking for a program where education is approached as a process of developing capacities; those who are seeking a more vital and living experience of knowledge, those who feel that moral questions should not be separated from questions of knowledge, those looking for deepening and maturing experience; or those looking for a broad and general foundation that might spark a voca-

tional interest, or further studies, could find what they are looking for in this program.

The program is intended for individuals between the ages of 18 and 35. Regardless of whether one intends to work, pursue further learning at another college or university, attend a technical or vocational school, the program could be a meaningful next step.

Areas of Activity Activities include the study of texts, experiential learning in biology, mathematics and physics, work assignments, studio work in the visual, practical and performing arts, and explorations of social theory and practice.

Faculty have recently led courses in practical morphology, the design of complimentary monetary systems, projective geometry, contemplative approaches to painting with color and to the performing arts.

theory, visual art, performance, and literature. The curriculum will be developed collaboratively, taking into consideration the interests of the first cohort. There are more details about the faculty at www.freecolumbia.org/people

Cost and Housing Admission to the M.C. Richards Program is not dependent on one’s contribution of tuition. After completing the admission process the tuition contribution is decided in a conversation. The suggested contribution for the whole year is $12,000. Some students make a contribution up front, others make monthly contributions, and still others pledge contributions in coming years.

This does not include room or board. In the village there are multiple rooming options in private homes and houses that are shared by students. It is also possible to

The Place Free Columbia is located in the very center of Columbia County, NY. The area is known for its rural beauty, small farms, many artists, and cultural organizations and initiatives. We are situated two hours north of New York City and one hour south of Albany.

The train runs from New York City to Hudson, a 15 minute car ride away.

Most of the facilities are located in Philmont, a small village of around 1,200 people first developed 200 years ago as an industrial site known as “factory hill.” It is here where the Agawamuck Creek quickly drops 250 feet in a series of beautiful waterfalls. Water was harnessed and directed into various holding ponds to be used to power the mills. Free Columbia has used multiple facilities in Philmont and is currently developing two new sites to host expanding programs. One site is a public/private partnership involving a building belonging to the village.

Faculty The faculty is comprised of artists and researchers who have developed rich and engaging approaches to fields as diverse as mathematics, biology, political winter-spring issue 2020 • 23

initiative! rent apartments in the village. For a room in a shared house the monthly cost for rent, including utilities, will be around $500 per month.

Principles and Practices for this Learning Community 1. Contemplative Inquiry & Contemplative Pedagogy Contemplative pedagogy strives to root learning and education in an integrated first-person experience and to understand the intangible as well as the tangible horizons of experience. Questions of understanding are not separated from ethical concerns. It involves tending to the subtle forms of experience. This striving has been captured and described by one of the elders of the movement as Contemplative Inquiry.

We desperately need to extend the sciences to include disciplined contemplative inquiry…the sciences of economics government, environment, business and medicine, as well as the arts, can all be extended fruitfully to include the spiritual. This requires us to embrace the fuller and therefore more adequate conception of the world available through contemplative inquiry and knowing.

— Arthur Zajonc, Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry

2. Why Aesthetic Education?

Aesthetic education, usually associated with art and the humanities, is much broader. The origin of the term aesthetic has always related to experience and insight derived from perception. Aesthetic education involves the cultivation of observation, perception, memory, feeling, and expressive dimensions of judgment and knowledge. In the M.C. Richards program biological morphology, projective geometry, and physics, alongside the humanities and the studio and performing arts, foster these capacities.

As we face unprecedented ecological and social challenges, aesthetic education offers us a type of thinking sensitive to the finite world we inhabit. It also compliments some effects of the digital revolution, for instance that our attention is increasingly directed away from rooted, terrestrial insight toward a virtual horizon of experience.

The healing powers that proceed from the cultivation of the aesthetic judgment can bring about an unanticipated intensification of daily experience. It will heighten the intensity of contact with appearances in the natural world, and enrich experiences between people.” — Adolf Portmann

24 • being human

3. Action Research The M.C. Richards Program strives to offer a practical and value-driven approach to social research. Action research is especially crucial for social theory. The fundamental question is “How can we think and arrange life so that it is good?” What we think becomes our theory and the results of the actions inspired by our theory, or ideals, are the outcome. The question is not simply if they are true, but if they lead to the good. Social life is not an objective, outer process that is independent of our own thinking and actions. We can only truly explore new possibilities through enacting them and then judging them by their fruits.

4. Transdisciplinary Learning One symptom of current approaches to learning is isolation among various disciplines. In order to grasp the whole and to connect to interdependence and holism, it is important to evade narrow and traditional confines of subject areas and fields. This is not the same as resisting expertise. Rather, transdisciplinary approaches involve focusing on questions and projects where many fields intersect and interrelate. The scientists, artists, researchers, artisans, and teachers in the program have expertise but the programs and explorations are designed to encourage big pictures and interconnections that cross traditional boundaries of subjects and fields of study.

5. Accessibility The way that tertiary education has been organized and funded in recent decades is seen by many as a failed social experiment. Free Columbia’s funding is organized out of the conviction that through removing all programs and activities from the market, and avoiding transactional mentality, we can foster a more social and engaged financial culture. This makes the M.C. Richards Program financially accessible, and it also supports attitudes that are most conducive to learning, service and creativity. Accessibility relates to both students and society at large. There are never minimum tuition or material costs for programs and events. The fruits of the most in-depth projects at Free Columbia, which include research, conferences, programs, classes, concerts, exhibitions, and performances, are regularly carried out into the surrounding towns, villages, and cities. Free Columbia is supported by patrons, pledgers, fund drives, grants and a wide array of other giving opportunities. To learn more please see freecolumbia.org

Putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt

them. That’s because markets don’t only allocate goods, they also express and promote certain attitudes toward the goods being exchanged… Auctioning off seats in the freshman class to the highest bidders might raise revenues but also erode the integrity of the college and the value of its diploma.

— Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy

6. Independent: worthy of doing, worthy of supporting.

Free Columbia is structured to encourage and support independence among faculty and students. While it is an incorporated nonprofit dedicated to education and social-cultural work, it is not accredited as a college or school, allowing for creative freedom among students and faculty. It is also a small initiative. This allows for great license for students and faculty to pursue this innovative experiment in tertiary education.

Teachers, artists, and researchers can follow their best ideas and engage the interests of individual students. This places the burden on the faculty and students to make the work meaningful in itself, and worthy of support.

7. Learning in Context: Work and Service Another way that learning becomes disconnected from context and life is through being largely relegated to classrooms and campuses. The M.C. Richards Program is situated in the post-industrial village of Philmont in rural New York. The main facility of the program will be a re-purposed warehouse that belongs to the village.

Free Columbia and the village have entered into a public private partnership through a 21-year lease. An important aspect of the program involves service-learning and work embedded in community. Besides service learning opportunities, another aspect of the program includes choosing a practical, work-related focus area. Students will work in one practice, two times per week, throughout the whole year. The areas of work that will be offered will be determined in part through gauging interest in each cohort. Possible activities include: leather work, care work, ceramics, working with horses, food processing, local development and studio arts.

Applications and questions may be directed to: Nathaniel Williams Director of the M.C. Richards Program 518 653 6160, info@freecolumbia.org

A Conference for Florida

by Barbara Bedingfield Anthroposophical work in the long state of Florida is sparse and very spread out and so in 2004, while attending the World Teachers’ Conference at the Goetheanum, Yvonne Cumming, of the Miami Waldorf School, and I, of the Suncoast Waldorf School of Tampa Bay, met and talked with Joan Almon about how we could bring teachers, anthroposophists, and people interested in anthroposophy together to share experiences, inspire

one another, and strengthen anthroposophical work in Florida. Joan agreed to be our first presenter at an annual conference that we hoped to start. Karen Maestrales, of the Boca Raton Waldorf School, volunteered to create a flyer, and Herbert Hagens, anthroposophical friend and mentor of anthroposophy in Florida, agreed to conduct a First Class lesson. In addition to presentations, the weekends have also included singing and other artistic activ-

Arts, including singing, eurythmy, and painting, are always featured at the conference, along with time for conversations. winter-spring issue 2020 • 25

initiative!

2012 Conference: (l) Rita Lucia and Blanca Rossano, teachers from Suncoast Waldorf School of Tampa Bay; (c) Herbert Hagens; (r) enjoying Cedarkirk, near Tampa

ity—eurythmy, drawing or painting and walks in nature. ence at the Canterbury Retreat and Conference Center in On the weekend of February 21-23 we will hold Oviedo, Florida, just a few miles from San Pedro. our 16th confererence at the Canterbury Retreat CenIn addition to the late Joan Almon, presenters through ter in Oviedo, Florida, a Catholic retreat center near the past 15 years (and some of their topics) have included Orlando. Andrew Linnell will present “Mystech: MeMary Adams (Cosmic Cycles, Earthly Rhythms), Michanical Occultism Along the Western Path: Facchelle Cumming, the late Rev. Richard Dancy (Meeting ing Technology through Anthroposophy.” Lectures the Challenges of Contemporary Culture), Torin Finser will include “The Iron Necessity of Our Technologi(Human and Organizational Health), Herbert Hagens, cal Age,” “The Human Double and Its Future,” “AhriDr. Richard Halford, Henrike Holdredge, Lisa Romero man’s Gift—Emancipation from Dead Thinking,” and (Crossing Thresholds in Life and Death; Developing “Greek Mythology and Its Relationship to Our Techthe Self for Our Tasks in the World), Edward St. Goar, nological Age.” There will be singing in the mornings, Stephen Salamone, Eugene Schwartz, the late Jean Scheurythmy with Carol Ann Williamson, a guided naweitzer and Joseph Savage (The New Language of the ture walk, Goethean conversation, and a First Class Heart), Laura Summer, the late Dr. Basil Williams (Crelesson for members of the School for Spiritual Science. ating Health: Anthroposophy in Medicine, Agriculture [ suncoastwaldorf.org/2020-florida-conference ] and Education), Bernard Wolf, and most recently Sabrina Our first conference in 2005 was held at “The Della Valla (Ecopoetics: an Ecological Practice in ListenPines,” a retreat in Booksville Florida, owned by the Uniing and Balance). Planners for ongoing conferences, in tarian Universalists of Florida. It was a small and rustic addition to myself, include Sabrina Della Valla and Joconference center—shared bathrooms on the hall—but seph Savage, with technical help from Suncoast Waldorf our group was the only group there and we loved the intiSchool parent, Cara Sutherland. Attendees come from macy and the natural setting in the Florplaces outside Florida as well—North ida woods of pines, magnolias, and oaks.

Dakota, New Hampshire, Alabama, Eventually, though, the retreat center Georgia, and North Carolina, to name did not meet our needs and we moved a few. February is an ideal time to come to Cedar Kirk on the Alafia River just to Florida! below Tampa. When that retreat center Barbara Bedingfield (floridaconference@ could not accommodate the dates that suncoastwaldorf.org), a longtime member of the Anthroposophical Society and School of we had arranged for Torin Finser as preSpiritual Science, led the initiative for founding senter, we found the San Pedro Retreat the Suncoast Waldorf School. She graduated and Conference Center in Winter Park, from the Waldorf Teacher Training Program at Florida. This Catholic retreat center ofAntioch University New England in 1996, and earned a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood fered private bathrooms, updated rooms, Education. She has taught kindergarten and a quiet rural setting, and delicious food. grades one through four, and focused on school We held our conference there for three development at Suncoast. She has led singing years and then, when no weekend was sessions for the Florida Conference each year. available for our next conference, we Carol Ann Williamson, eurythmist, Sabrina Della Valle, Barbara Bedingfield (sitting) Joseph Savage, planners moved to the 2020 site for our confer- for the 2020 Florida Conference, Feb 21-23.

26 • being human

Time to Grow in Nature Salamander Nature Awareness School, San Jose, California

by Meg Pelose Salamander Nature Awareness School is a small forest preschool program taking three-to-five year olds on outdoor adventures daily, in a county park in Silicon Valley.

They explore and observe nature with the teacher and grow socially with their peers, using all their senses to develop physically, emotionally and intellectually. Two year olds can join the class with their parent in the circle gatherings and on the nature hikes. Parents keep cellphones off, to focus on seeing their child experiencing the beauty of nature.

Born and raised in Hawaii, I enjoyed swimming in the warm ocean, seeing waterfalls in tropical forests and double rainbows. Banana, papaya, mango, and coconut trees grew in yards along with brightly colored flowers; birds and geckos were often seen and heard.

So many of my senses were engaged with my surroundings, it was paradise. This experience of the natural world I wanted for my own children while living in Silicon Valley, so I sought out like-minded parent groups, a forest preschool, and early childhood educators.

I became part of the inaugural Tiny Treks class for two year olds and their parents to meet in different parks.

When my son turned three, he joined Leaping Lizards Nature Awareness Preschool where the founding teacher took six children on hikes two mornings a week. Jack loved the adventures in nature and grew socially those two years. When my daughter Gina turned three, I accompanied her as a forest preschool aide. It was magical to see the children develop their curiosity, coordination, endurance, verbal and social skills in nature. When her two years were over, I was heart-broken to leave the class and realized how valuable time in nature was for me too!

Next, at Mulberry School, I participated in my children’s classrooms with cooking, science, math, and spelling; I supervised on the playground and field trips though 5th grade. Being at a parent participation school was such a gift for my children because of the education that I received on child development from the wonderful teachers and other caring parents. Serving on the school board,

I organized parent education speakers, began the Kindergarten Readiness Night, and proposed that the school join the Common Ground Speaker Series. When my children moved on to middle school at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, I helped WSP join Common Ground. Its nationally known speakers highlighted how exercise improves our mood, health, and brain development, and the science behind the benefits of time in nature.

Starting in 2010, Rudolf Steiner’s view of education became my focus with his whole child approach, learning from the natural world, and protecting childhood. While doing my Waldorf teacher training through Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, I became a substitute teacher at WSP. I also completed five years of Spacial Dynamics movement training, including how to teach archery, discus, javelin, and fencing. From 2015-16 I was the two-day assistant teacher at Leaping Lizards before the founder retired. Being back hiking with preschoolers reinforced how this fundamental need for children to be in nature has grown even more critical as technology has become so pervasive in our lives. With a masters in electrical engineering and having worked for Hewlett-Packard in the cellular industry, I believe children need to fully experience childhood with less technology in order to thrive. So I began working on creating my own forest preschool and attended Antioch University’s Nature Based Early Childhood Education training and Forest Kindergarten Teachers’ conferences. I decided to focus on placebased education and having children experience the seasons at one park.

I started Salamander Nature Awareness School in 2017 as both my children are were off to college. It is a forest preschool which serves a diverse group of students whose parents come from many parts of the US and the world. I enjoy collaborating with these parents to nurture their children out in nature!

Meg Pelose is a Forest Preschool Teacher and Nature Based Early Childhood Educator. Additional resources are at www.salamanderschool.com winter-spring issue 2020 • 27

arts & ideas IN THIS SECTION: Dan McKanan, from a prestigious post at Harvard, likes what he sees in the breadth and care of anthroposophic initiatives.

Tess Parker reports on the latest Biodynamic Conference and its commitment to a worthy and inclusive future.

Ninetta Sombart, one of the very best known “anthroposophic” artists, leaves a dramatic legacy of color and inspiration.

What does “biography and social art” have to offer a busy conference?

To gather together and experience the depth of inspired ritual is the heart of ASK2020ATLANTA. The strong embrace of a powerful meditation proved to be a source of health for a teacher.

28 • being human

The Water Is Wide Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism,

by Dan McKanan; University of California Press, 2017; 306 pages

an appreciation by David Gershan Dan McKanan’s 2018 study of environmentalism, Eco-Alchemy, explores the wide water of the ecology and environmental movements with its many streams with great coherence. It is possible to lose the way in these crowded waters, but McKanan keeps the boat afloat and admirably steers us to a wide shore. One great theme of the book is, to quote him: “Students of Steiner’s spiritual science, also known as anthroposophy…are active in every corner of the environmental movement...” McKanan explores, more thoroughly than this reviewer has ever encountered, how anthroposophy connects to and has created paths of influence and inspiration in amazingly disparate ways. He is remarkably successful.

How was Rachel Carson touched by anthroposophy? Gardens at the San Francisco Zen Center? Bhutan’s “Gross National Happiness” project?

Israeli kibbutzim? Intentional communities in Ireland and Norway? The Water Research Institute in Maine? And there are more connections, many more!

Anthroposophy’s centrality is not a surprise to McKanan because environmentalism, as he states, “is a movement that seeks to restore harmony between humanity and nature by helping humans model our behavior on the rhythms of natural systems.”

The reverence and deeply spiritual orientation gained from anthroposophy reflects this description of environmentalism, and it is shared by biodynamic farmers and Native American and many other rural agricultural communities that preserve ritual and acknowledgement of Mother Earth. He states: “Steiner taught that our planet is a single organism with a spiritual personality….is a holistic worldview that seeks to achieve harmony through creative work with the polarities of human and nature, matter and spirit, macrocosm and microcosm…..” We come to see how McKanan understands environmentalism in its widest contexts through explorations of agriculture, education, social reform and renewal, and the natural world. It is at the end of the book however that McKanan reaches another shore—and that is explored in the section: “Anthroposophy’s Gifts.” We will discuss this at the end of the review.

McKanan’s own path to anthroposophy and its founder Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), begins in 1995 with his membership as a contributing share-holder in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiative of the famous Angelica Organics farm in Caledonia, Illinois. Anyone who has not seen the 2005 documentary film The Real Dirt on Farmer John will want to get acquainted with the great operator of Angelica, John Peterson. From Illinois, McKanan spent parts of summers in Minnesota at a Camphill Village—one of many anthroposophically-inspired villages dedicated to the care and enhancement of adults and children gifted and also challenged with a variety of developmental conditions. His first book, Touching The World: Christian Communities Transforming Society, included research done there. He is a professor and Emerson Senior Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School. He

states that his orientation to anthroposophy is pragmatic.

His research methods, therefore, “are a hybrid of textual, historical, and ethnographic approaches.”

He remains, he says, “neutral” to the “spiritual practices and worldview” that are found in anthroposophy. I would comment that McKanan is ultimately not entirely neutral because of the enormity of its effect on his book’s conclusions and the depth of immersion of his studies of anthroposophy. The informed and deepened orientation is there—living with anthroposophy has altered McKanan and probably fructified his life in Unitarian Universalism—and vice-versa. Interestingly, it was Rudolf Steiner who repeatedly emphasized that the duality—of pragmatic and “being in the world” alongside the study and meditative growth within the spiritual behind it—is fundamental to anthroposophy.

I have been observing an interesting and challenging phenomenon: the emergence of “camps” of involvement in anthroposophical initiatives. There seems to be a separation between the pragmatic life and spiritual life. It has developed gradually. We are also witnessing a transformational theme in both camps, and this is explored

by McKanan. This is of great importance for McKanan and for me.

What about this transformation? I think, as does McKanan, that it goes to the heart of the life of anthroposophy today. The experiences of illumination gained from the study of anthroposophy and the working initiatives that are born from them have not always maintained that thread. “I don’t really know what he (Rudolf Steiner) is saying…but…I am a dedicated biodynamic farmer. I employ the techniques and rituals. They work.” I have heard this countless times at biodynamic conferences.

McKanan quotes Thea Carlson, executive director of the Biodynamic Association of America: “In the past, the reluctance to talk openly about spiritual matters made the movement more of an ‘insiders’ club,’ since outsiders couldn’t figure out what it was all about.” It seems that meeting the challenge of how to communicate biodynamics, social and economic reforms, medicine, and education so that they do not alienate is also transforming.

What is dissolved and broken down in human digestion is now undergoing a similar process in anthroposophic initiatives. McKanan sees this as a new way forward for the anthroposophical movement. The movement is also experiencing a new build up. Older expectations held within the movement are giving way to a new pragmatism, but not at all a new materialism.

McKanan states: “In its early years, anthroposophy was an intensely self-reinforcing spirituality that encouraged participants to devote their personal energies and material resources to the building up of a tight-knit community. Since 1970, the pendulum has swung toward self-dispersal, as people with little personal connection to anthroposophy have come to dominate many anthroposophical initiatives.” A shift and transformation is undoubtedly happening in many areas of human life and work.

Robert McDermott, president emeritus of the California Institute of Integral Studies, has shared that this transformation is also occurring in Auroville, the community of Aurobindo and The Mother. It seems that ideas of restorative justice, the emerging realities of gender expression, an understanding of the importance of “the conversation” and not only “the lecture,” are all now part of new forms of sharing and communicating anthroposophy with the world.

McKanan’s pragmatic position is both admirable and informative. What is most admirable is his honest boundary between the recounting of anthroposophic ideas and the effort to interpret uncharted areas for him. He lets us know where the water can be murky for him. These areas are the often-diffcult insights that arise from deep immersion in Steiner’s cosmology. This however has not prevented Professor McKanan from including many thoughtful and inspired discussions of the cosmology.

The book is the source of many stories and histories of the initiatives that produced the first ideas about biodynamic agriculture in the world, the founding of the Camphill movement, the new ideas in finance, the Waldorf school movement—and on and on.

From Steiner’s seminal lectures on agriculture (1924) that embed the farm in cosmos and earth, to the farms that inaugurated the principles and practices—and there are many—the story is brought up to the present. This is a great and important history. As McKanan has developed it, environmentalism is the broadest possible awareness of interrelationships among spiritual, social, economic, educational, medical, and artistic interconnections. The new understanding of a healthy social renewal is based upon a “three-folding” between cultural, economic, and “rights” spheres; the development of the Camphill movement, based upon a physician’s initiative, works in family settings within a village or farm. It was Rudolf Steiner who said that the developmentally delayed person cannot be peripheralized, but should be placed in the center of the winter-spring issue 2020 • 29

arts & ideas community, because the heart force must be there, and We follow McKanan’s continuous exploration of the these individuals bear the heart force in a pure human role of the human being in environmentalism. Can the way. There is the story of new ways to envision finances: Earth get along well, or even better, without the disasters Rudolf Steiner Finance, based in San Francisco, a new created by humans? How immense is our role in the care exploration of esotericism and alchemical studies that of the Earth? places them directly into the practical life, as discussed McKanan states: “Some biodynamic practitioners above. (This last is explored in a stunningly illuminatmake a pragmatic case for a human-centered worldview: ing and often funny way by Dennis Klocek in his Sacred like it or not, humans are currently the most important Agriculture, Lindisfarne Books, 2013.) Anthroposophy is force shaping ecosystems on Earth.” Rachel Schneider of the context of these interrelationships. These make up the Hawthorne Valley Farm in upstate New York is quoted: environmentalism that McKanan describes and it is made “To base your entire agricultural practice on a mimicking accessible through an exhaustively referenced Notes secof nature is not sufficient.” From McKanan: “But from a tion. practical standpoint, the salient feature of Steiner’s cosIn the section “Rudolf Steiner’s Holistic Vision,” mology is that the whole earth is inseparably caught up in McKanan explores Rudolf Steiner’s own life and teachhuman evolution.” ings: three great streams of hermetics, evolutionary These ideas are not new—but there is more to be thought, and social reform. Steiner’s “evolutionism” for found across the wide waters of enviornmentalism—and McKanan “was shaped decisively by Johann Wolfgang that is a staggering idea from the wellsprings of anthrovon Goethe…” McKanan observes: “the great poet was posophy and other deeply spiritual paths: that earth, also an idiosyncratic scientist, who counseled disciplined plants, minerals, and animals could not have emerged but subjective observation of holistic phenomena rather without the human being as original archetype for Earth. than atomizing experimentation.”

Earth’s well-being and future are “fertilized” by the huI submit that this Goethean phenomenology is funman—both practically and cosmically. damental to anthroposophy—and its teaching, not the David Gershan is a physician practicing family medicine in San least of which is the medical application. The developFrancisco, California. He combines his allopathic training and experience with the practice and study of Anthroposophic Medicine. ment and expansion of the current scientific nihilism and the detached “gaze,” critiqued by Steiner, was also critiqued by Foucault in his time in The Birth of The Clinic, 1963. The distillation and removal of the physician and scientist into realms of materialism by separating any subjective “observation” out of scientific inquiry actually inhibits the development of a deeper Camphill Caring for people. and renewed “gaze.” “Spirit in Village Minnesota Matter”—a profound mantra for Caring for the earth! anthroposophists, cannot emerge as a reality without a rigorously Live closely with nature and join self-educated subjectivism. Why? other volunteers and adults with Because it is through this portal diverse abilities in our life-sharing that a profound reality is reached: community! the knowledge that the “subjecWe welcome families, couples tive” soul content is, when educatand individuals to assist in our ed, a great diagnoser and bringer homes, biodynamic farm, garden, of insight. Objectivity must be herb garden, weavery, bakery, and humanized by an astute subjectivprocessing kitchen.

Learn more and apply at ity, and vice-versa. This is one of Apply today!

Camphillmn.org Goethe’s gifts, and McKanan appreciates it.

30 • being human

“Throw Yourself Like Seed”

by Tess Parker This year’s Biodynamic Conference took place on beautiful Lake George in upstate New York. Around 650 bright souls gathered to find common ground and meaning in today’s social, spiritual, and agricultural contexts.

We touched on how we can continue to learn what the earth is asking of us, work together from different streams and backgrounds, and rise to meet today’s challenges.

The organizers took care to set up a list of “Community Guidelines” to practice at the conference. This was particularly helpful to shape and form the experience.

The workshops provided comfortable space for me to learn and interact with people with a like mind, but that of a different background. The In Living Color BIPOC safe space (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) stood out, as well as Leah Penniman’s awesome explanation of indigenous agriculture... The community is becoming more inclusive, ... more ideas are being shared, and the steps towards a sustainable future become more refined and unique. There’s a growth in numbers as well... I’m excited to see what the future holds in terms of science and biodynamics.

With the BDA as leader, the North American biodynamic movement has been taking great strides to make room for voices of different backgrounds. In this work, many deep traumas can surface. Addressing the wounds at the heart and foundation of society and agriculture in the United States is no small order. Yet if we do not begin to address them, however clumsily, however humbly, we cannot truly stand in the integrity of the movement.

Keynoter Çaca Yvaire finished with a poem; we can allow it to resonate as we turn to face the coming year.

Throw Yourself Like Seed

by Miguel de Unamuno

Keynotes ranged from exploring and transforming one’s “eco-grief,” to exploring the elemental nature of the landscape living within us, to the spiritual ecology of African agrarianism. Poetry, singing, and dancing also wove through the space to bring people together and find common languages to connect. Through seed-sharing, an open mic, participant-lead “open space” sessions, fireside chats, and more, participants were encouraged to cocreate the experience.

Donovan Riley, a garden educator and farmer, was able to bring three of his middle school students from New York City. He writes:

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit; Sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate That brushes your heel as it turns going by, The man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain which is slowly winding you in the nets of death, but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts is the work; start there, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field, don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death, and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself, for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds; From your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

Find out more about the 2019 Conference as well as the next conference this November 11-15, 2020 outside of Boulder, Colorado at biodynamics.com/conference Tess Parker is the ASA Programs Assistant. She co-founded and managed Common Hands Farm in upstate NY where she hosted both a biodynamic CSA and an educational apprentice program. winter-spring issue 2020 • 31

arts & ideas

Ninetta Sombart (1925–2019) a brief appreciation by her son Peter Bruckner “The experience of beauty creates a bridge from the material world to the spiritual world.” —Rudolf Steiner

Ninetta Sombart, the extraordinary, much beloved painter, died on January the 24th, 2019, just a few months shy of her 94th birthday, May 2nd. She had begun to wonder why she was still alive, as she could no longer paint in the last few years. I told her that as long as she was alive, she was like the center pole of a very large tent that provided a space for friends and family to meet one another—a place to be nourished by her art, her humor, and her insights. From her spacious studio in Arlesheim that she had designed, one could see the Goetheanum to which people from all over the world made their pilgrimage, climbing up the steep hill. Many of them also paid a visit to Ninetta, where they were able to breathe a different air and see the world from another vantage point. Leaders of the Anthroposophical Society, as well as of the Christian Community and the Camphill Communities, were also often guests at her table, taking advantage of a neutral place to meet one another.

Although this opportunity is now gone, the legacy that remains are her paintings along with thousands of postcards, calendar pictures, and books that have found their way all around the globe. The altar paintings for the Christian Community alone—there are over thirty of them spread throughout congregations from Australia to America, from Norway to South Africa—would be a life’s achievement. Yet she only started to paint in the style she is now known for, which has already found eager emulators, when she retired in her early sixties from her job as the PR director of a large engineering company. While still in America she had achieved fame, if not fortune, as part of the “Magic Realism” movement.

With four children, five grandchildren, and four great grandchildren, Ninetta was very much part of this world.

About the worlds she frequented whilst painting, on the other hand, she was surprisingly reticent. “Der Maler malt und schweigt.” (The painter paints and remains silent.) On a rare occasion that she did share, she told me that a painting was only finished when she could feel its presence. It had to be more than only beautiful. It had to be. She held true to the maxim that many an artist before and since has had: “Art is not about, Art is.”

One reason why her paintings remain so striking in their color and drama is the personal technique that she was able to develop. I discovered one the secrets of the shimmering, glowing colors my mother was able to achieve when I was 32 • being human

commissioned to paint several large paintings myself: after no less than sixty thin washes of pigment, the magic started to happen. This technique enabled her to create what I have chosen to call “auric colors.” These colors have no common names, for they vibrate on higher frequencies. Red, green, and purple may shimmer together in unison as one color. If they were to be mixed together, they would only create gray or brown. In all the history of painting, such colors have seldom been created or used. The bright, bold colors of modern art can feel oddly flat in comparison.

Another quality that makes Ninetta’s paintings unique is the areas of profound darkness, deeper than any black pigment out of a tube. This allows the radiance of the colors and the brilliance of the light to be all the more intense. Yet the darkness also holds these colors, grounds them, guards them. When standing in front of an actual painting of Ninetta’s, one becomes a witness to the profound mystery of light and darkness giving birth to color.

As I am now the curator of several of her pictures that I have been displaying in Rose Hall, Camphill Kimberton Hills, I have been astonished how powerfully a single painting is able to transform an entire space. Her images of the New Testament allow the viewer to become part of a process that takes place within the painting and can extend to and include the viewer. Her paintings have the quality of words, each one a different manifestation of the Logos, and can be felt to be nourishing—images that have the ability to come alive within one.

Ninetta’s mother, Corina Sombart, was trained as an icon painter, and was responsible for the interiors of several orthodox churches. An icon is a sacred image, a meditation picture, painted during constant prayer and fasting. Ninetta saw her paintings as a continuation of this tradition, even calling them “modern icons.” Yet upon meeting her, many were dismayed at how little Ninetta fit the mold of a holy person, and were unable to reconcile their expectations with the personality they met. Others of course were greatly relieved that she never gave herself airs nor allowed others to idolize her.

From her Romanian mother, she inherited the great hospitality that provided so many from near and far with food and a place to sleep while visiting Dornach. On the other hand, her Prussian nature—she was born and grew up in Berlin—allowed her to be extremely practical and detail-oriented, always having her finances as well as her kitchen in order. Her years in the States—in Spring Val-

ley and Nyack, NY—softened her critical Prussian nature with a great love of American humor (Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Zits, etc.) and an unconventionality that the serious and conventional Swiss found surprising.

I am confident that her paintings will continue to be windows to another world and a source of inspiration to

many. Maybe it will not take almost a hundred years, as it did Hilma af Klint, for her art to be known in wider circles.

An interview with Ninetta Sombart by Jonathan Steddal for his documentary “The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner” is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8DQd3Z7tnc and a selection of prints and postcards of her paintings are available at ninettasombart.com

Ninetta Sombart, The Evening Meal

arts & ideas

Ninetta Sombart, Madonna of the Grotto

Ninetta Sombart, The Wondrous Catch of Fish

arts & ideas

Ninetta Sombart, Jacob’s Wrestling with the Angel

Facing Each Other and Ourselves

by Patti Smith and Chris Burke Immediately following the end of World War I, Rudolf Steiner spoke about the importance of developing new forms of social connection in our individualistic age.

In “Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being” (Bern, 12/12/1918), he stated: It is possible for human beings to meet one another for years and not know each other better at the end than they did at the beginning. The precise need of the future is that the social shall be brought to meet the anti-social in a systematic way. For this there are various inner soul methods. One is that we frequently attempt to look back over our present incarnation to survey what has happened to us in this life through our relations with others. If we are honest in this, most of us will say: Nowadays we generally regard the entrance of many people into our life in such a way that we see ourselves, our own personalities, as the center of the review. What have we gained from this or that person who has come into our life? This is our natural way of feeling. It is exactly this which we must try to combat. We should try in our souls to think of others, such as teachers, friends, those who have helped us and also those who have injured us (to whom we often owe more than to those who, from a certain point of view, have been of use to us). We should try to allow these pictures to pass before our souls as vividly as possible in order to see what each has done. We shall see, if we proceed in this way, that by degrees we learn to forget ourselves, that in reality we find that almost everything which forms part of us could not be there at all unless this or that person had affected our lives, helping us on or teaching us something.

At the Center for Biography and Social Art, we use social activities to support individuals in better understanding themselves and the roles other people have played in shaping their biographies. The October national conference in Atlanta, “Facing Each Other: Freedom, Responsibility, Love,” was therefore a perfect opportunity to introduce this way of working to a broad audience. We were invited to lead a short activity following each keynote lecture and in the final plenum. We led the participants in an effort to connect them with each other in a meaningful, participatory manner, and to relate the conference themes to people’s life experience. Attendees sat at assigned tables during these sessions, so they were able to work on each exercise with the same partner, fostering a deeper connection between them.

Vivid Images Our first exercise followed Patrick Kennedy’s inspiring keynote, “How Practicing Spiritual Science Means Becoming Truly Human.” We invited each participant to reflect back to the beginning of their journey with anthroposophy and to find a person who played an important role in taking that first step. We asked each participant to sketch a memory of that relationship and then to share the story with their partner. In asking participants to draw the memory, we are following Rudolf Steiner’s recommendation that we train ourselves to let images pass over us as vividly as possible. In these short exercises, each participant has an opportunity to practice reaching into their soul for meaningful memories. Expressing

winter-spring issue 2020 • 37

arts & ideas

these memories in a sketch expands one’s field of view to the broader context in which the event occurred: What was the setting, what were the details of what happened, who else was present, how does this experience live on in my life? Learning to build the deep vivid pictures of this expanded inquiry, one becomes more present in daily life, at times able to glimpse the work of one’s own wiser person within, weaving karma and destiny.

Deep Listening Following the lecture by Andrea De La Cruz from the Goetheanum Youth Section entitled “The Future of the Society: Freedom, Commitment, and Youth” we introduced the second exercise focused on freedom. We gave each attendee a postcard—a hallmark of biography and social art work—and asked them what about the image reminded them of a time they had a strong feeling of being free. In biography work, postcards (or other artistic images) are used to evoke genuine soul response to biography questions. We find that letting such images speak to your soul helps prevent the head’s more surface-level, often short-sighted tendencies from guiding the process.

Sharing responses with a partner, in turn, allows participants to experience the art of deep listening, first listening for their own inner response to arise and once again by giving full attention to their partner. Listening creates a chalice that holds a person in a selfless gesture, beholding that person, if only for a moment, as their truest self. It might be that this is the great social art of our time. As one participant recalled, “I worked with a person I already knew somewhat, but I felt that I had gotten to know him much better, and that I had brought something of myself into the conference”. And another person 38 • being human

commented, “I’m learning about the transformational power of listening. Learning to notice opportunities to listen more deeply and experiencing the power of being given attention when I speak.”

Preparing the Future At the final plenum, we turned to the responsibility theme, asking people to consider the future, writing about a next step they would take. Biography and social art exercises expand our capacity to understand how we participate in preparing the future. We have a tendency in these times to focus on ourselves, making sure our point of view is at the center of each conversation. Questions such as the ones asked at the conference can be added to daily practices, reflecting on our own experiences to create vivid images of the people who have touched you/us in important ways. We can even imagine these people at the center of the story and ourselves at the periphery, to develop the capacity to experience the other with the same level of attention we give ourselves. This practice moves us away from self-centeredness to selflessness.

This work is important for preparing a new lifetime and the next epoch. It invites us toward quiet spaces within ourselves seeking the counsel of the wiser person within that will lead us away from self-focus toward the capacity to understand the connections with others and our debt to those we meet in our life. By practicing biography exercises we live this life more consciously, able to glimpse our past and prepare for the future.

Patti Smith and Chris Burke are board members of the Center for Biography and Social Art. Learn more about the Center, its training program, and its work in the world at biographysocialart.org

“I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.” — John Muir

ASK2020ATLANTA

by Craig Wiggins Following in the big footsteps of the North-South conferences and the North American conference in Staten Island a while back, the priest circle of The Christian Community felt it was time to call its members and friends in North America together. And what better location than the Atlanta area? Enthusiastic folks from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee formed a planning group and in November 2018 met for a retreat in Decatur, Georgia at “The ARC.” Contemplation of a lecture by Rudolf Steiner on September 29, 1922 in Dornach helped set the mood and focus of the work to come.

“Think of the earth and within it the different processes of nature and plant life. All this will pass away. But on this earth, in future time, sacred rites will be enacted out of a true understanding of the spiritual world. Through these rites and sacred enactments, spiritual Beings are called down. As I have said, a time will come when the material substance in minerals,

plants, animals, clouds, the forces working in wind and weather and also, of course, all the accoutrements used in rites and ceremonies, will pass away, will be dissipated in the universe. But the spiritual Beings who have been called down into the sphere of the rites and sacred enactments—these will remain when the earth approaches its end.”

Isn’t that what we do every time we unfold spiritual activity, even as individuals in our quiet space at home?

How much stronger can the effect be when we gather together and participate in “rites and sacred enactments”?

At a crucial moment one of us opened and read from the Gospel of Matthew ““Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

Now all you need to know can be found on the website ask2020atlanta.org and on the back cover of this issue.

Rev. Craig Wiggins, the new North American co-ordinator or “Lenker” of the Christian Community, serves the Chicago congregation and affiliates in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Ordained in 1992, he co-directs the West Coast children’s summer camp, Camp Tamarack.

Health of an Octogenarian Student of Anthroposophy

by Daniel Bittleston When I was starting with my first First Grade at Michael House School in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, UK, I began to get migraines. After a while in the midst of one of these debilitating experiences, it occurred to me that the Foundation Stone Meditation, which I had recently learned by heart, might be a means of coping with this condition.

Arduously, word by word, I worked my way through: “Menschenseele...du...lebest...in...den...Gliedern...” At 15 I had spent a year at Waldorf schools in Kassel and Hanover and thus was blessed with fluent German. At the end of the first “Menschen...mögen...es...hören...” it became a little easier to say the words. When I got to the third “Menschenseele...” I could feel the migraine beginning to dissolve, and by the end of the meditation, my head was no longer being held in a painful vice grip.

This happened about fifty years ago and ever since

then, I have turned to the Foundation Stone Meditation to help throw off any illness or threat thereof. If I feel something attacking really fiercely, I speak the meditation striding up and down, gesturing all the sounds in eurythmy.

This has been so effective for me, that I tend to want to announce it to everyone as the great healer for everything. But I gradually realized that it may work for me with special strength because of my special situation. After all, I was born to a Christian Community priest father and a singing, puppeteering, rhythmic massage practicing mother (taught by Ita Wegman in person), and I had been studying the nine hierarchies, looking for experience rather than intellectual understanding, for ten years already.

However, it is clear that this meditation, calling on all nine hierarchies, has the creative power to refresh and renew one’s whole entelechy. The migraines went away within about three months and they never came back.

Thank you dear Rudolf Steiner! It certainly is surprising to be as healthy as I am at the age of 81.

Daniel Bittleston served for many years on the ASA Western Regional Council. winter-spring issue 2020 • 39

research & reviews IN THIS SECTION: Four notable books are reviewed or introduced in this issue.

Christopher Schaefer explores our present social-political moment, looking for the challenges but also causes for hope.

Mario Betti has taken Rudolf Steiner’s map of the world of intellect and helped us appreciate the multiplicity of perspectives.

Thomas Berry enriched the late 20th century imagination with his care for the Earth and his spiritual breadth; his friend Robert McDermott appreciates a new biography.

John Urban’s brief verses shed light on great ideas.

40 • being human

Re-Imagining America: Finding Hope in Difficult Times, by Christopher Schaefer; (Hawthorne Press, 2019), 200 pages; Foreword by Eric Utne.

review by Douglas Sloan Re-Imagining America: Finding Hope in Difficult Times by Christopher Schaefer is a gift to America, and the world. The phrase, “difficult times” almost rings as a euphemism for the horrific evil and suffering that now engulf so much of our country and peoples world-wide. Hope is essential if we are to rise to the challenge of these times. Central to the strength of Christopher Schaefer’s book is that, first, he addresses the challenges to hope in our times, without flinching and without softening their extent and seriousness. At the same time, he calls attention to the truly positive forces, individuals and organizations, actually working today to establish hope and bring it to fruition. He calls our attention also to the fact that many of these hopeful impulses come from outside the official and formal structures of power. The author writes with clear thinking and insight, grounded in solid evidence.

He provides us, moreover, with a host of practical ideas, proposals, and analyses to illuminate both understanding and positive action.

Christopher Schaefer is clear: we must confront without drawing back or denying the actuality of the hope-destroying forces at work in our present situation. He also stresses, however, that genuine progress has been made in the modern world in the areas of disease, infant mortality, health and illness, illiteracy, women’s rights, and others. These positive advances ought not to be forgotten. Christopher Schaefer, however, is also clear that we must Finding Hope in Difficult Times confront the actuality of the many hope-destroying forces and events in our times. The idea of hope rings hollow if it cannot take into account the serious challenges to it. The list is long: climate change and collapse, pollution, the loss of forests, the extinction of species, the horrors of war, poverty, hunger, racism, and so forth.

Christopher Schaefer Ph.D These days many of us, or members of our family and friends, ‘An acorn of hope … may it take root and grow into a mighty oak.’ have been tempted to say, “I can’t watch or listen to the news anyEric Utne, Foreword more—it’s just too awful, and, besides, I can’t do anything about it.” It’s just this wanting to withdraw from the ugliness with its two contrasting consequences—despondency or frenetic anxiety—that the author shows is not necessary. What is necessary, to start with, however, is awareness and understanding.

Christopher Schaefer provides a basic guide to understanding and action in three important areas: 1) the American Empire Project; 2) the global economic crisis and the failure of capitalism; and 3) the overarching ideological patterns of oppression and anti-democracy. Planning for the projection of American power and military dominance on “land, sea, air, and space” began in earnest in the 1990s.

This project had the support of conservative Republicans, Christian Evangelicals, key foreign policy personnel, and even some Democrats. It was recognized that this project would have critical domestic consequences, which fit into Republican conservative economic theory, for it would require huge increases in military spending, supported by massive tax cuts for the wealthy and the dissolution of entitlement programs, such as Social Security. All that was lacking to put these plans into action was a major event—a crisis—that would impel Congress and the American people to act—an event hoped for and even described in the early 1990s as a “New Pearl Harbor.” 9/11 was the event and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars followed immediately. Especially important is the author’s Chapter Three in which Profound insights and an inspiring call to action for saving the US from its own shadow. Confirms Chris Schaefer’s place as a thought leader in the still-emerging discipline of social ecology.

Steve Briault, Director of Development, Emerson College, UK We face alarming world events while needing to navigate our lives. Re-Imagining America connects these challenges in a deeply personal and illuminating way. Learning to witness events with understanding and empathy, allowing them into our soul, provides the opportunity for discernment, moral discrimination and hope. Here is a timely analysis of the ‘Long Emergency’ of American society. These essays unmask the Ideology of Oppression underlying the ruinous economic, social and foreign policy adventures of successive U.S. governments leading to the Trump Presidency. They also point to the emerging alternative of a new tri-sectoral re-imagining of the American social future. This book: •

Nurtures the seeds of practical hope for navigating chaos and countering fear

•

Tells the author’s immigrant story from landing on Manhatten Island? aged seven

•

Asks what it means to be a conscious witness of events

•

Raises disturbing questions about the War on Terror, 9/11, the corruption of democracy and the American Empire Project

•

Analyses the toxic excess of inequality and proposes radical solutions

•

Shows how we can build a more equal, free, mutual and sustainable society beyond failing free market capitalism

•

Re-Imagines America through spiritual activism and practical social change

Christopher Schaefer writes brilliantly with two hands, one for exposing the suffering caused by American militarism, racism, and the neo-conservative Republican economic agenda, and one for exhibiting the compassion, joy, and hope necessary in these difficult times.

Professor Robert McDermott, California Institute for Integral Studies

Christopher Schaefer Ph.D. taught international politics and economics at Tufts University and M.I.T. before becoming an organizational development consultant. He co-founded the Waldorf School in Lexington, Mass. and the Centre for Social Development at Emerson College in England as well as Social Ecology Associates, an international consultancy group. He is the author of Partnerships of Hope: Building Waldorf School Communities. A grandfather and activist, he calls for a new Covenant between the American people and its government that engages both conservatives and progressives.

£15.00

Political economy and Social Ecology Change Making Series

ISBN: 978-1-907359-96-5

9 781907 359965

Hawthorn Press www.hawthornpress.com

Christopher Schaefer Ph.D

Ted Roszell gives an enthusiastic welcome to an anthroposophic doctor’s musical perspectives on physiology and health.

Re-Imagining America

he lays out twenty “disturbing questions about 9/11 and the War on Terror.” These questions have not been acknowledged, let alone dealt with, by the appointed government fact-finding commissions, by any of the mainstream media, and by most, though not all, academics.

Drawing on massive evidence compiled by independent experts, Christopher Schaefer concludes that in all likelihood “some form of governmental complicity in 9/11 occurred.” From 9/11 followed the “war on terror,” the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the weakening of civil liberties under the passage of the Patriot Act and increased surveillance on the American people by the government.

A second major area encompassing both hope-destroying forces and hope-engendered positive possibilities for the future includes “the crisis of western capitalism” and “the global economic crisis.” The author analyzes the set of ideas—the ideology—at the heart of free-market capitalism known as “Neo-Liberalism.” Neo-Liberalism holds that competition and struggle are the central characteristics of human relationships, that people are primarily consumers, and that the market based on competition is essential to human wellbeing. Christopher Schaefer deftly analyzes and brings out clearly the individual and social consequences of the neo-liberal doctrines: huge economic and social inequality, the control of society by large corporations and the wealthy, the unrestrained exploitation of the earth for profit, the lowering of the health and life-expectancy of the population, and the debasement of the artistic and cultural life of society as a whole.

The author explores what it would entail to create a healthy economy based, as he puts it, on a “triple bottom line” encompassing “economic viability, environmental sustainability, and community responsibility.” He advances a number of concrete steps to make this possible, among them: a universal basic income for each person, a single payer health system for all, the expansion of social security, a Green Energy program, a Covenant of Democratic and Human Rights, the provision of grants for all students, and other proposals. Especially interesting is his recommendation of an Automatic Payment Transaction Tax to raise adequate revenue for all these proposals, a

step that would also serve to reign in economic inequality.

All of these proposals will require careful weighing of the pros and cons involved, and of the best ways for implementing them. All should be of special interest to anthroposophists, for these proposals seek to offer concrete substance to Rudolf Steiner’s “Fundamental Social Law” and to his vision of the “Threefold Social Order”— content and substance responsive to the specific needs and conditions of our 21st century.

Christopher Schaefer underscores the importance of the individual in the re-imagining of America. The individual and society alike each has a dark side and a potentially light—enlightened—side. At a time when, in our national life together, the light side is in danger of being eclipsed, it is important to remember the history of America’s unique and genuine accomplishments for the betterment of humanity—and the author describes many of them. To remember and build anew on these positive contributions to the world can be essential in restoring hope and new beginnings in our difficult times.

Similarly for the individual, the re-enlivening of hope in contributing to the good entails working to transform our dark side—our lower self—while nurturing our full potential—our higher self. Hope in this perspective, then, is not only an inner attitude but also an outward-directed practice. The author gives a number of suggestions of how we as individuals can “practice hope”—a practice that concretely takes away the illusion of being helpless, because in the doing it connects us with others as part of a growing, compassionate community of hope. And ultimately true hope reaches out to connect us with the spiritual reality of all being.

Hope is not wishful thinking. It is not even prediction of how things will turn out. In the words of Vaclav Havel, writing under the oppression of the Soviet control of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and quoted by the author, “Hope is a dimension of soul. . . . Hope is not prognostication. . . It is an orientation of the Spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.” Christopher Schaefer provides insightful, hardheaded, and compassionate guidance for action out of this hope for a truly human future.

Douglas Sloan is professor emeritus at Teachers College, Columbia University. He served as council president of the New York Branch of the ASA. In 2015 Lindisfarne Books published his The Redemption of the Animals: Their Evolution, Their Inner Life, and Our Future. winter-spring issue 2020 • 41

research & reviews

Twelve Ways of Seeing the World Foreword to the book by Mario Betti, published by Hawthorne Books, 2019

by Robert McDermott & Matthew T. Segall Rudolf Steiner was one of the 20th century’s few true Renaissance men. While modern science, art, religion, politics, and philosophy continued to fall into increasing specialization, fragmentation, deconstruction, and narrow-minded conflict, Steiner labored tirelessly to create new integral approaches to education, agriculture, medicine, architecture, social reform, banking, visual and performance art, esotericism, and more, all inspired by a deep commitment to humanity’s spiritual potential.

Mario Betti, a lifelong practitioner of Steiner’s anthroposophical method, has written a book that succeeds not only in its clear interpretation of a sometimes enigmatic thinker’s ideas, but in its brilliant amplifications and applications of these ideas to our present day circumstances.

Betti offers his book as a stimulus or seed to support the growth of a still fledgling pluralistic society. Achieving a planetary humanity guided by freedom and love out of the ashes of the modern pathologies of fascism, totalitarianism, nationalism, oligarchism, and terrorism (the list goes on) will require more than a shallow, relativistic multiculturalism that settles for mere tolerance. Betti draws on Goethe to remind us that tolerance can only be a temporary position. Genuine pluralism, Betti shows, requires more than toleration; it requires a willingness to engage the whole of our being in deep communication with and mutual affirmation of other worldviews. We must strive to reach across our differences through an inner development that is capable of seeing their holistic interdependence. Betti’s amplification of Steiner’s twelve views is a profound aid in this effort of inner development. Significantly, it shows the dignity and merit of each way of seeing the world at the same time that it reveals the danger of exclusivism. Every worldview becomes false the moment it claims to be the whole of the world.

Albert William Levy’s Philosophy and the Modern World, a particularly expert and readable account of 20th century philosophies, summarizes our present situation well: …philosophical movements of the recent past are to be viewed as waves of successive reform beating upon an infinite shore, with each group of partisans 42 • being human

committed to a conception of philosophy which assure them a virtual monopoly of its legitimate practice.…

And to pragmatists, logical empiricists, and linguistic analysts alike, any alternative conception of what philosophy is rests upon a tragic mistake.1

Who would dare an attempt to overcome such differences of opinion, each supported by knowledge and powerful arguments? An ideal candidate would be a teacher whose thinking is lifted by creative pedagogy and artistic imagination. Mario Betti would appear to be such a teacher. Every page of this book reveals an author who teaches thinking as a contribution to individual lives, to relationships, and to a sane society. He is invested not in scoring philosophical points but rather in helping his readers cope with intellectual confusion and conflict.

Betti succeeds in his purpose by giving a positive account of twelve worldviews. He takes as his model Goethe who held in one view both universal harmony and plurality (8). We are led to appreciate that each worldview is convincing up to a point. His treatment of Idealism, for example, invites the reader to see that all reality is, or at least emerges from, ideas, from a realm that Plato described so convincingly. But then Betti draws on Aristotle, an equally brilliant and equally influential philosopher, to show the need for a more positive account of particulars, whether moments, thoughts, or objects.

Betti refers to this combination of Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy as Realism, the philosophy that occupies the 1 Albert William Levy, Philosophy and the Modern World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1959), 444-45.

topmost spot on the clock (more on this below).

In a similar way, the way of showing polarities, Betti makes a case for Rationalism, the philosophy of ethical order and proportion, and then shows how it virtually solicits its polar complement, the philosophy of Dynamism; structure needs process to be effective, and process, in order to avoid chaos, needs structure. As an introvert needs at least a little extroversion to get through the day, and as melancholic and phlegmatic temperaments need at least a touch of choleric and sanguine temperaments, so does Psychism, a philosophy ready-made for psychology, need a little Phenomenalism, a philosophy that emphasizes the reality of external objects and events but is not sufficiently affirmative of the interior depths of the soul. “Psychism is the inner version of phenomenalism” (Betti, 110). These pairs, furthermore, are not only complementary, as in two static halves that make a whole; rather, they need and benefit each other but also oppose each other—like individual and community, inner and outer, and of course, like gender. The twelve views are also like gender in that they exist not only as pairs of clearly demarcated opposites, but as a spectrum with fluid boundaries, a perspective that contemporary social justice movements have made increasingly clear (Betti, 134).

In addition to an emphasis on conflict of worldviews, Betti emphasizes the importance of mutually enhancing polarities: “Each worldview is both a genuine opposite and an enhancement of its opposite” (Betti, 110).

By plunging downward into the domain of gravity, the Materialist worldview has produced marvels of human understanding like the periodic table of elements, just as the Spiritualist worldview has revealed its own “’levitating’ periodic table of spiritual elements”: the angelic hierarchies (151). While Materialism risks digging itself ever deeper into the sand like a crab, Spiritualism risks fleeing the Earth entirely. Such polar tensions are the engine of the evolutionary adventure that has produced all that we see around us and feel within us.

As was mentioned above, despite insisting on the equal value of each of the twelve views, Betti follows Steiner in giving pride of place to Realism. “All world-

views rest like a bud within [it],” as it is “the fundamental human outlook par excellence” (Betti, 197). “Cognition,” Steiner tells us in his autobiography, “is not the depiction of intrinsic being but rather the soul living its way into this intrinsic being.” (Betti, 205) In other words, an act of knowing is not an internal mental representation of an external physical world; rather, knowing is a participatory event that is immanent to the world-process itself. “If knowledge did not exist,” Steiner continues, “the world would remain incomplete.” (Betti, 206) This is obviously not a naïve realism: it is a higher realization rooted in Steiner’s participatory approach to knowledge and reality. This higher or participatory Realism is a developmental culmination of the other eleven worldviews, whereby through a sort of alchemical transfiguration the distinct capacities of thinking, feeling, sensing, and willing (each emphasized by their respective worldviews) are etherialized into what Betti calls “a new earth substance.” (Betti, 209) In this primordial etheric substance, Betti tells us, the opposition between spirit and matter is overcome so that human consciousness can be raised and transubstantiated by the power of the Logos-Christ.

Some readers may have trouble following Betti and Steiner at this point, as these are rather mysterious matters, to say the least. But Betti’s book succeeds at least in leading all spiritually-striving individuals to the point where they are able to perceive the intrinsic value of all worldviews. At that point, it is up to each of us to discover the true integral potential of our human existence.

“The whole world, apart from the human being, is an enigma,” Steiner tells us. “And the human being is its solution.” (Betti, 206) Robert McDermott is president emeritus of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and CIIS professor of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He is the editor of The New Essential Steiner (2009). His Steiner and Kindred Spirits (2015) includes approximately thirty pages on Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry.

Matthew T. Segall received his doctoral degree in 2016 from the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS. He teaches courses on German Idealism and process philosophy and blogs regularly at footnotes2plato.com

Photo credit, Mario Betti: Wolfgang Schmidt winter-spring issue 2020 • 43

research & reviews

Form, Life, & Consciousness Form, Life and Consciousness: An Introduction to Anthroposophic Medicine and the Study of the Human Being, by Armin J. Husemann; transl. by Catherine Creeger; Foreword by Prof. Peter Heusser; SteinerBooks (2019); 360 pp.

by C.T. Roszell Anthroposophy begs to be lived out in confidence and beauty. Where it does, it convinces, and becomes a force of healing and new creation. Form, Life and Consciousness is such an example. It expresses the harvest of a lifetime, illustration by illustration, and discovery after discovery.

An imminently readable book, it will fascinate anyone interested in the riddles of the human mind, body, and spirit. It is a must-read for anthroposophic doctors, and a copy belongs in every Steiner School library for science classes. Indeed, the world would be a very different place if it were a resource tool in general education.

Husemann’s latest work has been happily translated at full-length and great cost for good reason. Together with its companion volume, The Harmony of the Human Body: Musical Principles in Human Physiology, the book allows the one who takes it in hand the opportunity to realize how seemingly impossible, invisible principles can become palpable realities, and to taste the reality of the spirit in motion on paths of the structure and movement of the far reaches of creation in the marvel of human body. Starting from natural phenomena perceived through sensory observation and basic scientific research,

the reader is invited to participate with the author in discovering—proceeding the way harmonics of a note rise into ever higher ethereal regions—the spiritual organizing principles of what anthroposophy refers to as the realms of the etheric, the astral, and beyond.

A Taste of the Journey: from one of the routes one can take in the book Husemann’s focus is one of delicately careful scientific delineation together with nuanced experience of organizing principles—a process that leads to the heightened artistic sensibilities required to articulate them. Organizing emergent principles familiarly characterized in anthroposophy such as the etheric and life-spirit, astral, and spiritself—such words fall away in the doing of them together, the way individuals like Steiner, Goethe, or Husemann exercise and experience them. We can allow ourselves— and it is so refreshing and such a delight to do this!—to set aside everything we think we know about anthroposophy, and discover it afresh from the ground up. Here is the right place for the reviewer to stand aside, and to let readers taste and glimpse what such an exercise can bring, with any of the many expositions the book affords.

A very striking opening into the author’s theme is the graphic below that shows the interplay of musical tone, movement of the human sheaths, and phases of development in the brain ventricles and flow of the cerebrospinal fluid from the companion volume, Harmony of the Human Body.

Fig. 1. From the left, the four topmost images show the development of the brain ventricles, followed by the flow of the cerebrospinal fluid in the images top right. The complete progression is an image of a process of inversion by which the etheric organization separates from the fluid physical form and unites with the astral, penetrating the cerebrospinal fluid during respiration. Harmony of the Human Body, p. 74.

44 • being human

In the new book’s chapter “Clinical Pictures and Disease Patterns,” the author builds further on this dynamic.

He contrasts seven stages of development of cells from the perspective of their passive degeneration into the cancerous stages promoted by the passively mechanical environs of our time, with their sevenfold trajectory where active artistic thinking holds sway. Minerality becomes plantlike in the living cell, reaches the animal stage in bloodnerve organization, and in the refinements of cellular support for thinking, speaking, and walking, it begins to manifest human being, the fourth stage.

Opposing trajectories arise, from there on, into stages five, six, and seven—either one that is destructively regressive or spiritually ascending. Passive, artlessly mechanical lifestyles promote regression backwards through animal, plant, and mineral principles of exostosis (cellular deformation), osteoma (benign tumor), and mineral (fully manifested osteosarcoma and cell death). These stages five, six, and seven are the counter images of human telos, of human destiny as it begs to unfold.

The author proceeds to explore these sevenfold resonances in the human body and human being on the example of what happens in the body through the spiritually ascending vibration of actively created, artistic musical tones—building on the exposition to the figure shown above from the companion volume.

We live in a time most conducive to appreciating the fourth interval in the scale in its depths, in our own I, and only begin to access the fifth through actively artistic cognition going back out into the world in a deeper connection with it. “In the unstable fifth, we are touched by something that wafts towards us from the world, like a wisp of air touching our skin,” Husemann observes; “this is why Rudolf Steiner sometimes described the fifth as the interval of the skin or sensory surfaces.” The author implies that a counterforce is thus achieved against the deformation on the human cellular level which he has delineated as the downward trajectory of cell organization fifth stage. Its measurement would be invisible to our clumsy mechanical tools, other than to note that the the cell has remained cohesive, healthy, as opposed to degraded. The author continues: “We feel the gesture of the major sixth as moving away from ourselves toward something we aspire to and desire in the world. For this reason, the sixth is considered the interval of love in many places on the earth. In the major or minor sixth, our sixth, our connection to what we perceive in the world is either

sympathetic or tinged with pain.”

“In the seventh, we begin to move in a way that breaks through the boundary between ourselves and the world and transform it; we act. The result of this action, the accomplished deed, gives rise to a feeling that corresponds to the octave.”

The author intimates that the active artistic engagements required for the fifth, sixth, and seventh intervals of authentic musical experience enhance our humanity at the cellular level as a side-effect of something completely immeasurable: spiritual growth.

The author takes this progression further to reveal a deep mystery of our incarnation into the physical human body, in his study of the ear and skull in relation to the larynx and music and eurythmy. “The ear shares [a] temporal gesture of rapid development and early aging with the nervous system. The larynx is very different.“ Husemann then shows how the musculature of the laryngeal inlet, developed in tandem with the embodiment of vowel formation, hints at new powers the human being promises to incarnate in the future.

In the occiput [the back part of the skull] and in the ear organization…the old human being confronts the nascent human being of the larynx. …These “organs of music” embody the time body’s musical structure as developed above [the aberrant cell development stages five through seven we just explored above] in connection with cancer.

Fig. 109 at the left, from p. 238 of the new book, juxtaposes the two cosmic structures. From the curve of the back of the head looking forward and down through the spine and extending out again into the rib cages stands the old. The new is all that, inverted and smaller: the larynx appears with its curve looking back and upward, as if as a baby to its mother, with its own set of smaller ribs of Figure 109: Metamorphosis of the occiput muscle and vibration, doing and larynx (after a sketch by Rudolf the same.

Steiner.

Medicine, music, and eurythmy, moving together as the three Graces, through all the chapters of this splendid book! winter-spring issue 2020 • 45

research & reviews Rudolf Steiner from Hour One: original impulses coalesce over the generations in a Stuttgart family The context needs to be set for how this book could happen. The capabilities, interests and studies of a remarkable family have coalesced in Armin Husemann and his brothers. Armin was born into a family gifted to unfold three arts from the beginnings of anthroposophy: medicine, music and eurythmy weave through and inspire his work at every turn. The story is significant and relevant to his book, and can be told readily; it is the story of Rudolf Steiner and three brothers, Friedrich, Gottfried, and Gisbert Husemann.

Friedrich Husemann (1887-1959) lost his mother to tuberculosis at the age of ten; he was moved by the riddle of life and death to travel to Berlin to hear Rudolf Steiner’s architecture lectures in 1910. Out of inner existential need, he took up Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom, and introduced his younger brother Gottfried (1900-1972) to Steiner in 1919.

Gottfried, a gifted pianist who also trained in theology and chemistry, went on to become one of Steiner’s closest working partners, and one of the founders of the Christian Community. Friedrich, the first in a line of doctors in the family, married one of the first eurythmists, and in his first book, Goethe and the Healing Arts, carried Goethe’s accomplishments on to Steiner, setting the mark for generations to come.

Friedrich and Gottfried’s youngest brother, Gisbert (1907-1997), Armin’s father, won over the testing committee for his exam showing how Goethe reconciles nature with art; he went on to help found the Association of Anthroposophic Doctors in Germany. Born twenty years after Friedrich and seven years after Gottfried, Gisbert barely missed meeting Rudolf Steiner in life. The loss was made good: Armin’s brother Friedwart wrote memorial words for their father’s direct spiritual encounter with the figure of Rudolf Steiner.

This took place after a near fatal motorcycle accident, and a shoulder injury doctors 46 • being human

thought could never heal. In Gisbert’s vivid night experience, Rudolf Steiner appeared to retrain the shoulder.

Over the years, a metamorphosis took place both in the shoulder and Gisbert’s soul-life, and he went on to be recognized by those who heard him as one of the most moving and articulate speakers to ever take the floor in the cause of anthroposophy.

The die was cast. Every motif of this family’s recounting is a fiber of Armin’s life’s inspiration, and reflected in this book—a victory of the spirit by means of the three arts. These weave through the principle themes, which are chapter headings: 1. Form and Life 2. Life and Consciousness: From Amphibians to Reptiles 3. Humans and Animals 4. The Human Being and the Processes of Nature 5. Clinical Pictures and Disease Patterns 6. Working Principles of Therapeutic Eurthymy 7. Medical Thinking and Moral Practice 8. Goethe’s Thinking Applied to the Physician’s Path of Training.

Science of Emergence: the wide significance of this book for our time The following words, from the foreword to Husemann’s book by Prof. Peter Heusser of Witten-Herdecke University, frame and focus it in relation to the specific spiritual challenge of our time: Medical Etudes is the title Armin Husemann would have preferred for the studies published here, and rightly so. In this book, Husemann—anthroposophic physician, Goethean researcher, teacher, and head of the Eugen Kolisko Academy at the Filder Clinic in Filderstadt (near Stuttgart)—develops a medical perspective on the human being that infuses the often highly abstract scientific foundations of medicine with artistic sensibility. The result is a new, supple form of medical thinking that might be called “medical science through art,” to use an expression coined by Husemann himself.

Heusser goes on to articulate how Goethe’s approach to nature, waiting in the wings, has come to fruition in the best science works of emergence theory in our time. Emergence is essentially Goethe’s methodology, breaking through before our eyes. Friedrich Schiller enunciated Goethean science with these words in a letter to the great genius:

You take all of Nature together to shed light on individual details; in the totality of her phenomena you seek to explain the individual. From simple levels of organization you ascend to the more complex, ultimately assembling the most complex of all—the human being.

Breathtaking advances in what science can now observe in the molecular and atomic fields have facilitated the new science of emergence: the extended ranges of what can be detected have only heightened the riddle of organizing principles at every level.

Reductionist science theory registers the detailed new vistas of data, but fails to make sense of them, to appreciate the source of the emergent organizing principles at work. In Heusser’s words, “no emergent level can be derived from the one before it— each emergent level bears its own effective causes within itself.” World class researchers such as professor of physics Arthur Zajonc (Amherst) and Frederick Amrine in philosophy and literature (University of Michigan), or James Dyson, MD, in mental health and social therapy, have moved forward, articulating how the truths and powers of Rudolf Steiner’s research and creativity are percolating to the surface in the emergence science of our time.

A Barrier falls in our Time: Nicanor Perlas, Peter Heusser and Armin Husemann Unnoticed to many, anthroposophy has passed a crucial barrier in 2019. The world may not seem yet as changed as it in fact is. “Alternate Nobel Prize” laureate Nicanor Perlas gave the lead address in Stuttgart for the hundred year anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s Threefold Order, in the city where the movement began. From there he launched a nine-city speaking tour around his 2019 book Humanity’s Last Stand, to articulate the defining challenge of our time that cannot be met without anthroposophy. That challenge is the lure of artificial intelligence allied to materialist, threefold-less economy.

In Humanity’s Last Stand Perlas, too, builds on the epistemology and science foundations of Prof. Heusser, whose work has created inroads at leading universities to begin to realize the full force of Rudolf Steiner’s achievement for our time, before it can devolve into mere New Age fragments of itself. Heusser’s book, Anthroposophy

and Science, is groundbreaking—it is in the process of establishing authentic spiritual science in dialogue with leading scientists, researchers, and global leadership initiatives world-wide, and new research positions and fields at elite universities.

Fittingly, 2019 is also the year Prof.

Heusser’s introduction appears to Husemann’s seminal work, Form, Life and Consciousness. The book is a series of vivid realizations of the many things Prof. Heusser has elucidated in new light. The consonance and dynamic expressed through these three individuals is a clear sign that a long standing barrier has fallen.

*** Readers are encouraged to watch for updates at www.anthroposophy.org/calendar for possible special events with Nicanor Perlas and Peter Heusser on The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence and the Sciences in Relation to Experiencing the Spiritual Nature of Human Intelligence, during the first weekend of May, 2020.

References Armin J. Husemann, MD, The Harmony of the Human Body: Musical Principles in Human Physiology, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1994 Prof. Peter Heusser, MD, Anthroposophy and Science: An Introduction, Peter Lang, New York,2016 Friedwart Husemann on Friedrich Husemann and Gisbert Husemann: Rudolf F. Gedeke/ Hans Werner-Schroeder on Gottfried Husemann; in Forschungsstelle Kulturimpuls, http://biographien.kulturimpuls.org/ Heinz Herbert Schöffler, for Friedrich Husemann on Gottfried Husemann in Das Wirken Rudolf Steiner 1917-1925, Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach, 1964 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962, 1970 Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, Anchor Books, Garden City, NY, 1966 Frederick Amrine, Thresholds, Keryx, Ann Arbor, 2019 C.T. Roszell (croszell@wccnet.edu) teaches German at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is currently developing a multi-media German language course based on poetry, story-telling and guitar. In spring 2019 he spoke Forum3 in Stuttgart on “The Future Has Arrived Early: Risks and Opportunities in the Far West.”

winter-spring issue 2020 • 47

research & reviews

The New Story & The Great Work Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim, Andrew Angyal: Thomas Berry: A Biography. NY: Columbia University Press, 2019

review by Robert McDermott

lectures, given in Silesia, Germany, in 1924, and their rapid dissemination throughout the world as a guide to biodynamic gardening, a new agricultural development. While this teaching of Steiner already inspires many American projects, it needs to be more widely appreciated.1

Readers of being human who are at all interested in comparative religious traditions, or an approach to ecology rooted in a compelling cosmology and evolution of consciousness, or in an in-depth critique of Christianity by a deeply spiritual Catholic priest, will want to know about the life and ideas of Thomas Berry (1914-2009)— scholar, professor, author, lecturer, prophet, saint. From my attendance at Thomas’s informal seminar on Dante in 1954, when I was 15 and he was 40, until approximately 1980, I was one of Thomas’s unofficial students, a close friend, and academic collaborator. In 1964 Thomas officiated at my wedding to Ellen Dineen who for the next twenty years baked dozens of brownies for him.

In 1975 he arranged for me to replace him as Fulbright faculty at the Open University, UK. In the late 1970s it seemed to me that Thomas was not interested in Steiner and anthroposophy. Several decades later I came to realize that I had made a strategic mistake: Instead of telling him about Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom and his esoteric research on karma and rebirth, I should have told him about Steiner’s lectures on biodynamic farming and agriculture. While president of the Rudolf Steiner Institute in the 1980s I knew Marjorie Spock, Will Brinton, and Herbert Koepf, all internationally known experts on bio-dynamic farming, but I was not interested in their farms or in agriculture, including biodynamic. Forty years later I learned of Thomas’s interest in biodynamic agriculture from a letter that Thomas sent to his friend Sr. Adrian Hoefstetter, OP. In 2007, Sr. Adrian sent to Richard Tarnas (whose Passion of the Western Mind had influenced her own research on Aristotle and Aquinas) this paragraph that Thomas had sent to her.

As Thomas Berry is one of the truly prophetic voices sounding an alarm concerning the causes of ecological devastation as well as possible solutions, his recommendation of biodynamic agriculture is significant. Thomas’s writings, especially The Dream of the Earth (1988), The Great Work (1999), and with Brian Thomas Swimme, The Universe Story (1992), have exercised a deep influence on ecologists with a spiritual interest, including Leonardo Boff (author of Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor), who in turn influenced Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home.2 A person reading this review who might wonder how to learn more about Thomas Berry need look no further than the recently published biography under review. With photos, quoted passages, and plentiful tributes, this book offers a valuable account of Thomas’s evolution from a professor of comparative religion to a self-described “geologian” known throughout the world. This biography tells the story of how Thomas evolved and why his thought is so important in the face of ecological devastation—and why in 1993 CIIS awarded Thomas Berry an honorary doctorate.

Born to a large, prosperous Catholic family on the edge of Greensboro, North Carolina, Thomas entered the Passionist seminary at age 14. The Passionist order of priests are called to a reverence for the passion of Christ.

Ironically, Thomas’s primary theological contribution would be a refocus from the crucifixion of Christ to His creativity, or from salvation/redemption theology to

It became clear to Steiner that a more comprehensive understanding of Earth economy, as well as a more effective style of cultivating the land, was needed. This insight led to his remarkable series of eight agricultural

1 Correspondence from Thomas Berry to Adrian M. Hofstetter, OP, to Richard Tarnas, 2007.

2 This chain of influences has been confirmed by Sean Kelly, CIIS professor and integral ecologist.

48 • being human

creation theology. A brilliant student, Thomas read voraciously, learned a half dozen languages, studied all of the major religious traditions, and in service of ecology expressed the need for mutually enhancing human-Earth relations. As this rich and insightful biography shows, Thomas was wonderfully supported by many colleagues who recognized his prophetic genius. Perhaps foremost was Wm. Theodore (Ted) de Bary, professor of Asian Studies and for some years provost of Columbia University who was the primary force behind the publication of books for the study of Asian civilizations as well as the director of the monthly Columbia Seminar on Oriental Thought and Religion which Thomas (and I) attended.

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, husband and wife professors at Yale University and creators of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology (FORE), are the primary guarantors of Thomas’s legacy. Brian Thomas Swimme, my colleague at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) since 1990, and the co-author with Thomas of The Universe Story, is the second name in the increasingly influential Berry-Swimme worldview. Journey of the Universe, an influential film and book by Swimme, Tucker, and Grim, recounts the evolution of consciousness based on Thomas’s vision from the Big Bang to the ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction. In 2005 CIIS awarded John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker an honorary degree. Matthew Fox, exponent of Creation Spirituality in more than twenty volumes, and Drew Dellinger, celebrated cosmic poet, also advance the vision of Thomas Berry.

Beginning in 1978 with his influential essay, “The New Story,”3 Thomas has been known primarily as an ecological thinker, a Cassandra warning against the destruction of Earth. The first half of his career as a scholar of comparative religion is crucial for his ecological vision.

Following his dissertation on Giambattista Vico’s philosophy of history, Thomas studied the sacred texts and cultural history of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and China. The research that led to his first two books, Buddhism (1967) and Religions of India: Hinduism, Yoga, and Buddhism (1971), enabled Thomas to develop a truly global perspective free of Christian exclusivism and modern western exceptionalism. If one knows Augustine’s City of God and Thomas Aquinas’s Summa it is possible to detect their influence on Thomas’s thought but his writings are almost entirely free of Christian claims and limitations. This biography shows the many creative ways

that Thomas’s ecological analysis and proposed solutions include Confucian ideals and the profound relation to nature celebrated in shamanic/indigenous traditions.

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing through his lengthy, productive career, Thomas was one of the foremost exponents of the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, SJ (1881-1955). With an eye on the need both to deepen humanism and to show the presence of divinity in nature, Thomas celebrated Teilhard’s evolutionary vision which he complemented (and to some extent corrected) by Confucian and indigenous spirituality. His one publication on Teilhard is critical of Teilhard’s optimistic faith in industrial and technological progress and his failure to see the harm to Earth already in evidence during Teilhard’s lifetime. As Thomas wrote:

3 “The New Story,” in Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco, Sierra Club, 1988).

4 Thomas Berry, “Teilhard in the Ecological Age,” in Arthur Fabel and Donald St. John, eds., Teilhard in the 21st Century (NY: Orbis Books, 2003), 73.

Neither Teilhard nor his opponents seem to have realized that the greatest challenge to his work would derive from the planetary disturbance consequent on the ideas of progress that were then being proposed throughout Western society. They could not see that the glory of the human was becoming the desolation of the Earth or that the desolation of the Earth was becoming the destiny of the human.4

Thomas steers a middle course between a scientific humanism that regards the cosmos as dead and a Christian theism that fosters a separation of God and creation.

Thomas suffered opposition to his religious views but less severe than Teilhard who was forbidden to publish his theological writings during his lifetime. Teilhard famously lost a series of appeals to the Vatican and his Jesuit superiors; in his response to the attempted restrictions on him by his Passionist superiors Thomas repeatedly prevailed. Neither Teilhard nor Thomas was as opposed as Galileo, but the comparison comes to mind.

Students of Thomas’s writings are fond of quoting two phrases, one sentence, and a biographical reference, each of which invites an explanation: First, “The New Story” refers to Thomas’s conviction, based on deep personal experience, that the Universe is revealing itself through every species. Because humans are the only selfreflective species, they have a special role in the self-revelation of the Universe from the “primordial flaring forth” to the present and into the future. Second, “The Great Work” refers to that same ideal collaboration of human and Earth and the four institutions that in Thomas’s view

winter-spring issue 2020 • 49

research & reviews are thwarting its advance: corporations (especially due to unregulated capitalism), governments, religious institutions (especially dimensions of Abrahamic religions that focus on the divine at the expense of Earth), and universities. The Great Work (1998) concludes with Thomas’s recommendation of four wisdoms: indigenous, women, “urban classical literate traditions,” and “scientific knowledge [which] has advanced with amazing success ever since the sixteenth century.”5 Third, Thomas’s often-quoted sentence, “the universe is a communion of subjects,”6 refers to his compelling case for interiority and subjectivity of all components and all relationships. The plundering of Earth has followed the objectification and emptying of meaning that accompanied modern western science since Bacon, Descartes, and Newton. As Thomas argues, a viable future will need to replace both flatland science and religious transcendence in favor of numinous dimensions of Cosmos, Earth, humanity, and nature. Fourth, followers of Thomas often refer to his experience at age nine of a meadow across a creek to which he attributed a lasting importance in his life. As he recounted years later, “I seem to come back to 6 The Great Work (NY: Crown/Bell Tower, 1999), 177. Thomas Berry, “Teilhard in the Ecological Age,” in Arthur Fabel and Donald St. John, eds., Teilhard in the 21st Century (NY: Orbis Books, 2003), 73. “The Meadow Across the Creek,” in The Great Work, 16.

this moment and the impact it has had on my feeling for what is real and worthwhile in life.” Thomas wrote: This early experience, it seems, has become normative for me throughout the entire range of my thinking.

Whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good; whatever opposes this meadow or negates it is not good. My life orientation is that simple. It is also that pervasive. It applies in economics and political orientation as well as in education and religion.7

Returning to my unsuccessful conversation with Thomas in the late 1970s and my gradual (and always grateful) shift from Thomas as my primary mentor to anthroposophical teachers and friends, this passage also suggests, at least retrospectively, an explanation for why, in the 1980s and 1990s, I saw less of Thomas as I committed to the study of anthroposophy and administration of anthroposophical institutions. While single terms for profound mentors can be misleading, if not taken as a limit they can also be helpful. Hence, I tend to think of Thomas as a multi-religious humanist, Teilhard as a Roman Catholic scientist and mystic, and Steiner as a Christian esotericist.

Thomas brought to his task a detailed appreciation of the complementarity of many religions and wisdom traditions, all of which in diverse ways supported and extended his reverence for a meadow across a creek. Steiner researched and reported on many esoteric ways to know the influence of high spiritual beings on individuals and cultures, on past, present, and future. As Steiner would not want to build an ethics on a meadow across a creek, Thomas would not seriously consider the idea of Buddha spiritually attending the Nativity of Jesus. Yet, as I have known for approximately five decades, the prophetic ecological vision of Thomas Berry and the esoteric teachings of Rudolf Steiner are wonderfully complementary. It is a pleasure to recommend Thomas Berry and this book that describes him and his important ideas with insight and grace.

7 Ibid., 13.

Robert McDermott is president emeritus of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and CIIS professor of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He is the editor of The New Essential Steiner (2009). His Steiner and Kindred Spirits (2015) includes approximately thirty pages on Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry. His The Essential Steiner appeared in 1984; he served as President, New York Center for Anthroposophy; President, Rudolf Steiner [summer] Institute; board member, Steinerbooks; and member of Eastern Regional and General Councils of the Anthroposophical Society in America.

50 • being human

Two Poems

Heights and Depths

Of Higher Knowledge

Percepts are the depths, And their corresponding ideas, Or concepts, the heights.

Imaginations and Inspirations Are ideas clothed, respectively, In Images and Tones, but Intuitions Are the naked ideas themselves, While physical percepts are, As it were, ideas buried in matter.

The darker and deeper The abyss of perception, The higher and lighter The heavens of conception.

John Urban (johnurb@sbcglobal.net), is a longtime member living in California.

The ASA invites you to join the

Michael Support Circle

our major donor circle. THANK YOU to the 51 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.

Saint George Slays the Dragon, by Laura James

Anthroposophical Society of Cape Ann Anthroposophy NYC Association of Waldorf Schools of North America Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training Biodynamic Association Camphill 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 RSF Social Finance Rudolf Steiner College Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Foundation Shining Mountain Waldorf School

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 vitality—the basis for increased membership, new learning opportunities, and greater impact in the world.

To learn more about how you can support the strength and sustainability of our movement, contact Deb at deb@anthroposophy.org winter-spring issue 2020 • 51

news for members & friends

of the Anthroposophical Society in America

Sharing the Holy Nights with the World

by Laura Scappaticci Each night from December 24 to January 4, Angela Foster, Hazel Archer-Ginsberg and I hosted a one hour online gathering called “May Human Beings Hear It!” focused on an exploration of the Holy Nights. We opened each night by lighting a candle and reading a Rudolf Steiner passage on love (at right), and closed with the rhythms of the Foundation Stone Meditation.

We asked branches and members to offer a sharing each night, and twelve groups of volunteers said yes. The offerings ranged widely in content. After the content was shared, we used our technology (Zoom.us) to break the participants into small sharing groups where they had about 10 minutes to say hello and share anything that resonated with them from the content. We then came back and briefly shared as a large group.

There are two parts of this experience that I am still quite amazed by. First, nearly 900 people registered, and there were almost 100 people on the live calls each and every night. There were people from North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand on the calls. January 1 was hosted by two young people, Tess Parker and Abigail Dancey. It was focused on healing the earth. You can check it out, along with all of the other wonderful presentations, at our page with all the recordings: www.anthroposophy.org/holynights Second, there was what I experienced as an unprecedented openness and a true sense of community. There were people of all generations with varying perspectives and levels of anthroposophical understanding, and yet beautiful connections were created each night.

We feel that this has opened up a great potential for community building, and national and global con-

52 • being human

nection. We are looking forward to trying this format again soon. Send your online gathering ideas to community@anthroposophy.org

Many thanks to all of you who joined us!

Laura Scappaticci (laura@anthroposophy.org) is the ASA Director of Programs.

What is it really that we should write in our hearts — the feeling that we may have on this Christmas night?

In this Christmas night there should pour into our hearts the fundamental human feeling of love the fundamental feeling that says: Compared with all other forces and powers and treasures of the world, the treasures and the power and the force of love are the greatest, the most intense, the most powerful.

There should pour into our hearts, into our souls, the feeling that: Wisdom is a great thing — that love is still greater; Might is a great thing — that love is yet greater.

And this feeling of the power and force and strength of love should pour into our hearts so strongly that from this Christmas night something may overflow into all our feelings during the rest of the year, So that we may truthfully say at all times: We must really be ashamed, if in any hour of the year we do anything that cannot hold good when the spirit gazes into that night in which we would pour the all-power of love into our hearts.

May it be possible for the days and the hours of the year to pass in such a way that we need not be ashamed of them in the light of the feeling that we would pour into our souls on Christmas night!

“Thoughts On Christmas Eve” Berlin, 24th of December, 1912 Rudolf Steiner

A Wonderful Gathering in Georgia

by Tess Parker Those present at the annual meeting (AGM) this year in Decatur, Georgia, know that it was the kind of gathering that will long live in the spirits of those in attendance, unfolding for weeks and months to come. It was the kind of gathering that left one astonished in the depths, in awe of unrehearsed wisdom, and surprised at each fresh encounter.

Perhaps it was because this particular event was anchored by the guiding presence of three remarkable people, three selfless and evolutionary teachers. Rudolf Steiner, Martin Luther King Jr. and Marjorie Spock informed the planning and organizing process to the point where their presence was woven into the fabric of the event. Perhaps it was also within the quality of the prepared hearts and minds, that arrived with enough space to allow deeper realities to unfold in a collective space. Participant Jordan Walker reflected on this space as “an experience of self-aware connection: presence itself given the space to ‘speak’ with us in intimate conversation.”

The theme, “Facing Each Other: Freedom, Responsibility and Love,” unfolded with both gravity and levity. Participants were able to co-create a unique social sphere, one that could allow for many paradoxical truths to be revealed and have space to be understood and reflected upon together. Taking place in a community center in Georgia, one Whatever course events may be could feel the friendliness and generosity taking externally, however chaotic of the surrounding local environment. all outer happenings may become, One could sense that the form in which still at the same time we have in we were gathering was not exclusive or the present and the near future separate from normal, everyday life. the struggle of the human being.... the struggle of the human being to A song trail in the Decatur Cemwin through to an experience of the etery, led by Marianne Fieber and Jolie impulse for freedom.

Luba at sunrise Friday morning, inau— Rudolf Steiner, How Can Humanity gurated the mood of reverence and re Find the Christ Again? spect for the past, for the ancestors, for December 28, 1918 the mysterious present.

Later that day, Christian Community priest Patrick Kennedy opened the conference with a keynote, “Love and Knowledge—How Practicing Spiritual Science Means Becoming Truly Social.” He spoke to an aspect of our theme and work together: Light, when it enters the world, lets the world appear, but itself remains invisible. Water has no form of its own, but when poured into whatever form it’s poured into, it takes on that form. Both light and water, reveal to us that their inner spiritual nature is selflessness become matter. Water does not have any form itself. It says to the puddle, “What are you like?” It says to the glass, “This is an interesting form.” It flows into the form of the other.

Light does not look at itself, that’s a different kind of light. Light in its spiritual nature, reveals the other. It says, “Who are you?” And the world reveals what it is. In the spiritual world, darkness is dispelled by an inflowing light. It is a weaving, flowing ether light, that flows into the other. winter-spring issue 2020 • 53

Patti Smith and Chris Burke led meaningful biography dyads throughout the weekend, helping to uncover pivotal moments in one’s biography through the listening chalice of the other. Our second keynote conversation with Andrea De La Cruz, a remarkable leader within the youth section at the Goetheanum, expressed with precise insight the qualities needed to renew the spirit at the center of anthroposophy. She reflects on her time at the conference: I feel like I came to meet Columbia in each one of you, what a privilege! This reverberance utters still within, and my honest response to it is “thank you”... I am re-enlivened to continue my work—our work— together in freedom, wherever we are in the world.

At the heart of the weekend was a meaningful exploration into the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his impact on our understanding of engaged anthroposophy, embodied activism, and facing the social, economic, and political struggles of our day. John Schuchardt unraveled Injustice anywhere is a threat to the systemic injustices at play in our justice everywhere. We are caught in current socio-political climate, link- an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. ing Steiner to King with utmost clarWhatever affects one directly, affects ity. Shortly thereafter, Linda Brooks all indirectly. —Martin Luther King, Jr. Cooper organized a community read- Letter From a Birmingham Jail ing of King’s famous “Mountaintop” April 16, 1963 speech. It was powerful to hear a myriad of voices reading Dr. King’s words, as well as the audience receiving this wisdom as if it were uttered for the first time. Of this experience she writes: The offering of this speech, presented a deep insight into what is needed in our community, in our world and how we must prepare our whole self with the knowledge and spiritual prowess necessary to ensure that love, peace and strength, including social justice is included in the world. We can see in our time how humanity is travelling a very dangerous path, isolating oneself, as well as isolating humans from each other. We disregard other humans who don’t look like us, who don’t fit our definition of “good” people…. It is our duty as students of Dr. Steiner, anthroposophists, to lead the way in how to develop a way of thinking that can lead to a change in men’s hearts....

We recognize the error and are facing it. We have the strength, courage, and love to bring to the world the power of Love.”

More workshops throughout the weekend significantly touched on the deeper aspects of community and of meeting one another. Our final day culminated in a powerful rendering of Anthroposophia, with Carrie Schuchardt’s deeply felt sharing of her biography and work with refugee children with the House of Peace, as well as her ongoing personal study of the divine feminine. The conference closed with the group speaking the Foundation Stone together, a reverent and poignant way to honor our time together. Conference presenter and professor Joaquin Munoz reflects: 54 • being human

I believe there is still so much that I have to learn, and so much that I want to contribute to the mission that I encountered in Atlanta. To live, and enliven the legacy of those seeking justice and recognition of mutual humanity, and a love of the beautiful differences we all bring forth. And to do this with humility and love.

We are looking forward to gathering together in the spirit of community, of anthroposophy, and in service to the world, next year in Portland, Oregon. Please come!

Tess Parker is the ASA Programs Assistant since 2018; she supports ASA conferences, online education, and social media, and contributes to the work of the Youth Section.

At www.anthroposophy.org/webinars you can find the recordings of both conference keynote speeches.

There is only one sure hope, and it has not been tried: To base both our understanding and our practice on esoterics. For esoterics alone makes it possible to see human beings whole, to discover them in their heavenly as well as in their earthly aspect, and, in the light of that total picture, to recognize what makes them worthy of esteem and love.

—Marjorie Spock, Group Moral Artistry, 1983

Karma Work in the Central Region

by Marianne Fieber The Central Regional Council has continued to host and facilitate a monthly zoom study group with an average of 15-20 members participating on a regular basis. We are working through the collection of lectures under the title of The Karma of Anthroposophy: Rudolf Steiner, the Anthroposophical Society and the Tasks of its Members. Our process invites participation by having different sections of the lecture assigned to 5-6 members who prepare and present the material found in their part. Conversation, questions, and discussion of the ideas and themes follow before we assign the next lecture segments. This study has been enlivening for all and serves those members who live in areas far from a group or branch yet long to connect and study with others.

Out of this karmic study we are excited to be collaborating with the Anthroposophic Association for Psychology on an Easter conference in Chicago, April 9 – 12, 2020. Members of the CRC have been work-

ing with Dr. Roberta Nelson, Dr. David Tressemer, and James Dyson, MD, to imaging a rich and engaging weekend. More information on Karma and Anthroposophic Psychology can be found on the Central Region webpage. The webpage is also a wonderful resource for papers and recordings from previous study series facilitated in our region. Please visit: anthroposophy.org/centralregion

The CRC hosted the January 6th Holy Nights offering organized by the Anthroposophical Society. A staged reading out of the imaginations surrounding the Three Kings was presented.

CRC members are Marianne Fieber, Libertyville, IL; Hazel Archer Ginsberg, Chicago, IL; Lisa Dalton, Dallas/Fort Worth, TX; Alberto Loya, Ann Arbor, MI; David Howerton, St. Louis, MO. winter-spring issue 2020 • 55

Light & Water

by Deb Abrahams-Dematte Recently, I was invited on a road trip, and I want to tell you about this southern journey. The unexpectedness of it and the sweetness, the land and the water, and the multiple opportunities to be together with people striving out of anthroposophy, to visit historical sites of pain and violence, and to do what we can in the moment and going forward to heal the wounds of our society with love.

I was just coming down from the inspiration and excitement of the annual conference in Atlanta, feeling connected and strong about my work and our work of bringing anthroposophy more deeply into the world. I had been feeling despair as I consider the violence and hatred that seems to permeate our culture now more than ever. But what could I do as an individual? Each day I work to stay connected and moving forward, creating opportunities for peace and understanding in my own life and beyond.

I feel incredibly grateful that my work with the ASA allows me the opportunity to pursue these deep and lifelong goals. Where is the meaning? What can we do? How can we support one another?

And then, an unexpected phone call from Angela Foster in Atlanta, GA. She and Hazel Archer Ginsberg are about to embark on a southern tour, talking about St Martin, and Martin Luther King, All-Souls Day, the planets and stars, the Sophia wisdom, and so much more.

They know it’s short notice, but could I join them? Wow! A wonderful surprise and opportunity, and a chance to deepen relationships with our members in that part of the country. Yes! During my time “on tour” I traveled from Atlanta through Alabama and into Tennessee. I participated in a Martinmas / All Souls evening at the Martin Clinic in Decatur, GA. I also attended a vibrant and well-attended presentation and lunch event on working with the dead held in Auburn, AL, and a delicious and interesting dinner with members in Nashville, TN. We also visited some sacred places: Helen Keller’s birthplace; Memphis, where Dr. King was killed; the Mississippi River; and others.

There we meditated and set intentions and had profound conversations with the people we met. And in between all of that, the three of us studied, wrote and talked, ate, laughed, and shared our dreams about a better world and how we could contribute toward making that happen.

This healing and connecting is my work and my journey, 56 • being human

and I’m so grateful to share it with you. How are you living into your relationship with anthroposophy?

Leaving a Legacy of Will We are deeply grateful to the estate of Robert S. Miller for a recent bequest. His intention and generous care helps bring the gifts of anthroposophy into the future. Robert lived in Canada, and had a deep connection with Ernst Katz many years ago. On Christmas Day 2017 he crossed the threshold at the age of 86.

Legacy giving, including bequests and other types of deferred gifts, is a far-reaching and meaningful way to support the work of the Society beyond a person’s current giving capacity. And the magic of this Circle is that it can only continue to grow, no matter which side of the threshold you are on. Contact me if you’d like further information about legacy giving.

Appeal Update Our 2019 end of year appeal, Together We Can Change the World, raised nearly $37,000 in operating support toward achieving the mission of the Anthroposophical Society in America. Thank you to the 271 individuals who made gifts this year. Your unrestricted gifts are essential to the operation of the Anthroposophical Society in America. Together, we can share Rudolf Steiner’s deep insights, along with expanding resources for learning and human connection, to a world that needs these ideas and practices now more than ever. On behalf of all of us at ASA, we thank you for your generous support.

Thank you for your interest in the Anthroposophical Society in America, and for your care for anthroposophy in the world.

Deb Abrahams-Dematte (deb@anthroposophy.org) is ASA Director of Development

New Council Members; Ann Arbor Staff Three “at large” members have joined the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America over the past two years.

Nathaniel Williams, who also serves as Secretary, is originally from the Southeastern United States. He studied visual art and anthroposophy at the neueKUNSTschule in Basel, Switzerland, worked in marionette-theater briefly, and then returned to the USA. He has worked as an independent artist (visual and performing) and an educator since. In 2008, he co-founded Free Columbia, a cultural initiative in Columbia County, New York. He was an active member of Think OutWord, the peer-led training in Social-Threefolding. He lives in Columbia County and is completing a PhD in Political Theory at the University at Albany (SUNY). His research is on how education and culture can support, or oppose, our facing of current social and ecological challenges. In the Fall of 2020 he is initiating the M.C. Richards Program with a circle of colleagues, where he is putting these ideas to work. (For more on that program see the initiative! section.)

Helen-Ann Ireland began exploring spiritual ideas in high school when she wrote a paper on Buddha and Christ. After meandering through some Eastern pathways and traveling, she met anthroposophy in Australia when she became interested in educating and raising children in a wholistic way.

Through her work as a class teacher in Honolulu and then Pine Hill in New Hampshire, she continued to study and deepen her interest in Steiner’s works. For seven years, she was the Vice-Chair of the Hawai’ian Society and became a member of the First Class there in 1992. After graduating her second class of children at Pine Hill in 2009, she pursued doctoral studies at UMass Amherst and coauthored a book, Assessment for Learning in Waldorf Classrooms. Having been conferred her title in May 2018, she is currently working as a post doc fellow at UMass Amherst and will continue as a lecturer coordinating the Elemen-

tary Educator Master’s Degree program and teaching undergraduates about human development. At the same time she entered her doctoral program, she was appointed as a reader for the First Class, School of Spiritual Science, in February 2011 for Wilton, NH. Hannah Schwartz is one of the co-founders of Heartbeet Lifesharing. She serves as the community’s executive director, drawing on her lifelong experience with social therapy and her commitment to bringing the lifesharing philosophy to community-based care for adults with developmental disabilities in Vermont. Hannah was born and raised in Camphill Village/Kimberton Hills in Pennsylvania, a community dedicated to lifesharing with adults with disabilities. She pursued her college education in the field of health and care-giving, taking time off to participate in a Camphill community-based training course in care for adults with disabilities in Copake, New York and to work for eight months in a residential program for severely disabled adults, L’Amitié in Canada. Once back in the U.S., she balanced her studies with the needs of her own growing family, receiving her Bachelors Degree in Women’s Studies and Health Education from Goddard College in 1999. she completed her Master’s in Education at Antioch New England (MEd). As executive director of Heartbeet, she weaves together the unique and often incomplete histories of each of the adults under her care, whose lives are often not well documented, so that a care plan can be tailored to their specific biographies. She also works to create advocacy circles for each of Heartbeet’s adults with disabilities, including friends, family and members of the community who have found a connection to Heartbeet.

The friendly voices in Ann Arbor In the last issue we shared brief biographies of three assistants working in development (Diane Carlen), programs (Tess Parker), and finance (Eddie Lederman). The work of Kathy Serafin, Director of the Anthroposophical Prison Outreach, was highlighted in an article on APO’s twenty years of service. The two other staff members best known to members were mentioned, but we did not consider that their “introductions” would have been more winter-spring issue 2020 • 57

than a decade ago. So here are the two diligent people who answer your calls and inquiries and solve problems.

Cynthia Chelius has worked in the Society office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for 16 years. She has had the pleasure of communicating with hundreds of members over the years, and recognizes the names of almost every member. Her experience in the office has included member services, bookkeeping and accounting support, copyediting Society print materials (including being human), answering phone and email queries and requests, managing the Rudolf Steiner House, and almost any other thing which comes up in a busy, diverse work environment. Cynthia had a parallel career at the Ann Arbor District Library, from where she retired in December 2018, after 36 years.

She spends every spare minute in her garden from April to November, and then spends the winter reading, cooking, and practicing Chopin on the piano.

Linda Leonard writes: “I came to the Society through a temp agency and was hired as the receptionist. My initial feeling when I arrived at the Rudolf Steiner House was ‘this is where I am meant to be.’ Fourteen years later, here I remain. Over the years, my role has changed and grown into my current position as not only the bookkeeper but as the database administrator. It is my role to provide support to all users, members and colleagues in various ways. I most enjoy the interaction with our members, I have some very strong connections to ones I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting but am always glad to hear from. I am a native Michigander, raised on a farm with horses, pigs and cows. Always tended a huge garden and did lots of canning in the late summers with my Mother and Grandmother. I enjoy canning, cooking, gardening and spending time with my family and my faithful companion beagle/basset hound Toby.”

Youth Section Worldwide: Building Bridges beyond Borders

by Johannes Kronenberg It is astonishing to have witnessed the powerful gathering of the Youth Section Worldwide movement last June. About fifty Youth Section representatives from nineteen countries came together in Dornach and shared about their work and youth living in the 21st century.

We started with our dreams, visions and what wants to come from the future. Afterwards we worked with observations in the present time and how we work and live with them. Building bridges between the future in becoming and todays reality was the final step. The urgency but also joy of youth gatherings in this open and free space was embarked by the content and results of this work. The tremendous confrontation with daily feelings of loneliness in a world full of ‘social’ networks, fear and high pressure came to the surface. But also, the will to start new social action initiatives like powerful places such as Elderberries Threefold Café and community in Los Angeles or Free Colombia and their M.C. Richards Program in New York (starting September 2020) were present and take forward. Next to this a big group from Georgia was present with specific questions concerning the characteristics of the task of our 58 • being human

generation and how to work with is concretely.

The Youth Section Worldwide seems to be situated in a momentum: a lot of young people take responsibility and express their commitment to connect both to the impulse of the Goetheanum and share the endeavor to bring fruitful inspiration into action. There is a shared aim characterized by a wide range of diverse ways of working and dealing with the youth work. The next Youth Section Worldwide Gathering will be held in 2021.

Johannes Kronenberg is a co-worker of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum in Switzerland.

Questions of Courage 2019 Youth Gathering in Spring Valley, NY Last August, in the height of summer heat, humidity and potent soul-forming, about 100 young individuals met in Spring Valley, New York, to engage with and marinate in the theme: Courage. This particular youth conference, “Questions of Courage,” was hopefully the first of regularly held youth conferences, working with the theme of courage from new angles. Organizers are already working to develop a conference with a focus on the earth: climate change, as well as social and inner change.

Those who participated in 2019 felt a rare and valuable opportunity to practice courage in an open-armed community, to develop a deeper understanding of this much needed virtue. Let’s hear from two participants to gain a glimpse into the substance generated.

— Tess Parker

Odin Esty During my stay, I began to consider Courage to humans—Heart-age—as something like clay to a dedicated sculptor or yarn to a dedicated weaver. It is the material of action. How, then, may we approach such a concept?

Humans are beings who move through the will, shaping and manipulating. How can we draw something from the realm of ideals and make it human? What is the way to make courage be in us, the place where it belongs?

Karen Walton Given I’m easily disoriented, overexcited, and confused, traveling on a combination of trains, buses and other public transport for a five day stay in New York to participate in a jam-packed conference with a hundred of my peers was not a logical act. But walk with me for a second. In my life, hope doesn’t always feel logical—nor courage. What about you?

Suffice to say there was certainly a lot of my diving in (literally, into the Threefold pond) and out of proceedings over the course of our four days together. But despite my frequent swim, walk, and think breaks, I found the elements in which I could engage, much to my surprise, presented a vibrant and coherent whole: from the first morning when we stood up and sang and I first heard the melody of courage, to the many moments after as I watched people step into the space, on stage or otherwise,

and speak their truth. It was mentioned in our closing circle that the theme “courage” was purposefully woven in, not dictated.

Through side long tears, relationships, rivers, and melancholy walks in between the various re-entries to the humid auditorium, to listen, I could hear, see, and experience this word. The miniature epiphanies were so abundant, simple, fast. Andrea De La Cruz (youth section leader from the Goetheanum and keynote speaker) asking her audience if she could stand closer to them, rather than on stage, then compromising by raising herself up on a step... Turning to a partner who would be a friend to share how 2030 should be. Meeting a vibrant young woman who told me that she raised caterpillars like those on my shirt. Listening to language and feeling that changed and grew in individuals, one day to the next, and wondering if all the different languages, ways of decorating English, would all come out, day after day, to mean the same thing. The same one word.

Back home in my room surrounded by the quiet of twenty six years of memories, after trying to thread all of these moments together…maybe to keep them, maybe to let them go, I realize that not once, not during any interaction, at any time, whether searching for a missing backpack or departing early from a workshop, did I ever feel judged for how I was.

What could possibly be more courageous than that?

I never could have had any idea how difficult my life was going to be. Perhaps, after all these years, what I need most is hope. And seeing these beautiful people sharing their voices, songs, hearts, and believing in the art of listening to young people, listening for a possibility, an inkling of a dream that may as of yet be uncovered, has given me a new promise. Golden like the feather stem I was gifted on my walk from the fellowship: by facing the truth with striving… winter-spring issue 2020 • 59

New Members Anthroposophical Society in America, 6/6/2019 to 1/21/2020 Aaron Abell, Salt Lake City UT Mark Aaron, Lawrence KS Michele H Andre, New Orleans LA John C Armanini, Washington DC Neelima Julia Baird, Albany NY Sonia E. Barros, N Babylon NY Elizabeth Bavaria, Boca Raton FL Laura Beatty, Putney VT Erik Bell, Nevada City CA Vincenza Bonarelli, Charlottesville VA Robert Bryant, Chicago IL Jonathan S Bucki, Saint Paul MN Genevieve T Buckley, Orangevale CA Michelle L Carter, Atlantic Beach FL Justin W Clarke, Vallejo CA Daniel J Clifton, Charlotte NC Carole Cressman, Ribera NM Faith Elizabeth Danneil, Milwaukee WI Maria de Ris, Foxborough MA Stefano Di Concetto, Stillwater OK Brian Drury, McLean VA David Eichler, Durham ME Erin Kathleen Erkelens, Calais VT Jan Jacob Erkelens, Calais VT Odin David Esty, Chatham NY Fiona Fairty, Lansing MI Mary E FitzPatrick, Greenfield NH Theodore Flittner, Costa Mesa CA Ezekiel Floro, Capitola CA Andreas F. Fontein, Copake NY Daniel T Foster, Keene NH Kenneth M Freeman, Mountain Home AR Ryan Freeman, Brooklyn NY Michaela M Gerhartz, Lithonia GA Sebastian Gocan, Philadelphia PA Jennifer K Goodman, Wayland MA Zdenka Gottwaldova, Wynnewood PA Laura Guitian, Baltimore MD Max M Gunther, San Francisco CA Linda Halcon, Minneapolis MN Peter F Hansen, Glendale WI Nathan B Hatfield, St Louis Park MN Hayley Kay Haynes, Tomball TX Renata Heberton, Lakewood CO

60 • being human

Kristin Hoffmann, Chicago IL Megan E Hubbuch, Chapel Hill NC Sue Ingles, Culver City CA Sayo Iseri, Fair Oaks CA Lisa Johnson, Ann Arbor MI Linda Kemp, Richardson TX Kayla N Kerstetter, Auburn CA Scott Kilian, La Mesa CA Tatyana Kissin, West Hempstead NY Kevin R Kossi, New York NY Michele LaCroix, Great Barrington MA Martin Alphonsus Lane, Cty Cork Eire Tiffany A Laton, Saratoga CA Jessica Leaf, Escondido CA Peter Lema, Miami FL Ivette Lenard, West Nyack NY Jerry Lindsey, Occidental CA Kathy Lofton, Viroqua WI Mary Katherine Lokken, Bellingham WA Ellen P MacBain, Basking Ridge NJ Teresa Majewska, Warren MI Alexander Marshall, Loganville GA Maria Martinez, Napa CA Douglas Meade, College Park MD Amber Melendy, Gainesville FL Mark Merritt, Lake Orion MI Jean Miller, Cleveland Heights OH Megan Mills Hoffman, Derby NY Luzdaris Morales, San Juan PR Mario D Morales, Houston TX Elizabeth C Nachstein, Bronx NY Bonnie Nack, Temecula CA Logan Nance, Fort Collins CO Gabrielle M Nembhard, Easton PA Alyssa Nemes, Beverly MA Jenny E Nielson, Portland OR Brita Nordgren, Weaverville NC Sarah EH Northrip, No. Hollywood CA Cynthia D Oliva, Huntingdon Valley PA Máire Osborne, Medford OR Nadege Maria Fabienne Ott, Copake NY Thomas Ottoman, Tecumseh MO Melody Owens, Costa Mesa CA Dana Palermo, Avondale Estates GA

Bonnie Pearce, Northville MI Sheila F Pick, Lee MA Sharon B Price, Asheville NC Maria Fernanda Pulido Duarte, Albanay CA Paul Ratte, Viroqua WI Shirley Reischman, Cincinnati OH Lydia Reynolds-Royer, Windsor ON Laurie Rhody, Hubertus WI Mark Riccio, Honolulu HI Sergio Rico, Chatham NY Angelika Ritscher, Montvale NJ Ian W Robb, Hillsdale NY Melissa Robins Solvejg Rogers, Palmer AK Vladimir Sankewitsch, High Point NC Kelly Saran, Ann Arbor MI Carolanne Sargavakian, Bedford NH Alison Slavin, Middleburg VA Deirdre Burns Somers, Rockville Ctr NY Jaclyn M Stetson, Jacksonville Beach FL Sheldon Stoff, Hicksville NY Kelsy Stone, Atlanta GA Laura Storey, Toronto ON Martin B Summer, Hillsdale NY Vilmos Thomazy, Houston TX Conley Ross Thurman, Stephenville TX Magdalena Toran, Conway MA Julia Toro Schubert, Ferndale MI Petrus Johannes Van Leeuwen, Fort Collins CO Merel Visse, Morris Plains NJ Tamara A Visser, Gilsum NH Karen Walton, Phillipston MA Stacie E Warren, Colorado Springs CO Elizabeth Webber, Portland OR Everard W Wentworth, Pohoa HI Mary Lynn White, Spruce Pine NC Paula Williams, Shokan NY Leslie W Woolverton, Silver Spring MD Woodrow Allen Wyers, Florence AL Andrea Zeno, Akron OH

Louis John Aventuro

April 19, 1934 – October 26, 2019

by Michael Ronall Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come. ~ Tagore

Since leaving Spring Valley for Hamburg three years ago, I have thought a lot about Judith and Lou Aventuro. I had of course seen and admired how Judith’s caring for, and eventually helping as needed to guide Lou, steadily intensified as he began gradually—and as was his style, gently—to slip away from us; the picture of Judith’s companionship to Lou was always comforting, as I was unable to imagine how he would have fared without her at his side.

Gentle is certainly the first descriptor that would come to mind if anyone were to ask me to characterize Lou, but what was unusual in him was the combination of that gentleness with the clear focus that he seemed to bring to bear on anything that, and especially on anyone whom, he encountered. When I think of his elegant pairing of these two moral qualities, I realize that he also joined them to shape the aptitude that he brought to his professional activity, in that a healer of another’s vision—of an-

other’s focused outlook—needs to approach his neighbor’s sensitivities with restraint and profound respect in order to gain sufficient trust over a sufferer’s protective reflexes. Persuading a soul to subject the vulnerability of one’s most cherished sense-organs to the judgment and skill of a therapeutic practitioner is a battle that only focused gentleness can win, and it was an endeavor in which Lou gallantly excelled.

An accessible, representative point of reference for the most telling universal human experiences can often be found among the optically acute ancient Greeks. Within that race, it could seem that easily the most paradigmatic ancient Greek, Aristotle, who was always seeking the incarnation of the theoretical—the Greek word for visible—might have been speaking about Lou to explain why others approached him, both professionally and socially: All human beings by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight that we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing, one might say, to everything else.

The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.

When years ago I visited a study group at the Fellowship Community in which Lou participated, it was gratifying to see him openly, though as ever quietly, struggling with uncertainty—an atGeorge V. Rose titude that not every physician will Garden City NY readily display—with a particular joined 1979 died 11/06/2019 feature of Goethean optics that it became clear he and Gerald Karnow had Fred Rosenbaum Los Angeles CA long been collaborating to identify in joined 1982 their respective clinical experiences. died 12/05/2019 What was as plain in the study group Roger Marcum Schultz as when Lou treated patients like me Durham NC in his office was that his focusing to joined 1995 illuminate the “differences between died 12/31/2019 things” emerged from a vital energy Beverly Sonner that he had assiduously transformed Mission Hills CA joined 1965 through self-discipline, that vital endied 12/08/2019 ergy that the ancient Greeks called spiritedness.

Anciently, the Greeks deemed that faculty—even in its expression as anger—as the repository of virtue,

Members Who Have Died Joan Almon College Park MD joined 1977 died 07/14/2019

Alexander Dreier Belchertown MA joined 1972 died 06/23/2019

Louis Aventuro Chestnut Ridge NY joined 1995 died 10/26/2019

Warren D Haddon Chatham NY joined 2003 died 10/17/2018

Don Brakebill Rockford TN joined 1993 died 06/09/2019

Jane W Hipolito Placentia CA joined 1980 died 09/23/2019

Leland Brown Hypoluxo FL joined 2013 died 02/16/2019

Gertrud Kohler Pasadena CA joined 1966 died 10/04/2019

Patty Carbajal Abita Springs LA joined 2006 died 08/22/2019

Sandra Liverman Wesson MS joined 1988 died 06/11/2019

winter-spring issue 2020 • 61

which Aristotle characterized as “loving what is noble and hating what is base”; but Christianity’s warm dawn through the dusk of antiquity has of course mercifully been allowing us to release the melting burden of anger by refining it into such responsive attentiveness as Lou abundantly offered to his many associates. From what I could see, he had long been taming his native spiritedness into a manifestation of that rare sum of manhood tempered by mildness whose product we call, not accidentally, the true gentleman. It was his great good fortune at the close of his earthly life to find that admixture of gallantry and tenderness reflected in his caregivers.

With the recent eclipse of Lou’s earthly orientation, through whose gradual, anticipatory dimming those around him had faithfully stepped in to support him, we can be sure that he is now shedding upon us the refined light of his own freshly liberated vision cast in appreciative recognition for the ways in which he was accompanied here. So we know where we can always find him, ready as ever to facilitate our own seeing, and hence, in a way at least as valid now as when Aristotle pointed it out, to serve Lou’s and our beloved and reciprocal knowing.

Hamburg, Germany

George V. Rose May 19, 1930 – November 6, 2019

by Kathy Bossuk, Waldorf School of Garden City, NY It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of former Music Director and Faculty Chair George V. Rose. He was 89 years old. He is survived by his wife and former faculty member Faith Rose, and his five children: Rebecca ’73, Elizabeth ’76, Charles ’78, Thomas ’82, and Faith ’86.

Mr. Rose has been associated with The Waldorf School of Garden City since 1962 when he joined the school as the Head of the Music Department. In 1979 he became the High School Chair and served in that capacity until 1981 at which time he assumed the position of Faculty Chair, a position he held for over a decade. With the cre62 • being human

ation of the Faculty Council in 1993, Mr. Rose continued to serve the School in a leadership position until his retirement in 1997. “George Rose’s leadership in our School defined an era,” said Roland Rothenbucher, High School Chair. “The years with George at the helm were marked

by George’s big heart and generous soul. He genuinely delighted in his students’ achievements in the classroom, on stage, and on the playing fields, and through his magical personal qualities the School became a beehive of cultural activities in the Garden City community.”

Mr. Rose was an active Board Member of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA) and the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS). Under his guidance, the School was successful in receiving several foundation grants, including a prestigious Edward E. Ford Foundation Grant in 1986 for music program enhancements.

Raised in the Black Hills of South Dakota, in the gold-mining town of Lead, Mr. Rose attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he received his undergraduate degree and studied Voice and Conducting. Mr. Rose later earned a Master’s degree in Music from New York University. From 1953 to 1955, he served in the Special Services Division of the U.S. Army and conducted the Fort Dix Soldier’s Chorus on the ABC television show “Soldier Parade,” with Arlene Francis. During the late 1950s, Mr. Rose taught music at Brooklyn Friends School and the Great Neck Public Schools. He also was the Choral Director at King’s Point Merchant Marine Academy.

Throughout his tenure, Mr. Rose always taught music, and under his tutelage choirs from the school appeared in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, and other cultural centers. He made three European tours with the critically acclaimed Waldorf Singers in 1971, 1981, and 1994. The Class of 1997 dedicated the yearbook to Mr. Rose upon his retirement, stating: “Your contribution to the entire Waldorf community, including the special extension of your love to our class, have been priceless. This exceptional quality is something we hope to carry with us as we go out into the world.”

Mr. Rose founded The Waldorf Choral Society (WCS), which he conducted for 39 years. WCS first began rehearsals in the fall of 1964 and held its inaugural concert in 1965. He embraced the early music movement and established an annual two-day Bach Festival in the early 1970s. The festival featured reconstructed baroque instruments, which captured the distinctive, historic timbre of the period. He also conducted the Great Neck

Choral Society for 21 years.

Mr. Rose was honored numerous times by his students and colleagues for his leadership and his ability to inspire students and musicians. During the 1999-2000 school year an endowed scholarship, The George V. Rose Music Fund, was established, in 1997 the High School Student Room was named in his honor by the students, and in 2004 he received the Franz E. Winkler Leadership Award.

Mr. Rose will be missed for his devotion to the School.

He shared his love of music, leaving us an enduring legacy and a gift that enriched our entire community. “We will forever be grateful to Mr. Rose for blessing us for so long with his remarkable talents. His leadership, his insight, his love, and his gift of song will always be remembered and cherished by our community. We take comfort in knowing that choirs of angels will now receive his legendary guidance,” said Trustee, Legal Counsel, and Alumni Parent, Jay Dorman. Memorial contributions may be made to The George V. Rose Music Scholarship Fund in memory of Mr. Rose at www.waldorfgarden.org/donate.

Roberta Van Schilfgaarde May 16, 1930 – December 18, 2018

Roberta van Schilfgaarde served on the Eastern Regional Council of the ASA and on the General Council from 1991-1996. Arthur Zajonc wrote that in these years “she has played many important roles within the Society, assisting in the transition from one form of organization to the present one. Hers has consistently been a voice of candor and clarity. In ad-

dition, she has carried much of the work of arranging for European speakers to tour the US. Dozens of communities have corresponded with her to bring such individuals as Sergei Prokofiev and Pietro Archiati to their areas.”

Roberta had a sizable collection of veil paintings by Liane Collot d’Herbois and Leszek Forczek. She was particularly involved in astrosophy work of Willi Sucher, for which she was a trustee.

Born in 1930, Roberta was raised on a large farm in Iowa in a fairly secluded area. In her college years, she met a young man who was an international student in agriculture and came to work as intern. This young man, Jan van Schilfgaarde not only became her husband and father of their three children, but also introduced her to anthroposophy. Roberta first encountered Willi Sucher in 1970, after her family relocated to California from Washington, DC. When her husband first told her about the move, she was not happy, but a friend told her, “Never mind, Roberta, Willi Sucher is there.” This was a name that she had not yet heard, but for some reason that statement cheered her up. Once settled in California in a beautiful home overlooking the San Bernadino Valley and the San Gabriel mountains, Roberta was invited to a lecture given

by Willi Sucher. Willi had recently retired and moved to Meadow Vista in Northern CA but came regularly to present workshops in the Los Angeles.

She had expected a giant of a fellow, but he was a short, small-framed man who started his lecture by drawing a huge free-hand, perfect circle on the blackboard. As he spoke, she realized that in reality she was witnessing a giant of a man. She was in total amazement at the content and depth of his understanding. She took up a study of his work and moved into all aspects of it with great enthusiasm, even doing birth star charts. Willi continued with these workshops until the mid 1970’s. He then asked Roberta if she would take over these workshops for him, as he was finding that the long weekends were too much of a task and too strenuous for his 80 years.

In 1995 she met a wide group of people at an Astrosophy Conference in the Bay area ten years after Willi’s death. From that time she participated in all aspects of the Astrosophy Center, attending the annual board meetings and continuing tirelessly editing with Darlys Turner all of the remaining books, articles, letters, and lectures

by Willi. During that time she moved into the foothills of Oakland, CA and then to Fort Collins, CO, where her husband, Jan, passed away. Her last move was to Huntsville, Alabama, near her family, in an elder care home. winter-spring issue 2020 • 63

“I am the light of the world” by Helen Chamberlain

Ask S eek Knock...

Walking with Christ

(Matthew 7:7)

Let’s explore these promises together in a community of caring and sharing.

Let’s join hands and hearts, to learn about healing ourselves, humanity, and the earth.

June 24-28, 2020 | Atlanta, GA

ASK 2020 Atlanta Conference Bring your wh e family for a fun-fied, inspiring week!

Five days that will bring joy, enrichment, hope, and light to the world: Keynote Speakers St John’s Bonfire Singing Act of Consecration Social Opportunities Evening Entertainment Workshops Good Food Angel Market

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ask2020atlanta.org

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