Camphill Correspondence January/February 2003

January/February 2003 CAMPHILL CORRESPONDENCE True Freedom . , we are today living in a society that creates alienation . Many people do not realize this . We are offered many superficial choices, which engender the delusion that we are free. But actually we are pushed around a great deal by the media and by other people's expectations and demands . This produces the psychological condition of alienation, in which we are never allowed to be fully ourselves ; we do not belong to ourselves . The real personal meaning of our lives is not allowed to emerge . We are dominated by someone else's ideas, tastes, desires : speak this way, act this way, see these things, do these things, have these things . And we are reaping the results of this lack of true freedom, this self alienation, for deep down it breeds a profound resentment toward the persons and the society that does not allow us to be our true selves. This smouldering resentment suddenly erupts in terrible acts of hatred and violence . Tom [Thomas Merton] went on to speak of the answer to this . It lies in coming to understand the full dignity of the person, above all in Christ, and attaining to that contemplative attitude that opens us to the true reality of ourselves, of others, and of everything in this creation . In a talk he gave to his community in January 1966, Tom made a penetrating analysis of the concept of freedom in the work of Jean Paul Sartre, the French atheist existentialist who certainly has had a great influence on the thinking of our times. For Sartre, we are free because we have chosen to be here, and we have to keep choosing, choosing ourselves . This is our very existence. If we would be truly free, we must choose to be our authentic self, but only for ourselves as the subject of this being. All others are to us objects, nonselves, not the self. Each person is enclosed within himself or herself and is willing himself or herself to be over and against all others-which is ultimately the morality of hell . Tom considered himself an existentialist, but not in this dark, atheistic way. He rather drew his inspiration from Gabriel Marcel, the Catholic existentialist. Marcel saw that the only way to be free and to be authentically a person is to be wide open to what is, and therefore to be open to other persons as subjects and to be open to relationships . It is in relationships that each one discovers himself or herself more and more . In the mutual gift of respect and love, we come to know ourselves more fully, to enjoy ourselves more completely, and are able to be more totally and freely gifts to others . From 'Letters from Skokholm', C . F. Tunnicliffe From Thomas Merton Brother Monk by Basil M . Pennington The story of the three crosses Irma Röhling, Hermanns, South Africa t all began in 1952 when Camphill started to reach Especially a little place on the other side of the moun- out from Scotland, in the north, to the furthest south tain - a sand quarry was there which contained moun- of Africa . The need of a handicapped boy was the 'call' tain crystals among the stones and sand . The crystals and, as soon as possible, Camphill responded to this were small but pure and always beautifully shaped . need . A house in the valley 'Hemel en Aarde' waited We named this place 'Crystal Mountain' . for them and gave the first shelter for this work . Ascension Day 1975, all the school children and Hemel en Aarde is a beautiful place on Earth and has teachers went up to search for stones . The day was so its right name . Mountains form a beautiful bowl from beautiful and, during our picnic, we decided that each which, night and day, one looks up to the wide open one of us would take a rock from Crystal Mountain sky, at times bright blue, at other times hidden by mist and carry it over to our side, and so we did . There and clouds, but I know that at all times one is aware of were big people and big stones and small people with the starlit heavens or the bright glow of the sun above . small stones but in all these stones was the beauty of In the east the mountains are soft and gentle, in the crystals. All these stones waited in the garden at Dawn west they are high and rocky, but the highest moun- House, who knows what for. tain in the north, 'Babylon's Tower', seems to close In January 1976, one year later, there was a big fire on off the valley. The river comes from there and flows our side of the mountain . The mountain became bare to the wooded opening in the south leading to the and black and often we walked up into this scar. When Atlantic Ocean . Ascension Day came in 1976, we wanted to do some- The Hemel en Aarde valley has sheltered a commu- thing for the mountain . So we took the stones waiting nity of people before who were brought together for us at Dawn House and carried them to a place called through suffering, illness and need . It was a commu- 'Castle Rock', which is an outcrop of rocks on the west nity of all kinds of people . Illness made people the side of the valley. We laid out a big circle of stones with same . When things fell apart, no colour, no creed was a cross inside . This cross was given a circle in its centre a protection from the illness - leprosy. like the sun crosses of Ireland . There it lay. At the centre of this community stood a chapel with The plants started to grow, the mountain became a steeple and a cross . I am sure that it was so, because green . 'Fynbos' began to beautify it . The cross became this chapel belonged to the Moravian Brothers . We do part of the mountain, always there . know where it stood ; ruins are still there . It was on the Not long after, lower down the mountain, Ingrid and east side of the river called 'Onrust' . People travelling Anna stood and looked down into the valley below . through the valley always hurried past for fear of meet- There was a lot of growth alongside the river. Suddenly ing one of the lepers . This was the past . they saw, in all this unbridled vegetation, a different With Dawn House a special school began which colour of green . They went down and discovered oak expanded and grew. I was allowed to join this work in trees, a grove of oak trees . 1968 . Destiny had led me here from America and I The Farm Community had started . This land was ours . know how much we love this valley . At that time Oupa Tucker, the father of one of our co- workers, was with us . He knew that soon he would die We have heard of the deaths and expressed the wish to find his resting place among of the following friends : the oaks . He did not realize that this wish would save our place . Peter Elsholtz, died unexpectedly and peacefully on All our oldest pupils, now trainees, started to work the morning of Sunday, 10th November at his home with strength and determination and freed the oak grove in Hermanus, South Africa . for Oupa Tucker's grave . We were standing there at the Marie Korach died peacefully after a short illness, open grave when we saw a fire approaching, this time in Aberdeen, on Monday, 28th October. in the river bed . It was a fierce fire driven by the wind . Lotte Sahlmann died peacefully in the early morning Miraculously the fire slowed down at the oak grove of Saturday 7th December. because we had cleared it of the alien growth . This gave us the possibility of making fire breaks elsewhere . Contents The story of the three crosses Irma Röhling News from the Movement The Rhythms of the Foundation Michaelmas and Ofsted Almut ffrench 13 /'Ways Stone Meditation Andrew Hoy 2 to Quality' Rudolf Kirst 13 / Mercury Hall Irma Colombia U'wa, Camphill, and the Röhling 14 / Impressions from the opening of practice of idealism Margit Engel 3 Mercury Hall, Michael Lauppe 15 / Medical Marga goes to No .10 4 Section Conference, June 2002, Stroud, England Review Edeline LeFevre 15 / Kate Roth Seminar Veronika Bewegung, Sprache, Denkkraft Georg von Arnim . 4 van Duin 17 / In praise of the Adult Communities letters 5 Course Scot Lusk 17 / Life as a Building Dan Obituaries McKanan 18 / Zenta Maurinas House, Rozkalni Eva Sachs 6 / Robert Margolis 10 / Donald Henry Anne Langeland 19 / Curative Education in Thai- Stewart 10 / Marion Jamieson 12 land Anchana Soontornpitag 20 Later we became aware that we had space in our valley for a graveyard, peaceful, a place of contemplation . Here we erected the second cross with its strong beams guard- ing those graves that later gathered around . Then came the time of the first international Camph i I I conference to be hosted in South Africa, the Agricul- tural Conference, bringing Camphill people from the movement all over the world . Our farmer at that time, Tim Christiensen, had asked our neighbour if we could erect a cross at the top of the mountain where wind and sun, rain and mist meet first before they come down into the valley. At daybreak we watched the cross being erected . The moon setting there in the west and, opposite, the sun's rays illuminating all the surrounding mountain tops .

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