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Camphill Correspondence July/August 2005

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Camphill Correspondence July/August 2005 July/August 2005 CAMPHILL CORRESPONDENCE Detail from Raphael’s The Transfi guration Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it. Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom. Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me fi nd the grasp of your hand in my failure. Rabindranath Tagore From a Baltic Journal Camphill Birthdays — July to December 2005 Russia Becoming 85 In the summer gardens the leaves of the Lenie Seyfert-Landgraff, Clanabogan ................................. July 8th trees Reg Bould, Copake, USA .......................................... August 28th turn from green to gold and fall in tight Eva Nitschke, Altenheim, Berlin ............................ September 7th circles Becoming 80 around the trunks—above them the Sabine Bertsche, Kimberton Hills, USA ..................... August 18th power of prayer th lives on in the outstretched limbs and lifts Muriel Valentien, Winterbach .................................... August 30 Werner Greuter, Switzerland ............................... September 13th these golden platters into another th dimension Martha Frey, Botton Village ................................. September 29 Jean Surkamp, Ochil Tower, Scotland .................. November 24th by monasterying the gardens with gilded th domes Brigitte Koeber, Rüti Hubelbad, Switzerland .......... December 7 Peter Burger, England .......................................... December 15th within our level landscape of marshes, th lakes and rivers Tamar Urieli, Camphill Kyle, Eire ......................... December 25 the sky plays an easy role of storytelling Becoming 75 our everyday world David Root, Copake, USA .............................................. July 21st with its fickle changes of the wind and Ella van der Stok, Sheiling School, Thornbury ................ July 24th the weather Erika Nauck, Nortour, Newton Dee Village, Scotland ... Sept. 11th there lives a third dimension in the Bettie Edwards, Hapstead Village, Devon ....................... Sept. 4th Russian soul Renate Sleigh, Alpha Camphill Village, South Africa ....... Dec. 3rd a consistency to overcome our normal highs and lows Becoming 70 and weaknesses that offers hospitality to Ita Bay, Stuttgart .............................................................. July 1st the spirit Saila Roihú, Sylvia Koti, Finland ............................... October 7th like the gilded image hung in the corner Harald Rissmann, Karl König Schule .............................. July 14th of the room Alexander Krafft, Alpha Camphill Village, South Africa ... July 21st that sheds a subtle radiance upon the day Ilse Jackson (Sander), Hapstead,, Devon ...................... July 23rd Aira Tirronen, Sylvia Koti, Finland .................................. July 27th Sweden Stella Russell, Alpha Camphill Village, South Africa ........ Sept. 5th By October the birches are ready for Herta Hoy, Kimberton Hills, USA .......................... September 8th resurrection Alma Stroud, Botton Village ................................. September 29th and that is what alchemy is all about Congratulations to all of you! before they disappear as phantoms in the snow New Books that we have first to give up all we have When a Loved One Dies — How to go on after saying goodbye and so they blaze forth in gold and silver Hans Stolp, O Books 2005, ISBN 1 903816 95 5 for only then are we truly purified Children who communicate before they are born there is no clearer form of selflessness Bauer, Hoffmeister, Goerg, Temple Lodge 2005, ISBN 1 902636 68 6 no surer way of meeting who we are Philosophy as an Approach to the Spirit — An introduction to the fundamental works of Rudolf Steiner Norway Richard Seddon, Temple Lodge 2005, ISBN 1 902636 69 4 Rainbows become acrobats with our Valentin Tomberg and Anthroposophy — A problematic relationship northern sun Sergei O. Prokofieff, Temple Lodge 2005, ISBN 1 902636 64 3 The Mystery of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist at the Turning Point never complete, nor resting in one place of Time — An Esoteric Study but leaping vertically right out of the Sergei O. Prokofieff, Temple Lodge 2005, ISBN 1 902636 67 8 waves and swinging in upside-down arcs just Contents under the clouds before placing all seven feet firmly upon Transfiguration 2005 Michael Luxford .....................................1 the land A candle against oblivion Muriel Valentien .............................3 without hesitation, nor the buckling of Of Biomass and Biogas: Renewable energy initiatives in knees Ireland Hetty van Brandenburg ........................................5 Renewable Energy Conference in Clanabogan Patrick Lydon ..6 I grow giddy, simply from following their Resurrection Crosses and Related Symbols — A Pictish moves Antecedent Friedwart Bock ................................................7 as an earth-bound man I stagger along Obituary: Erika Agnes Opitz .................................................11 the shore News from the Movement: a victim of the tide and the wind and the International Teachers’ Conference Almut Steffen 12 English Welsh Regional Gatherings in Trigonos Centre, rain Wales Suzanne Pickering 13 as the rocks reach up to guide my feet Camphill International Dialogue Chuck Kyd 14 along the path ANDREW HOY Ways to Quality Rudolf Kirst 16 Transfiguration 2005 — Part One of Two Michael Luxford, Milton Keynes Camphill Community First Dimension Second Dimension t 8.15am on the 6th August 1945 the order was given The above anniversary gives added weight to the need Afor the bombardier of a USAF B-29 to release an to set against its terrible symbol, the Transfiguration atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Afterwards Colonel imagination from the Gospels, which is associated with Tibbets, the pilot, turned his plane away and looked back the 6th August. to see, ‘The city hidden by that awful cloud… boiling In this imagination, described in the Gospel of St. Mat- up, and mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall.’ The thew Chapter 17, and depicted in Raphael’s painting in co-pilot could taste the atomic fission, which he said, the Vatican in Rome, three of the twelve disciples are led ‘Was like tasting lead.’ by Christ onto the slopes of a mountain. There, before their This year it will be sixty years since that ‘awful cloud’ eyes, He is transformed, ‘His countenance shining like the marked the enactment of the first of the two most de- sun, his garments shining white like light itself’. structive single deeds ever to have been carried out by Moses and Elijah appear in conversation with Christ, one group of human beings on another, as far as I know. and Peter seeing this says, ‘Lord, it is good that we are The second bomb was dropped over Nagasaki. here. If you wish it, I will build three shelters, one for The image of the mushroom cloud became the symbol you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’. But, while he for atomic and nuclear power as the ultimate weapons was speaking a shining cloud overshadowed them and of mass destruction. Warfare entered a new phase as a voice spoke out of the cloud, ‘This is my Son whom I technology created distance between perpetrator and love. In him I have been revealed. Hear his words.’ It is victim. The plane, perversely named Enola Gay, the crew described how the disciples fall on their faces, ‘trembling and those at mission control, could boil alive hundreds at the closeness of the spirit’. This is a counter image to of thousands of innocent people in the blink of an eye, the Hiroshima, dark atomic light cloud. causing death and unimaginable sickness and suffering Science learnt how to ‘split the atom’. When this is lasting into future generations, without laying a physi- done, cosmic order is disturbed, and contained energy cal hand on them or looking them in the eye. In the is released. It is an enforced crossing of a threshold from decades since those singular and never to be repeated order into chaos, on a material level. What happens, in bombings, arguments have raged over the justification the latter case, occurred spiritually and imaginatively for what happened; for what in the Gulf War came to on the slopes of the Transfiguration mountain, without be termed ‘collateral damage’. causing destruction but rather manifesting a divine love The negative dimensions of what Rudolf Steiner was the which normally lies beyond human sight. first to term ‘the consciousness soul’, appeared before The Gospel depiction and Raphael’s painting show the world in their stark reality. It had become possible there to be three levels of reality, between the earth and to carry out a monumental act of destructive will, and the heavens. Below the mountain is a mass of people, yet to remain at a distance from an immediate realisa- arms flailing, a young man described as ‘moon struck’, is tion of the effect of what had been done. The ensuing having to be supported. Above are the prostrate disciples arguments could be carried out at a distance, at an who have, through their proximity to Christ, been able intellectual level. to lift themselves up to a transformed kind of ‘seeing’. The consciousness soul faculty is a positive develop- At the top of the mountain Christ is lifted up into the ment for the human being; necessary in order to attain ‘cloud realm’, from which he later returns, directing his freedom in thought, feeling and will, but requiring attention to the
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