November/December 2015 Still Life with Madonna, petunia and apples, August Macke There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most com- mon form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander Keeping in touch Dear friends, touch with the informative, and the deeper and lighter he Camphill Correspondence is in an unusual situa- aspects of international community life. Ttion: it is both flourishing yet also struggling. Particu- How else can you help the Camphill Correspondence? larly lately articles are flowing in, people are sending By helping us to become more relevant to those who lovely little notices to be included, there are those who are newer to Camphill. If you are one of those people remember to tell people – ‘send what you’ve written in and are reading this, tell us what matters to you, what to the Correspondence!’, dialogues and debates, book you would like to read about, what would make this, the reviews...much is happening on that level. The Cor- only Camphill journal with a world-wide distribution, respondence is part of people’s lives for which we are appealing enough for you to take out a subscription. very happy! We are enabling Camphill Correspondence to become Yet, due to the slow drip drip drip of communities easier to subscribe to in future with a link from the Camp- changing how they take their subscriptions, our cash hill Research Network. We will get that set up as soon flow is running perilously low. Many communities have as we can. Meanwhile if you wish to make a donation stopped the once-common practice of automatically you can access this link: http://www.camphillresearch. taking out a subscription for each house (sometimes two com/camphill-correspondence-archive. If you can copies per house) in their community. Instead, individu- make your contribution via Paypal that means we will als are meant to make the effort themselves to get a copy not have to pay a charge, if you contribute via a different if they want one. That means, too often, that people don’t payment method there will be a charge for the Camphill find the time/money/or don’t remember to start their own Correspondence (we’re not sure how much yet, this all subscription. We also know that some residents would being new to us!). On page 19 we have included a new love to get a copy but are not quite aware that this is standing order form to make it easier for you to subscribe a possibility or how to go about doing that. There are and to renew your subscription. also some communities that don’t want to receive any It is an exciting time to be involved in Camphill. So subscriptions at all, as if the Camphill magazine does much is changing, some of it painful but some of it is also not relate to them. vibrant and exciting. Let’s reflect that in our magazine The solution we would like to ask you to help with? Get and bring it back to financial health. people subscribing again! Encourage all houses to get a Thank you, as always and with gratitude, for your copy – after all this is the magazine reflecting, inform- support. ing, communicating with their communities, families and friends. Give the Board Members all a subscription! Maria Mountain (Editor), and the Support Group: Give the families a subscription. Empower the residents Deborah Ravetz, Christoph Hanni, Maria Lyons, to take out a subscription if they would like to keep in Bianca Hugel, Marianne Sander Celebratory Birthdays Contents November – December 2015 Becoming 90 Responses to ‘The vision of Camphill Jean Surkamp, Ochil Tower .............. 24 November Communities Ontario’ ..................................1 Brigitte Köber, Rüttihubelbad ............. 7 December What do you live for? Deborah Ravetz .............2 Tamar Urieli, Simeon Houses .......... 25 December From insular to global Johannes M Surkamp ....4 Becoming 85 Renate Sleigh, West Coast, S.Africa ... 3 December News from the Movement ‘World Wide Weave’ exhibition on tour Becoming 80 Peter Bateson ............................................5 Ellen Klockner, Milton Keynes ......... 13 November Looking back over thirty years of Becoming 75 community at Loch Arthur Barbara Roos, The Sheiling, Ringwood . 2 December Lana Chanarin ..........................................6 Becoming 70 Camphill Ghent today Sila Penttonen, Tapola, Finland .......... 6 November Deborah Grace .........................................9 Gunnar Nesheim, Solborg ............... 19 November Alan Severance, Stroud .................... 24 November Book review ..................................................10 John Henry Wilson, Botton Village ... 26 December Obituaries: Eva van Lieshout, Holywood, Ireland ..26 December Gillian Thomson ........................................12 Any additions or changes, Irmgard Anna (Irma) Roehling ....................12 please let Sandra Stoddard know: Ursel Pietzner ............................................13 [email protected] Nils Christie ...............................................18 +44(0)1224 733415 Responses to ‘The vision of Camphill Communities Ontario’ (Camphill Correspondence July/August 2015) hen we read your letter in our long term co-worker They would have to trust the committed community Wmeeting we felt a certain kinship with your com- members. munity in that we have often been wondering whether Those of us, who know you, trust you. When you say we are really respected as a true Camphill place. It is not that your places are truly Camphill, we trust that you that we have been made to feel inadequate, at least not have wrestled with this question intensively, and for a lately, but we are aware, ourselves, of the many areas long time. So, we here in Glenora Farm are not saying, in which we fall short. We are struggling with finding “O, if they have salaries and shift-work, then they can't the right administrative forms, we are struggling with be Camphill!” But we ask you, “How do you do it, how keeping anthroposophy alive, and we are struggling to are you Camphill?” We all struggle with the question, bring the Bible Evening back. The validity of our income how we can remain Camphill and keep abreast with community has often been questioned by newcomers, the changing times. and so has the validity of the traditional form of Camp- In order to come to terms with this question we need hill life-sharing. more dialogue. Already a year ago the Glenora Farm Sometimes it seemed that there were too few of us Community has begun to discuss what it means for to stand firm against the forces that want to erode us us to be Camphill and some of the thoughts that have into just another care facility, and then there came new resulted from this. We want to share them, not because people to stand with us. Some of those were not dyed in we think that you could benefit from them, but rather as the wool anthroposophists, but just broad minded, good a beginning of a dialogue from which we could benefit. people with common sense. And so we always feel as if Last summer, following the report of one of our board we are teetering at the brink groping for helping hands. members on the Camphill Association of North America When we visit another community, what makes us dialogue, a conversation ensued around the question, recognize it as Camphill? what is it to be Camphill? At first glance it is of course the picture in the hallway, Three questions stood out: the dining room with its large table and other traditional • What is social therapy? features; it is the whole atmosphere, and the committed • Is Camphill all about sharing? community members whom we trust. • What is the role of anthroposophy in our Absence of certain traditional forms causes doubt and community? it is harder to sense the spirit when we do not meet with We would love to exchange ideas on these questions. the familiar that opens our receptivity for what is alive in the place. Especially for those who have never seen With warm greetings, the place before, the absence of even one traditional Olaf Lampson, Markus Heinz, element may cause doubt. Martha Muller, Karen Humber For the Executive Group of Glenora Farm, British Columbia, Canada ‘ raditional Camphill model’ is a well-used term at Surely this is one of the many many things the Being of Tthe moment, particularly in saying that it hardly Camphill should be engaging with today. Camphill was exists. But does anyone actually know what is meant? meant to move out into society like leaven in the dough. König did not have a ‘traditional model’; he fit in to the Towards the end of his life König wrote the essay which circumstances as well as was possible, using the study has been so often quoted and so little read, ‘The Pur- of anthroposophy to find the best possible methods. The pose of Curative Educational Work’. There König clearly forms were always in evolution and at least König always states that our ‘curative attitude’ is needed throughout came up with something new. The Memoranda, of which society wherever the individual is threatened, wherever there are four and a fragment, depict König’s recognition the earth is threatened. In the essay he gives examples of what had been achieved, not of what needed to be of ‘pastoral care, the elderly, orphans, refugees...within done in all future.