4 minute read
from the editors
The Anthroposophical Society in America
being human
Dear Friends,
We’re celebrating ten years of being human. In 2008 the General Council chose to replace News for Members with a full-color magazine. We first put the name on the spring issue of 2011 honoring the 150th birthday of Rudolf Steiner. Many thanks to Marion Léon, James Lee, Fred Dennehy who edited the Library Newsletter, designer Seiko Semones, proofreader Cynthia Chelius, information manager Linda Leonard, and so many wonderful writers and artists!
This issue departs from its usual layout in order to celebrate the living, inspiring ideas of anthroposophy, brought by Rudolf Steiner, and the people who apply those ideas in all the fields of life. Anthroposophists are confident in the human ability to rise higher, to real freedom and love, and those who make our higher potential visible help others regain that confidence. We are mailing to a number of friends who do not usually receive these printed issues. Consider becoming a member at www.anthroposophy.org/join and help sustain this work.
Twice a year in these few pages we try to share the relevance of anthroposophy and its applications. Last issue we included a personal commentary on our current medical situation and its social-political context by Richard Fried, MD, a longtime practioner of Anthroposophic Medicine. This was not a “party line” on health questions and we noted that “contrasting experience-based views are always welcome.” In this issue we affirm Anthroposophic Medicine’s broadest essentials with a remarkable testimonial by the physician who brought it to this country as his life’s work, Dr. Christoph Linder, supplemented by an excerpt from a longer paper by anthroposophists Ricardo Bartelme, MD, and Walter Alexander. Walter is a past contributor and a professional writer on medical subjects who has tackled key questions like the “placebo effect,” which shows that consciousness actually works in and on the physical organism, and the true role of the heart in our circulatory systems. Anthroposophic Medicine is founded 1) on the full reality of the human being, 2) on the fact that every illness is personal, and 3) on the balancing of short-term and long-term goals in its therapeutic treatments.
There are many other wonderful pieces here. Many thanks to Casse Forczek for her work in creating the wonderful gallery. Also note the last page, “Dear Anthroposophical Self,” which means to help us stay alert and questioning even in our engagement with this great being, anthroposophy.
John Beck
In this tenth anniversary issue, Joyce Reilly reviews two autobiographies, Sunshine Girl: An Unexpected Life, and Gardens of Karma: Harvesting Myself among the Weeds, by two highly successful women, Julianna Margulies and Susan West Kurz. Each work touches the intersection of anthroposophy and celebrity, and each differently reveals the karmic interweavings of love and neglect.
Christopher Schaefer, whose life was changed many years ago after meeting Bernard Lievegoed and spending a year with the Netherland Pedagogical Institute, turns again toward Holland to review two books on spiritually based community development. The first, by Erik Lemcke, is Social Ecology in Holistic Leadership: A Guide for Collaborative Organizational Development and Transformation, an invaluable guide and workbook meant particularly for those already
practicing as consultants and facilitators. The second, by Harrie Salman, The Social World as Mystery Center, points to Rudolf Steiner’s insight that the modern mystery center resides in the everyday world of work and play. Salman focuses on the archetypal social phenomena of human meeting, conversation, and the working of karma.
My review of Frederick Amrine’s The Perennial Alternative: Episodes in the Reception of Goethe’s Scientific Work, finds cause for optimism in the continuing, even growing, influence of Goethe’s scientific method. Goethe’s practice has not only proven to be the enduring alternative to scientism, it has expanded beyond the disciplines of botany and color theory to become a way of seeing capable of interpreting anything that lives.
I have also reviewed a modern day trilogy of mystery plays, Angels at Bay, by Owen Barfield, written more than seventy years ago but only published this year. That review, too long for this issue, will be available soon in a new online PDF edition of being human.
Though things are arranged differently for this special edition, being human has been featuring a research & reviews section for ten years. In looking back over the decade, I am struck not only by the quality of the publications we have reviewed, but the broad scope of the material. In addition to books about the history of spiritual science, we have had strikingly original works about philosophy, science, social ecology, spiritual practice, religion, art, and literature, as well as distinctively new fiction and poetry.
Most striking to me in overview are the threads connecting most of these books: a passion for inquiry, a readiness to see life within experience, and a willingness to begin each act of thinking anew. Nearly one hundred thirty years ago, a book entitled The Philosophy of Freedom made its appearance on the world stage, and it was an open question whether it would survive a generation, let alone more than a century. Today we see its endurance not only as a text relied upon all over the world, but as a method that brings together the most diverse interests through a shared practice of thinking, seeing, and aspiring.
