International Newsletter, fall 2013
Click on link to access the Newsletter in English.
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The password is michaeli.
A Michaelmas Sermon
A sermon given after the gospel reading from Matthew 22: The Parable of the Wedding Feast.
We often speak of Knighthood in the time of Michaelmas, as in the song: “Let me of God a fighter be, in the knighthood of the Grail!” And in a festival for children, we may bring to the children the ideal of the knight: to ever serve the Good; and test them with challenges of aim, balance and courage which can help them serve and develop knighthood in themselves.
The highest ideal of the knight however is something called Minne, what often is simply translated as LOVE. But this love is something different than the often sentimentalized “chivalric love” of the age of knights—it is far more than anything personal. This love that the knight aims to develop is not merely a protective love for the “damsel in distress”, but rather, a far-reaching love of humanity which longs to serve the divine in each human being. It is a love seeking the essential being of the other, that which is most important and true. The knight seeks and serves that which is becoming in the other as a highest ideal and a life task.
Michaelmas Prayer
A meditative prayer by Adam Bittleston
We need in the light of our day
The eternal Light of the Word of God.
When we see with our thoughts this Light
On the path which leads from the cave
Where thinking and seeing our shadows,
Into the fields of life
Into the freedom of the heart—
We shall meet Michael
Who reveals how Christ
Awakens thinking
That it may serve God. Read more
No Truer Friend Than Christ
True friends are people who prove themselves over time. They truly listen in a way that draws out of us strengths we did not know we had. They stand by us in our trials, offering their support. Their constancy gives them a depth of knowledge about us, both of our strengths and of our weaknesses that allows them to be a gentle and loving mirror in which we can truly see ourselves. The result is that we are known. We feel accepted, just as we are. We are loved.
Christ is truly our truest friend. Read more
North American Newsletter, Fall 2013
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New Legacy Giving Coordinator Hired
The Christian Community in North American would like to welcome Mary Hirsch as our first Legacy Giving Coordinator. Ms. Hirsch has been hired by The Region to assist our individual communities in the development of their own Legacy Giving Programs.
Ms. Hirsch brings to this new position over 23 years of extensive experience ranging from public relations and marketing to planned giving, major gifts and capital campaign management. She has worked in large non-profit organizations, state universities, two Waldorf schools and a charitable foundation. As the Advancement Director at Kimberton Waldorf School, she launched Waldorf Works – a mission-based sustainable fundraising program that attracted over 500 people to campus over two years. She was Director of Development at the Waldorf School of Princeton, Rutgers University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Director of Planned Giving at Rider University. Read more
August
Upon fields and orchards
Growing towards harvest
there look with blessing
The spirits of heaven;
And their gaze searches
Men’s hearts for ripening.
In the close weaving
Of manifold fates
Living in the Midst of a Battleground: The War in Syria
Life comes to us with many simple yet essential blessings whose value we often forget about until we no longer have them. We take such blessings as water to drink, food to eat, talking to someone freely or even simply taking a walk; we take them for granted until we have them no more. This is one of the faces of the war. It shows itself by taking away from normal people the essentials of life. How does a war start? How does it grow to last for years? How is it that in our lifetime, we, the citizens of the earth, have not yet found a way to extend a hand to stop it, to transform it? Not yet. The war in Syria has been going on for over two years. It is now extending beyond Syria. Thousands of people have died. Thousands of people have become homeless and are in danger of dying. Read more
Are Faith and Knowledge Mutually Exclusive?
Generally knowledge is acquired through experience. Often it results from our having perceived a pattern: every day, at predictable times, the sun rises and sets. Therefore, I know that the sun rises and sets on a daily basis. I also know, either from close observation or from the observations of others, that there is a gradual shift of the point on the horizon at which it rises or sets, and that this shift from one extreme to the other and back takes a year to complete. Generally knowledge is related to the past and is founded on past experience.
But even a single event, a single experience, can give us knowledge. The sun rose this morning; I saw it; there is such a thing as sunrise. An angel appeared to me; I saw it; I know that angels exist. Read more
To Hear Is To Be Near
How important it is to be heard. It seems to be a deep, even existential, need. How sensitive we can be to the slightest nuances when someone speaks. Before we learned to speak, we learned to hear.
We have all gone through a profound school of hearing and listening before we were born. The wondrous images of the embryo in the womb show that its shape is like a large ear. The ear itself is shaped like an embryo. Is it only coincidence? The ear is always open and receptive. Might it be that it was not only the heart-beat of the mother the embryo was hearing? Does the ear-shaped embryo possibly indicate that the whole human being is listening as a totality? Or, that the human being is “heard into existence”? What depth of hearing that would be!
Read more