The America Verse

May our feeling penetrate
Into the center of our heart,
And seek, in love, to unite itself
With the human beings seeking the same goal,
With the spirit beings who, bearing grace,
Strengthening us from realms of light
And illuminating our love,
Are gazing down upon
Our earnest, heart-felt striving.

–Translation by Frederick Heckel

The United States of America received a great gift from Rudolf Steiner in 1923: the so called “America Verse” given for the Foundation of the Threefold Group which was transmitted by a Swiss messenger directly from Rudolf Steiner to Ralph Courtney. Ralph Courtney met Rudolf Steiner in Paris in 1906 and later became a strong voice internationally for the Threefold Social Order. This verse was translated into English by Frederick Heckel, a long-time editor of the Society’s Newsletter.

Today many people work with this Verse privately and in groups and branches of the Anthroposophical Society in America. I would like to suggest that members and friends who are concerned about the destiny of America at this time, direct the thoughts which are within this Verse especially to the beings of the Third Hierarchy who may then be able to form this meditative effort into a positive direction. This Verse is actually both a meditation and a prayer.

–Excerpt from a letter from Virginia Sease to the members of the Anthroposophical Society of America dated February 24, 2020

Larisa Khimich

Evening
–Adam Bittleston

I go into the realm of the invisible.
The weight of my earthly body
The surging forces of my earthly life
Release their hold.
In the world into which I now enter
The watchful care of the Angels
The loving guidance of the Archangels
The creative power of the Spirits of the Ages
Work upon the souls of men.
My heart bears in it many thoughts of conflict,
But also the thought of Christ.
May this grow in the world of sleep
Into full being–
That I receive through powers of Light
His strength and peace.

The Deathbed – Ninetta Sombart

No One Dies Alone

–Cindy Hindes

In the current situation, we may bemoan that many are dying alone. No one dies alone. One’s guardian angel is always there. And predeceased loved ones also gather to guide the who is one dying across the threshold. From a forthcoming book by Iris Paxino, Bridges Between Life and Death:

…I remember a sixty-seven-year-old patient in the hospital who had had an extremely challenging illness… One day I entered her room, and the first thing she said was: ‘I am expected, you know? I am expected,’ and a smile brightened her grey face. The illness had marked her body; her breathing was labored, and from day to day, the pain became more unbearable. ‘Yes, I am expected,’ she repeated. Her eyes were shining, and a joyful glow emanated from her being.   ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’ I asked.

‘It’s my angel. I know it is him. He is so loving; he waits patiently. He stands mostly at the head end, do you see? Here…” she said, pointing to the wall behind her bed. ‘He is so loving … And sometimes I see him in the right corner of the room, there by the window, next to the curtain, you see?… Some days other figures appear in the room. My mother is there below. Oh, it was so long ago that she died …” And you know, she is so young now, much younger than she was then, and so beautiful, so radiant! It is time for me to go. I am expected there. I am no longer afraid; it is only a transition. I know that now.”

…The moment of death is, therefore, never a moment of loneliness. The [angelic] hierarchies receive the deceased person in a sublime ceremony, as that which goes dark in the world of the bereaved shines forth on the other side in a luminous spiritual celebration. For the one crossing the threshold, it is as though they ‘breathe’ themselves out of the physical world. It is a moment of liberation, and they experience an incredible expansion of their being. They look down at their body and realize it is merely a shell they have discarded. Their consciousness in the spiritual world is clear and wide awake; they recognize the beings that now receive them. For the deceased, it is a sacred moment in which their individuality, embedded in the light of an elevated spiritual reality, unfolds within them more intensely than before.