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Sunday 21 JulyAnthroposophy in Hawkes BayNewsletter 29-24 Calendar of Coming Events-- Diary Dates In the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings
========================================= Winter Conversations at the Centre 1. Thursday, 25th July, 10.00a.m. with Lesley Waite We are glad to be offering Winter Conversations. Following morning tea, Lesley Waite will talk with us. “I will share some biographical sketches of my path to the Christian Community Priesthood from family surroundings in medicine through fields of education.” All welcome. A koha will help cover morning tea costs. 2. Thursday, 1st August, 1.00a.m. Caring and Support At this Winter Conversation we would like to talk about caring and support within our community. Is there a need for a Care Group? How can we be aware and reach out to those who have a need? Please come and share your thoughts with us. Bernie and Diana ========================================================== Living on the Pathway towards Death Several people in our community have expressed a desire to become more conscious, more aware of practical aspects relating to our journey towards death. We therefore are arranging this series of three sessions to try and meet this need with a variety of talks,contributions and sharing which will hopefully offer new insights and ideas. For the first of our three sessions, there will be a forum with Anthroposophical nurses who will talk of their experiences when working with people who are nearing death, and with their families and friends Sunday afternoon, 25th August, 3.00p.m. FORUM with Anthroposophical nurses The Following sessions will be on consecutive Sundays, 1st and 8th September, all beginning at 3.00p.m. and concluding with refreshments . (More details about these later) Death is not always easy to talk about and we recognize it can be a very sensitive topic as most of us will have experienced the death of a close friend or relative or are in the process of helping someone or oneself on this path. This series of presentations, along with time for discussions and sharing of personal experiences, is suitable, not only for older people, but for people who are, or who might someday be called on to work with a friend or relation who is approaching their end of life. This series will focus on practical aspects relating to the pathway before death. If you wish to read about the soul and spirit’s journey after death, or Rudolf Steiner’s path of inner development, the Centre’s library has many related books. (Opening hours, Wednesdays 11.00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m.) . At the second and third sessions there will be a display table where people can share any relevant information, including verses, art work, books, references, etc. If you have a question or something that you would like us to consider for these sessions about Living on the Pathway towards Death, please send us an email. A koha would be appreciated and it will help towards refreshments and handout/s. (This koha bowl is separate from the wooden box where koha support the upkeep of the Centre) Bernie Raichle sophia@actrix.co.nz Diana Bacchus diana@bacchus.co.nz. ================================================================ Heating A Tevo radiant heater has been installed in the Main Room. The Committee are looking at the adequacy of the insulation. There is fluff in the ceiling, but the walls and underfloor have none. Maggie Farr offers:
1.00pm to 2.30pm TXT Maggie 027-2484193
Art history 6 week course in Term 3 . Come along for a small glimpse into art history. Starting with the 1.Prehistoric/Egyptian, 2. Greek/Etruscan, etc, finishing with the Renaissance. There will be a small introduction followed by an artistic exercise. No artistic experience needed. When: Wednesday 12.30/2.45. Where: Margaret-Mary Farr Studio/Gallery 100 Eastbourne Street East, Hastings Dates: July 31st, August 7,14,21,28; September 4th Costs: $165. Txt Maggie on 027-2484193 Email: manawastudio@gmail.com Come along and get inspired. Kathy Allan offers: Therapeutic Pastel Class - Term3 The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily Ten guided colour meditations introducing the characters, beings and landscapes. Where....Rudolf Steiner Centre Art Room When.....Wednesdays 10am- 11.30 start July 24th Tutor....Kathy Allan is a Leane Collot d'Herbois art therapist. Contact Kathy on 027-2330970 QUOTE: The Historical Spread of Christianity and Islam – and The Crusades
By Rudolf Steiner19 March 1924, Dornach, GA 353 (questions by the workers building the First Goetheanum) Today I’d like to go into more detail about the later part of the time when Christianity spread. If we look at Christianity today, it has three forms. These have to be considered if we want to find the right way of tracing what really happened because of the Mystery of Golgotha, considering the ideas that are held today. Let us first of all consider Europe. As I have shown the other day, we have Asia over there, with Europe really a kind of peninsula of Asia. As you know, it looks like this [sketching on the blackboard]. This would be Norway, then Russia over here; this takes us to the north coast of Germany; and here is Denmark. Over here we come to Holland, France, and this would be Spain. Here we have Italy, Greece, the Black Sea, and we then come to Asia. Africa would be down below. It is difficult to speak about the spread of Christianity in the present day and age because conditions are unusual in this respect. But if we consider Christianity as it was before the World War in these parts of Russia we are able to say: This eastern Christianity still had more of the original religious character that came from Asia. I have spoken of the different forms it took with the Egyptians, Indians and Assyrians. Much of the ritual, the offering ritual, for instance, that was well understood in Asia has flowed into the Christianity in these eastern parts. When you get to know the religious practices of these parts you get a direct feeling that the ritual is much more important than the teaching. The teaching seeks to express something that belongs to the world of the spirit in human words, or at least as much as human feeling can grasp of that world. It always seeks to address the human intellect. The ritual on the other hand is much more conservative, and religion is conservative by nature in areas where ritual predominates. We may thus say that the eastern religion is conservative by nature, with ritual considered more important in bringing religion, religious life, to human hearts than in areas that lie more to the west. The second stream in Christianity came from Rome, spreading to the north, and was then strongly influenced by missionaries coming from Ireland. This southern and central European Christianity under the influence of Rome has kept its ritual, but it also put more emphasis on teaching than the eastern religion. People are thus much less aware of the significance of ritual than of the preaching, the teaching. There has been much more dispute about the teaching within the Roman Catholic Church than in the Eastern Church. There was also another influence. Christianity arose at the beginning of our era, with Islam arising five or six centuries later. I drew Arabia for you the other day. If I draw Asia Minor again, we come to Arabia down here, with India over there. This would be Africa, with Egypt here. Here in Arabia, Islam came through Mohamed. Islam spread with great rapidity in the second half of the first Christian millennium, from Asia initially towards Syria and here to the Black Sea, then through Africa over to Italy, Spain and the west of Europe. The special characteristic of the Islamic religion is that it combines a fantasy element with one that is sober and rational. The main principle of Islam, which spread so rapidly in the seventh to ninth centuries, is that there is only one God, the one proclaimed by Mohamed. We need to understand what it means in world history that Mohamed insisted on this principle of one God. Why did he stress this point so much? He knew the Christian faith; this does has not have three gods, but it has three divine figures. People are no longer conscious of this. They do not realize that Christianity from its very beginning had not three gods, but three divine figures—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What does this mean? You see, the original Latin meaning of ‘person’ was ‘figure, mask, the character represented’. And in the original Christian faith people did not speak of three gods but three figures through whom the one God was revealed. They had a feeling for the true nature of those three figures. Let us consider what is the real situation with those three figures. Today, we have a science that is distinct from religion, and so we are no longer able to understand this situation. Scholarship has become quite independent of religion, and people do not think of religious life when they speak of scholarship or science. It was different in earlier times, including early Christian times. All scholarship was studied together with religion. They did not have separate priests and scholars, for their priests were also scholars. This was above all the case in the late mysteries I have described to you. In those mysteries the human being was seen to be part of nature, born from the womb as a physical human being with the aid of natural forces. This, they felt and thought, was where forces of nature were active in the human being. If I consider the way a physical human being comes into existence, I am looking at forces that can also be seen in a growing tree, in evaporating water and in falling rain. These are forces of nature. But in earlier times people perceived spiritual forces behind those forces of nature. Spiritual forces are at work throughout nature. They are at work when a crystal develops in the mountain, and the stone grows, when a plant appears in spring, when water evaporates, clouds form and rain falls. The same spiritual forces are active in the human embryo developing in the womb. They are active in the blood coursing through the veins and the breath coming in and going out. The ancients saw everything in nature as spiritual and everything in the human being as the Father Principle, calling it the ‘Father’ because nature study was also religion at the time. They would say to themselves: ‘Someone who has achieved the highest level of enlightenment in the mysteries is an image of this Father Spirit; he knows about everything that exists in nature.’ This was the 7th stage in the mysteries. The next level was that of the Sun Spirit, as I have told you. What did people mean by this Sun Spirit who was later called the Son? As I said, the Christ referred to himself as Sun Spirit. People would say: ‘Human beings are born through forces of nature, the same forces that make plants grow, and so on; but they develop during their lives on earth. In the state in which they are born through the forces of nature, we can no more call them good or evil than we can a plant.’ You would never dream of calling a deadly nightshade-plant evil because it is poisonous to humans. You would say it cannot help it. A deadly nightshade-plant does not have a will living in it, whereas a human being does. And when a child is born we cannot say that it may be good or evil because of the forces of nature. It becomes good or evil because the human will gradually develops. In contrast to the forces active in nature, therefore, people would call the principle active in the human will—a principle that may be good or evil—the Son of God or the Sun Spirit. Someone able to reach the 6th stage in the mysteries would merely be a representative of this. All the individual representatives of the 6th level were representatives of the God principle on earth. And people knew the sun to be not merely a body of gas; the sun was giving out not only light and warmth, but also the powers that developed the will. Thus not only light and warmth came from the sun but also the Sun- Spirit. The Son-God was also the Sun-Spirit. People would say, therefore, that the Father-God was to be found everywhere in the natural world, and the Son-God wherever human beings developed an independent will. People then thought of something very strange. They would ask: Does it make a human being worth more or worth less when he develops an independent will? They were still asking themselves this question at the time when Christianity came. ==== The full lecture can be found on the Rudolf Steiner Archive: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/RSP1999/19240319p02.html
Posted: Sat 20 Jul 2024 |
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