Understanding, nurturing and supporting life

With parts of the Goetheanum reopening, the Goetheanum Leadership’s working year 2019/2020 has come to a preliminary conclusion. A book on perspectives and initiatives in the time of Corona is one of the fruits of this work and contains, among other things, contemplations on the Christ-Michael experience and the cosmic Christ impulse.

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As travelling and conferences had to be cancelled due to the Corona crisis, the Goetheanum Leadership devoted this time to intensive inner work that resulted, for instance, in the book ‹Perspectives and Initiatives in the Times of Coronavirus›, published in German by Verlag am Goetheanum and in English by Rudolf Steiner Press. The German edition was completed and printed in record time and delivered to the Goetheanum Leadership fresh off the press at the end of its June retreat.

Since Easter, our work on the question of how to approach Michaelmas in a way that is appropriate for our time has been extended by the Christian dimension of Anthroposophy in the sense of the Christ-Michael experience described by Rudolf Steiner in his Michael Letters (GA 26). The inward, spirit-illumined path and the outward, spirit-supported path belong together – as we were able to experience during our retreat when our new colleagues introduced us to places that are important to their work.

Cosmic Christ impulse

On 8 June Peter Selg (a new member of the leadership of the General Anthroposophical Section) spoke to us in a moving and intimate way about Rudolf Steiner’s work at the end of his life, in the room where he died: his studio, which is situated in the Schreinerei building, next to the Goetheanum. How modest is this ‘shed’, where so many seeds were planted out of inner spiritual power that have now grown strong in the world. The Christ Statue of the large wooden sculpture, the Representative of Humanity, used to stand in this room then. In Peter Selg’s description the relationship to the cosmic Christ-impulse, in which the global anthroposophical movement originates, lit up.

On 9 June, Matthias Rang and Johannes Wirz (the two new leaders of the Natural Science Section) took us to their Section premises in the Glass House, where they spoke of the Goethean approach to science that has been fostered in this Section for many decades, supported by the work of Jochen Bockemühl, who passed away very recently (1928-2020) and Georg Maier (1933-2016). According to Rudolf Steiner, a concept is esoteric when it is kept united with the phenomena that first gave rise to it. The Goethean experience of nature is therefore an experience of the living spirit – in the Michaelic sense.

Transsectional focus theme

These experiences lead directly to the theme that the Sections have chosen to be guided by over the next three years: “Understanding, nurturing and supporting life”. We also consulted and decided on a logo for the whole Goetheanum, approved internal regulations, allocated responsibilities for further anniversaries in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and worked on a descriptive text for the School of Spiritual Science.

In the evening of 8 June we had a Zoom meeting with 47 participants, including almost all the country representatives from Australia to Canada.

Matthias Girke and Florian Osswald will be the spokespersons for the Goetheanum Leadership in the next working year, starting from September.

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