The Easter Mood and the Waldorf Impulse - Still Ahead of Its Time?

That question refers to the Waldorf impulse here in Montana, as the impulse is quite large and thriving in other parts of the country and world. The first school in Stuttgart, Germany nearly 100 years ago, however, was in a similar mind frame then as it seems this area is now. After years of destruction by World War I, the people of Europe closely felt, because they lived it, the horrors of war in their own back yard. The destruction was visible all around them, the losses in their families deeply felt, the economic hardship as close and as palpable as the hunger pangs in the belly. My own grandfather fought in that war as a US soldier, was shot and gassed in trench warfare in France, lost a lung, and nearly died before the age of 19 years old. Today in our valley, while hardly a post-war environment, still, we see the yellow ribbons, the plaques and displays of support for our troops, and yes even some memorials for the recent combat activity in which our country is currently embroiled. The ubiquitous TV screen now found just about everywhere we go shows us constant reminders of the current destruction caused by war and other disasters. The current economic downtrend also reminds us of our fragility.

Many people flocked to Rudolf Steiner’s post-WWI lectures, in which he attempted to awaken them to idea of the underlying social chaos accompanying the war’s end. At least one among them, the director of the Waldorf factory, was able to hear Steiner’s call for moving our attention away from the preoccupation with fear of death and instead focus on the other end of life, birth.

The subsequent founding of the first Waldorf school in 1919 was based on Steiner’s philosophy that the basic task of education, indeed of all social renewal, was to overcome human self-interest, or egoism, and at the heart of this self-interest was the preoccupation with death. He contended that the best training for teachers and parents (who are also children’s teachers) was their own honest struggle for self-transformation. He also urged to view the task of the parent and the teacher as a moral spiritual task, learning how to continue the work of higher spiritual beings, done before birth, within the life of the children we have to raise and teach. The struggle for self-transformation can be reworded more simply: parents and teachers each must BE the person you wish your child(ren) to become. The view of the task of education can be better understood with the following excerpt from Steiner’s first lecture to the Waldorf faculty as part of their teacher training for opening the first Waldorf school:

“Although we can physically see children only after their birth, we need to be aware that birth is only a continuation. We do not want to only look at what the human being experiences after death, that is, at the spiritual continuation of the physical. We want to be aware that physical existence is a continuation of the spiritual, and that what we have to do in education is a continuation of what higher beings have done without our assistance. Our form of educating can have the correct attitude only when we are aware that our work with young people is a continuation of what higher beings have done before birth.”
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As founder of Glacier Waldorf School, I ponder these ideas of nearly 100 years ago, but still so apropos today, as GWS struggles with so many challenges. In looking back, while there have been many good-hearted people attempting to help, so many challenges have come from the problem of egoism or self-interest, which is, as Steiner indicated, a symptom of preoccupation with the human fear of death. I was reading this weekend some lectures about Easter in which Steiner took up this idea in a different realm: the preoccupation with suffering and death, which is the Good Friday mood, and the overcoming of egoism with the focus on the resurrection of spirit, or the triumph of spirit over death, which is the Easter mood. I could see this idea in his attempt to awaken the new Waldorf teachers to replace their preoccupation with post-war suffering and fear of death and destruction with a focus instead on the resurrecting spirit of the child; from a focus on the fear of the end of one’s own life to a focus on the hope of the beginning of our children’s lives.

All the struggles GWS has endured can be traced directly to an individual’s or group of people’s personal fears, and what are all human fears rooted in, but the most basic fear of death. But these individuals or groups are merely microcosmic reflections of our larger society, which continues it’s work and decision-making based in fear. Education is a prime example as I received in the past week pleas to write to Congress to stop the inappropriate focus on testing and measurement in creating new “standards” of education, even as early as kindergarten. The continued focus on merely the physical, the test scores, is nothing more than an expression of our societal fear of our children not “getting ahead” (or being “left behind” as the phrase has even been put in fear-based, negative language), which again has as its root a human fear of death. Where is the child, in all of this bureaucracy and fear-laden decision making? Where is the spirit?

Steiner urged the first Waldorf teachers to take up this very difficult task of going against the mainstream of materialism, the view that we are all just physical beings on a one-way road to death. We should turn away from the focus on the Good Friday mood, the focus of which is on human suffering and death. Granted, it is important to recognize that we do have the opportunity, the gift, to learn from our physical suffering and pain. But the Good Friday mood must then transform into the Easter mood in which one does not allow one to be mastered by one’s suffering and pain but to discover that one is strong enough to rise above it. Pain is a condition of our involvement with the material world, Steiner indicated in his lecture “Spirit Triumphant.” If we continue to insist on only focusing on the material/physical world, and our own material/physical existence in particular, we sink into egoism with every fear-based decision we make, with every action, both mean-spirited as well as seemingly innocent or well-intentioned, meant to “protect ourselves” or “our family” and our “stuff.” Steiner urged the first Waldorf teachers, and really every human being, to rise above the pain and suffering inherent in seeing the human experience as merely materialistic and physical.

The attempt to establish Glacier Waldorf School comes from the same impulse as that nearly 100 years ago in the wake of the disastrous World War: to rise above the fear and preoccupation with “what’s going to happen” at the end of our lives, and to look instead at the children coming in at the birth-beginning of life. This is the key to transforming our world, to transforming ourselves. This is why the Waldorf school is so very important, that the work to overcome people’s reactive fears is crucial, because this is our very mission as humans on earth: to transform acting from fear into acting from Love.

As I look back at the many fear-based decisions that badly affected the Waldorf school - all kinds of things from individual jealousy, to lack of courage to confront someone directly with a concern, to gas lines dug up, locks put on gates, broken promises, fear of there not being a class for one’s child, financial fears, aversion to exerting effort, making changes, lack of courage to stand up for what is right, the list goes on - it sometimes seems hopeless to continue.

However, it would truly be hopeless to not continue. Steiner said of the true mood of Easter: “Into whatever mortal frame I have been born, my real being is both unborn and deathless.” This belief in what is our real being indeed brings me hope. The work with our children in a realm beyond just the material/physical realm is the most important thing we can do as human adults. Steiner said, everyday, “We must enter the classroom (or living room) in the awareness that this spiritual relationship exists.” Which brings us back to the assertion that as parents and teachers, it is not what you say, but who you are. If one is acting from a fear-based orientation of life, then the “who you are” is a human being oriented toward the death-end of life. If one is acting from a resurrected viewpoint, an understanding that we must BE the person we wish our children to become, the “who you are” is a human being oriented toward the birth end of life.

Waldorf asserts to work with children in a spiritually enhancing way, rather than in merely the physical realm. As written recently in the New York Times by Williams College professor Susan Engles, “Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.” In other words, the materialistic approach to education is “strangling,” or death-oriented. Waldorf’s spiritual approach to life-giving forces, to focusing on the continuation of the work of angels after birth, is needed now more than ever. If you agree and wish to see the work of Glacier Waldorf School continue on its struggle against the mainstream flow of fear, keep us in your hearts and consider how your own will can contribute to this effort.

I’ll close with two items from Steiner. First, the prayer for teachers given at the end of his first lecture to the new Waldorf teachers in 1919. This prayer is for all, not just teachers, who desire to live in the consciousness of self-transformation, and its simplicity also makes it good for a meditation mantra:

“Enliven imagination,
Stand for truth,
Feel responsibility.”

The other item is the closing from Steiner’s Easter lecture, “Spirit Triumphant.”

“We have to seek the One who is here, by turning at Eastertime to the spirit, which can be given to us only in the image of the Resurrection. Then we shall be able, in the right way, to pass from the Good Friday mood of suffering to the spiritual mood of Easter Day. In this Easter mood we shall also be able to find the strength with which our will must be imbued if the forces of decline are to be countered by those which lead humanity upwards. We need the forces that can bring about this ascent. And the moment we truly understand the Easter thought of Resurrection, it will bring us warmth and illumination, and kindle within us the forces needed for the future evolution of humankind.”