Issue 71

Spring, 2014

Editorial

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the Easter-Spring issue of New View magazine; Easter-Autumn over the other side of the world. It always feels a little strange to reverse the seasons when remembering readers who live across the equator in the South. I sometimes imagine what it might be like to experience the passage of the year on the equator; balanced, as it were, between the winters and summers of North and South. I have been told that equatorial nature still shows its seasonal processes, but in very subtle ways. Whilst the seasons reverse as you travel around the Earth, Easter is constant; a recurring moment in the cycle of the year, a remembering of a spiritual historical event culminating with the resurrection on Easter Sunday and leading to Whitsun, seven weeks hence. And no matter what the season, any human being, anywhere on the planet, can connect to this event. Rudolf Steiner showed that the Easter event brought a renewal of life forces for humanity and the natural world. How can that be experienced?

This is more a rhetorical question, because it is something we can only really answer for ourselves. I have to make experiences my own. But I can be inspired by those of others. And, perhaps most importantly, I need to avail myself of concepts that can enable me to understand the experiences I have. New, enabling concepts can come to each of us in different ways; you can read about them; a person can be with you and share them; or you find it arriving as a thought, a moment of recognition, quite unexpectedly, in your inner life.

New View has always carried the potential – sometimes actualised I hope! – to be a place where it might be possible to read enlightening, enlivening, concepts; even to be inspired by some of its authors’ experiences. Based on an appreciation of Steiner’s world view expressed as anthroposophy, my ethos as Editor has been to bring, through the magazine, anthroposophy – its inherent knowledge – into connection with the world and our inner life in such a way as to help reveal a deeper understanding of inner and outer experiences. I based the magazine around four cardinal points of the year within the four seasons: Easter, Mid-Summer/St. John’s Tide, Michaelmas and Christmas, and tried to bring about something of the quality of those Festivals in each issue as a whole. Of course, individual articles address varied aspects of life on Earth, but, taken as a whole, it has always been my intention to help form each issue to contain a quality in keeping with the festival period that the magazine is appearing in.

The Celtic people, of the time of St. Columba and beyond, called Christ “The King of the Elements”; they had an appreciation that Christ did not come only to re-enliven humanity, but to re-enliven the Earth Herself, the elements, such that we really would have a place (a stage, as Shakespeare would have it) to live out our destinies over aeons of time to come. It might be difficult to see this happening, with so many challenges our human activity has brought towards the Earth and one another. That is our free-will; we are not forced to follow any prompting of our conscience. If we are indeed to realise our potential to attain the resurrection of our own spiritual-physical nature, with consciousness and conscience as our guiding principles and witnesses to such a process, then it is my hope that this humble issue of New View may help a little along that path.

Message from the Temperate Rain Forest by Marcia Phillips from Oregan, USA, shares her experiences of old growth forests and their value to us. Tobias Kaye complements this in Brotherhood with Trees where he explains the nature and physical functioning of trees.

In Easter – Noli Me Tangere, David Newbatt shares some of the thoughts underpinning his painting which appears on the front cover of this issue.

Anthroposophy and Steiner Schools – time for a reassessment? by Paul White, offers an insight into the issues being met in Steiner schools today. There follows an appeal on behalf of Frank Chester, USA, for funding the writing of a book, aimed at the medical profession, bringing new discoveries and insights about: The Human Heart.

Then, Mark Lewis, writing from New Zealand, offers an economic perspective with A Brief Overview of some Economic Trends in the Light of the Crash.

This is followed by The First World War and the Ukraine Crisis: 1914-2014, where Terry Boardman deepens and widens the context to understand the recent events in the Ukraine. This is gently complemented inReflections on a Conflict by Terry Goodfellow.

NNA News for New View, from around the world, is compiled by Christian von Arnim. And John Marking takes us to a possible starting point of the world in Before the Big Bang.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, late of Germany, are welcomed with their contribution Sweet Porridge – a little food for thought, as it were! And throughout there is to be found a gentle sprinkling of poetry from David Donaldson, Peter Snow and Theresa Roach Melia to complement and add to the sharings in this issue.

Finally, I wish to offer my grateful thanks to Cathy and Graham Edwards, Valerie Taylor and Mouna Hayes for their good-willed assisting with the peripatetic nature of the production of this particular issue of New View – very much appreciated!

To those who can also assist with any donations to help us keep New View going – and an enormous thanks to those who have already done so, some on an ongoing basis – my heartfelt thanks in advance.

And to you the reader, my very best wishes for now and the time ahead, wherever you may be,

Contents

Article/Author Topics

Messages from the Temperate Rain Forests

by Marcia Phillips

Ecology

Poem: Consider the Trees

by David Donaldson

Brotherhood with the Trees

by Tobias Kaye

Easter: Noli Me Tangere

by David Newbatt

Anthroposophy and Steiner Schools: Time for a Reassessment?

by Paul White

Poem: The Fifth Chamber

by Peter Snow

The Human Heart: An appeal to the readers for funding book

by Tom Raines

The First World War and the Ukraine Crisis: !914-2014

by Terry Boardman

Reflections on a Conflict

by Terry Goodfellow

NNA News for New View

by Christian Von Arnim

Before the Big Bang

by John Marking

Sweet Porridge

by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Poem: Consider the Caterpiller

by David Donaldson

Poem: Without the Cross

by Theresa Roach Melia

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