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Editorial

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the Holy Nights and New Year issue of New View. I hope that what you may find in these pages will offer helpful insights, even some nourishment for the time ahead.

It is always a challenge to bring each issue of New View together in a meaningful way. I listen to what is happening for people as best I can to better understand what we may need to help each other along the way. Sometimes I ask for written contributions that I recognise may stimulate and deepen understandings for the readers; often I receive unsolicited contributions for consideration, some of which have been very fine indeed. In the past decade over 200 authors have been published in New View. The magazine is something of a networking initiative, connecting people in many walks of life to ideas and experiences in the first instance, but also, perhaps, to a sense of sharing the content of the magazine together – even when we all mostly live far apart from one another.

I often have in my mind’s eye that the New View reader is an aware, seeking individual, with an open-hearted intelligence and a willingness to do good in the world. I also think that there may be more that could be done, with such a community of readers as New View has at this time, to help develop better things in the world, if only at the personal level; which after all is the place from where we must all start.

New View stands in the world to support and foster the spiritual life and the gradual realisation of what Steiner called the ‘Universal Human being’. Anyone supporting New View is at the very least supporting this too.

As one year closes and a new one opens out and the future beckons, pregnant with possibilities, I want to offer here a heartfelt thankyou, as one way of recognising and honouring the wonderful way people help keep New View going with their financial and moral support. One’s back gets firmly pressed against the wall at times and it is touching and remarkable what help comes, often at the last moment, to keep things together. If, for whatever reason, I have been unable to thank anyone personally, it never meant that the generosity extended to me was in any way not appreciated. On the contrary, it has made me feel quite humble at times and warmed me into my heart and soul by experiencing what we are capable of bringing to one another, even in the smallest gesture.

When I first became the editor of New View I had a number of ideas and hopes for it. In particular I wished to enable more understanding and insights into the Christian mysteries and the elemental world to be possible through its pages. This has not proved an easy thing to accomplish; but I have remained willing and open for these things. So this issue carries something special, I believe. Whilst there are many ways to express things and one has to often reflect for a while before some of the deeper connections and meanings start to reveal themselves, I believe this issue has much to offer in terms of threads that connect one contribution to another. Connections to nature, the land, are strongly touched upon here, as is a conscious willingness to engage with life, go a little deeper and a little further and discover a moral content to one’s existence.

So we begin with a man I know who is a Philosopher and someone who knows how to work on the land. Jeremy Naydler, from Oxford, looks back to a time when past wisdom was regarded with reverence in Reclaiming the Past for the Future and makes us aware that we have a certain debt, at least of recognition, to those who went before us to enable us to stand where we do now; and that we will do the same for those yet to come. This is followed by an interview with Aonghus Gordon about the Clervaux Trust, a new initiative aimed at helping young people who find themselves not suited to conventional eduational methods, with an enormous emphasis on the practical life and a connection to the land. From the Cape in South Africa, Norman Skillen has written a very evocative piece, Take the Scenic Route, that underpins a School of Nature by which one can learn how to reconnect with the landscape on an inner and outer level.

David Donaldson from Hereford sent me a poem several years ago, on the meaning of Christmas and even though Christmas may seem to pass quickly poems can linger with us in a serious and pleasant way, as I believe this one will.

Andrew Linnell, writing from the United States, looks deeply at the Christian mysteries embedded in Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings of the Madonna of the Rocks – one in the Louvre in Paris, the other at the National Gallery in London. Steiner foresaw that we were only at the very beginning of coming to know the Christian mysteries and this article gives much food for thought.

A reader from the USA appeals for pen-friends on behalf of a prisoner who has been on Death Row for 31 years. Some things are hard to comprehend. Another contribution from America comes in Heart Pictures by Sandra Williams, which I might describe as an oasis for a brief refreshment on the journey through this New View landscape.

Terry Boardman has been on a different journey, to Prague. Where is My Home? Truth Prevails: A Journey to the Heart of Europe allows Terry to weave history in with current impressions and insights. Another Terry, Terry Goodfellow, offers us an hors d’œuvre to a main feast that he will present in the Easter issue with The Question of Afghanistan, offering here just a few pointers to a deeper consideration in the next issue, sowing seeds of interest.

Christian von Arnim has selected news items from around the world in NNA News for New View and also appeals for some help. This is followed by some impressions by a young person from London, Sammy Saunders on The ‘State’ of Britain and its Future Generations: A Youth Perspective. Along with others, he wishes to start a youth forum and New View would like to support that.

And, finally, I made another interview and learned a great deal in A Meeting with Janet Barker and the Rising Picture; all about her work of well over thirty years at the Ita Wegman clinic in Switzerland.

I hope we can continue to meet in the year to come, at least through the pages of New View.

Wishing you well for the new time ahead, wherever you are,

Tom Raines – Editor.

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