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Editorial

Dear Reader,

Welcome to this issue of New View which comes at the turning of the year; a moment which lends itself to a look back and a look forward. Reflection and contemplation; what will we experience in 2012 and perhaps more importantly, how will we meet what life brings towards us? Many readers will have this issue of New View with them during the Holy Nights which, even in our very intense world of competing calls for our time and attention, still offers an opening, a doorway through our inner life, into a wider connection with the source and meaning of things. We naturally mark off the passage of time in years and at the turning of one year to another we even make resolutions about how we might carry ourselves, standing differently in the world, resolving to approach life in new ways in the New Year to come.

With that in mind, and the hope that you might make the time and space to read the contributions in this issue and consider what thoughts and actions may arise from anything that really takes your attention in the articles, a number of longer articles appear on this occasion. It has always been a challenge, in the context of the seemingly ever quickening pace of life, to place something before the reader that not only will they have time to read but that they would also find of value.

The trend with many publications is for short articles, to stimulate some awareness and move on to the next item, almost as if assuming that no one has time to go much deeper. Well, New View has always been more for the deep sea diver, the mountain climber, the explorer of inner worlds, making real sense of the outer one. So, we often bring longer articles, a slower read for the ‘shimmering fish’ who make that effort, like the salmon (of which I have spoken before in an editorial), to swim against the prevailing stream and connect to the source and renew life. A tall order for a magazine, but that has been one of our guiding images: to push through towards a real understanding of things. It takes an effort of will to engage our thoughts sometimes; perhaps New View could be likened also to a gymnasium offering a work-out for our thoughts and feelings to develop some spiritual muscle that might carry us into deeds in the world. But we hope you will also find some pleasure and relaxation along the way within these pages.

We begin the journey through this issue of New View with a look at the background of the financial ‘crisis’ that the media is constantly placing before us, particularly centred right now on the Euro currency and the political discussions raging around Europe. Beneath the European Crisis by Terry Boardman offers insights into the biography of this whole situation.

Part Two – The Continuing Significance of 9/11 sees Richard Ramsbotham continue to look deeper at the 9/11 incident and what followed in its wake. His is a spiritually forensic approach, avoiding polemics and emotion to bring a wider appreciation of the forces at work surrounding this event. Paul Carline gives a complementary insight based on the importance of looking for the truth and adopting a ‘symptomatic’ approach to understanding events in Sleepers Awake!

Then we go East for a moment with Travels to China – and the growth of Waldorf Schools where Richard Brinton shares his experiences of the upsurge in Steiner/Waldorf kindergartens and schools in China.

NNA – News for New View, compiled by Christian von Arnim, gives a taste (some shorter items here!) of things happening with initiatives that work out of Steiner’s legacy of spiritual understanding.

Matthew Barton offers a resting place on our New View journey to stop for a moment and consider: Hogweed and the Imagination. Suitably refreshed, we come to a major contribution by Hannah Townsend, one that is also heralded on the front cover picture she drew for us, illustrating an Ark that protects the seeds, so important to all our food and nourishment, from destruction and extinction. S.O.S. – Save Our Seeds is an enormously important article.

Fritz Schumacher – one hundred years young by Jonathan Stedall celebrates a man who understood how we should connect and work with nature. Richard Bunzl then rounds off his series of articles that has looked at the four subtle bodies of the human being (physical, etheric, astral and ego) with Sleep, Wakefulness and Meditation – or being asleep when I am most awake. This is followed by a contribution from Terence Davies, who is certainly awake, to The Inner Life section.

Finally, at the end of a year celebrating Rudolf Steiner’s 150th Anniversary, is Frau Balde and the Library: The Search for the Real-Life Fairy Tale Teller in Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas where David Wood has meticulously researched for the true identity of one of the characters in Steiner’s Mystery Dramas. It is, in the best sense of the phrase, an intriguing ‘whodunnit’.

A number of readers have suggested that doubling the cover price of New View would bring us the financial stability we, quite desperately, need. Of course for many that would make a subscription prohibitive. But for those who could offer a double payment by way of donation we would be very grateful.

A sincere thank you for all the support that we have received this last year or more and may I take this opportunity to wish you well for the New Year, wherever you may be,

Tom Raines – Editor

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