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We make these books available because we think they offer inspiration to those people working to infuse our culture with a truly human spirit. They confirm the surprising power of resurrection so palpable in recent times, and they foster the impulse of living spirited lives. We hope you find some treasures here. |
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Chorus May calm warmth work
in us, We are all journeying, Silently and together Christy Barnes |
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This book begins with a selection of Christy's poems published when she was 21 in Out of Chrysalis and from Wind in the Grass , published a year later. In the first poem "Up!" she celebrates the sprouting forces of organic growth that she senses in the grasses and trees and feels so strongly within herself. "To Run on Hills" conveys the same exuberant, almost mythical oneness with nature. The second and third sections of the book are comprised of hitherto unpublished poems written in midlife and old age. As her youthful forces dwindle, Christy turns more and more toward an inner source that grows ever stronger and more definite in her old age. Throughout the last years of her life, Christy's poetry often focuses on the immediate impressions of her surroundings, which she portrays with the utmost simplicity, wonder, and devotion. As she has throughout her life, she explores the deep correspondence between the world that lies within and the outer world of nature. As in her youth, she participates inwardly in the creative inner aspect of the outer world, experiencing the living forces of nature within her own soul. Yet much has changed. Gone is the youthful vitality of her early poems. It has been replaced by a mood of peace, permeated by the inner sun of her experience. Here, as in all of her poems, it is the imagination where inner and outer merge in a creative act revealing a deeper dimension of reality. |
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"The riveting saga of a sensitive musician's initiation into rock 'n' roll and his ultimate struggle to remain true to himself, Rites of Rock burns with passion as it explores the most potent musical hybrid--rock, in all its variegated forms. This fast-moving biographical novel takes us from South Africa through Europe to the United States, through outrageous rock scenes, romance, and chilling encounters with evil to new frontiers of musical experience. At the same time, it offers a rare glimpse into the heart of an artist's soul." "Eric
Müller's succulent Jeremiad of rock rings necessary bells. The
insidious commercial culture of rock, indubitably megalomaniacal,
present and past, is his subject. The author doesn't bandy with religion
to make his spiritual points, he goes right to the boss, his own
presciently audible inner voice, which never stops pestering his
fledgling attempts at self-destruction. Charging at a good clip through
a mindscape of devilish villains, sublime goddesses and the walking
dead, he makes it experientially clear that, for a musician, salvation
is in the music or nowhere, certainly not in the absurd trappings
of success. His observations on the art of music are deeply intuitive
and fully educated. This book feels like it just had to be written
and Müller took fifteen years to do so gracefully, poignantly
and with unquestionable sincerity. If this book makes him famous,
I reckon he can handle it." "When Vincent
Erling discovered Rock and Roll, he was exhilarated by its power,
energy and vitality. This rollicking novel (on the surface
hip and savvy) is the story of a young man's odyssey through a world
of new sound and his search for a new way of living--the Rites of
Rock." "This is a beautifully
written book about a life lived attendant to the right kinds of questions. Eric
writes like the Laurens van der Post of the subsequent generation."
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I also know that I appear to the world as one who has built a ship atop a high mountain, thousands of miles distant from the ocean; but the waters will rise, and my ship will float and sail. |
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Without forgiving there can be no true resolution to human conflict. In this essay Kühlewind penetrates to the roots of the process of forgiving, dissolving and resolving the inner struggles involved in this process and uncovering the sources of blame, envy, and hostility. “Through self-knowledge I come to understand why it was necessary for the other to rise up against me, why for me it was necessary to bring him into this situation.… When we really behold the guilt in ourselves, it is forgiven….” |
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Both God without revelation and good will without knowledge lead to sectarianism, only with different signatures, here passive, there active, never however to a peace on earth encompassing all peoples, but only to further estrangement, to a new conflict and eventually to complete chaos.… There exists, however, already today a number, even if an inconsiderable number of people, who have won for themselves out of their spiritual scientific knowledge another view of the world whereby the earth organism in its entirety reveals itself to be a living being which breathes, is ensouled and penetrated through with spirit. Each human being is an Atlas; in his bodily organism he bears the entire earth about with him. And it makes an enormous difference whether he conceives of it as something dead or as being alive, ensouled and infused with spirit. Albert Steffen |
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Signs and Traces If you’ll heed
his signs and traces, In the rustle of a leaf In the swirling water’s
flow In bright sun on snowy
peaks In the surge of green
spring-growing In the weaving of life’s
tides Like the crystal, deep
and pure, Forge Christ’s
Kingdom, friend to friend, And, in stillness deep
as night, Michael Burton |
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Any life-changing crisis can be seen through the archetypal lens of the crisis of the artist. How do we grasp the deeper significance of the crises that we confront? How can we transform such an apparant obstacle into life-renewing creativity? Steffen sees that the existential challenge facing all contemporary artists is achieving true self-knowledge. This essay shows how Schiller and Goethe dealt with the dangerous separation of thinking, feeling, and willing, and how they achieve their harmonious reintegration. It then turns to questions such as how the artist in each of us can find meaning in illness and pain and lead us to healing. |
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This book has proven helpful to countless people faced by death. This collection of prose, poetry, meditation and prayer addresses the experience of death from many points of view, but always from a profound, spiritual perspective. Contents: The Needs and Tasks of Those Who Have Died; The Mystery of Death; Death as Experienced by the Living; Death as Experienced by Those Who Have Crossed the Threshold; Verses and Prose Passages by Rudolf Steiner; Words of the Living for Those on the Other Side of the Threshold; Poets of the Past; In Time of War. After the death of his mother, one reader wrote: “Thank you so much for creating such an invaluable and beautiful work where all can find sustenance. In the words of my mother, ‘This is just what I thought all along. It’s good to be able to read it, to have it confirmed.’” There is a new kind of awareness of the nature of death in the world today, and at the same time a growing need to find the means to deal with the suffering, loss and questions which it stirs within us.... This book has arisen out of the wish to serve this growing awareness and need, and out of the conviction that poetry has the subtlety, imagination and heart forces to illuminate the mystery and stature of this universal event and to help and give strength and courage to those who approach it.... From the Foreword |
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Karl Ege was one of the last teachers to be appointed by Rudolf Steiner to the original faculty of the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart, Germany. Many years later he came to teach in America, still wrestling with the comment that Steiner made shortly before his death, namely that to meet the needs of the future, Waldorf education would need to turn its direction (not its method) 180 degrees, away from the academic toward the practical and artistic. Karl Ege’s subsequent work has inspired the founding of farm schools on both U.S. coasts. This collection of essays stresses the need for such a radical change in pedagogy, for the education of the whole person, and for a reconnection with nature and with physical work as an antidote to an increasingly intellectual culture. The content also includes considerations of Problems of Puberty, Community, and A Teacher’s Preparation. |
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Full of poetry, humor, and drama, this moving play uncovers the deeper issues underlying Columbus’s “discovery” and the mission of America. In dramatic scenes and imaginative pictures it probes the profound questions of human destiny and the implications for nature of this world-changing historical event. Perfect for students in the middle and upper grades. To know your own spirit, The Discovery |
