It is quite some time I have not written in my blog…I wrote a bit on TTG blog…but somehow these last months I was not « in the mood » for writing…
I guess when I started my
blog it was just in the beginning of Tho moving to Bhutan ( already 3 years ago !) and me trying to adjust between Switzerland/Vietnam/Bhutan
With Bhutan coming into our lives we needed to re-balance our lives and I think I needed
to write my sort of diary/blog, in order to help me to make sens of it all, to digest and to share it with those I love, to keep us all on board in this very moving landscape of life!
These moments of « unsettling », »moving
out of our comfort zone » are so precious, even though sometimes quite challenging on different levels…practical, inner etc…
Bhutan is now fully part of our life, many new wonderful friends, many experiences are
interweaving with all the various « other » parts of our destiny, actually there is not such a feeling as « other parts » anymore…it is ONE life really !
So here I go again writing
my blog…after a few months of …silence…
There is in me , since quite some time, a feeling that we sometimes we do not always look in the right direction...I'll explain...
I called my blog Camphill…
In my previous blogs I told the story ( at least I think so…check it later) of our family living for 12 years in a Camphill community ...
For those of you who do not know Camphill I need to give a certain background
In the 30ties last century, an Austrian Doctor Karl König, who was of jewish origin, and a student of Rudolf Steiner, felt a calling to become a doctor specialized to work with children living with disabilities.
Rudolf
Steiner was an austrian philosopher and spiritual teacher who’s aim it was to create a dialogue between philosophy/spirituality and science and to bring insights out of the meeting of these first seen as opposite attitudes into practical realizations
( Waldorf schools, Weleda, Wala, Medicine, bio dynamics, Demeter, Arts…etc etc) …something extraordinary in those days..something that it quite up to date nowadays ( Mind&Life and others..). He was the initiator of what is now called Steiner
School education in which the social and emotional aspect of learning , creativity, education of head heart and hands etc is central.
Many insights of Steiner must be seen in a context of his time, of a very un-globalized world, time of
colonialism, time of strict separation of anything spiritual and scientific
But some of his insights are still avant garde and valid today.
Steiner died in the 19 twenties, so Dr König actually never met Rudolf Steiner personally.
Dr König and a group of friends who all studied Anthroposophy together, some were doctors like him, some artists, many from jewish origin and rather from Viennas vibrant intellectual, openminded and artistic society, studied and practiced Steiners
ideas together in Vienna.
As a Viennese myself, I always felt drawn to this « Vienna of the 1920 » when there was such a concentration of scientists, artists, philosophers, architects, gathered in this vibrant City…a
moment of artistic grace of scientific breakthroughs…of innovations.
But the 3oties in Vienna turned into a very grimm and dark time...It was the rise of Hitler and the Nazi regime
The rise of the Nazi regime
changed this vibrant creative City into a city of fear, desolation and war.
The Nazi regime refused dignity to people of jewish origin, to people living with disabilities, persecuted and killed many… Many jews fled Vienna Austria
Karl König and some of his friends also just fled Austria just in time.
They fled to England and came to Scottland. There they ceated the first « Camphill »in a place actually called Camphill.
They created a living community, a « village » of people living with disabilities, mainly children and so to say « not disabled » people together as a big community or almost family. Not working
for, but living with...concentrating on each ones abilities, co workers, children etc not on the disabilities.
The main aim was to honor cherish the HUMAN BEING in all its forms, all its origins and to create a community in which respect,
dignity and care of the Human nature are truly in the centre.
Till today there are over a 100 Camphill communities in the world
TTG has become partner of the Camphill movement and feels inspired by its principles and
aims.
Why I tell you all this comes in my next chapter !
Camphill today ?
Ps this page is still under construction...too busy with Eurasia these days...