Text

E-book Camphill and the Future Spirituality and Disability in an Evolving Communal Movement

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Penilaian

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Each year I bring students from Harvard University to a Camphill community—usually, either Camphill Village USA in Copake, New York, or Heartbeet Lifesharing in Vermont. At Camphill my students encounter a social world that is different from their own. We travel from the busy streets of Cambridge to dirt roads and mountain valleys, where our passage may be blocked by a herd of cows making their leisurely way to the milking barn. Camphill houses have a unique architectural style, with few right angles and lots of whimsical art. Each house is home to as many as a dozen people—families with children, young volunteers, elders—and the houses are interspersed with craft workshops, chapels, perfor-mance halls, and gardens. People walk easily from home to work to church to artistic performances that sometimes feature world-class performers. Meals open with sung prayers that are familiar to the Camphillers and unknown to my stu-dents. The students must learn the subtle customs of Camphill—a napkin in a ring, for example, signals the usual place of one of the house’s residents, while a napkin folded flat signals a space available for a guest. They learn, sometimes with difficulty, that they should not leap up after a meal to help wash the dishes. Every task is already assigned to someone who performs it with pleasure and pride, and the visitor’s role is to wait for someone to offer tea and conversation. My students learn that Camphill is a community suffused with intentionality: its daily rhythms keep everyone in physical and emotional balance; its gardens and farms keep humans, animals, and plants in creative contact; its economy and decision-making structures are designed to honor the integrity of every person.My students also learn that Camphill places are shaped by a distinctive spiritu-ality. The clues are subtle and ubiquitous. Interior walls in Camphill buildings are often painted using the “lazure” technique, in which multiple colors are applied in very thin layers to create rhythmical variations of hues. Reproductions of classical Christian art abound, with Raphael’s Sistine Madonna a favorite. Even more com-mon are “wet on wet” watercolor paintings, many depicting the “elemental beings” associated with earth, water, air, and fire. Many communities include a chapel designed for services of a tiny denomination called the Christian Community; others have “halls” suitable for both religious services and artistic performances. Visiting such a hall, we may see Camphillers practicing “eurythmy,” a form of spir-itual movement that is used therapeutically and artistically. Outdoors, my students visit “healing herb” gardens full of medicinal plants, and observe cows whose horns have not been removed—both out of respect for the cows’ bodily integ-rity and because some Camphillers believe that cowhorns help channel cosmic forces to earth. If we visit in the summer or fall, we may hear about a St. John’s or Michaelmas festival, seasonal celebrations that Camphillers observe as devotedly as Christmas and Easter. We may also hear about plays or conferences devoted to such personalities as Faust, Parsifal, or Kaspar Hauser—the last a nineteenth-century German youth who claimed to have been raised entirely in a dark cell. All of these distinctive features of Camphill life reflect the fact that the movement’s founders were inspired by the “anthroposophical” spirituality developed by Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). Yet our tour guide may not be able to offer a full explanation of any of them, because committed students of anthroposophy represent only a minority of Camphillers today.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

321.07 MCK c

Penerbit

USA : University of California Press., 2020

Deskripsi Fisik

251 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780520975354

Klasifikasi

321.07

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Ideal States, Utopias

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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