PSE9 - Is Jesus Chris Your Savior?

Fellow-Steiner student Shelly and I start with the title question, then go on to discuss various themes arising from her life’s path, including parenting, Waldorf ideas on child-rearing, the deep importance of Truth and Beauty in daily life, and whether she is able to see gnomes.

Highlights from this episode:

• Did you get help understanding what Waldorf is all about, as a parent?

• “This created so much Truth and Beauty and Intelligence to our daily existence”

• “Steiner would say that how adults act around children matters a great deal”

• “Where I grew up, children got the junk… ‘Oh that doesn’t matter, the kids don’t care; they don’t know the difference’. I was a very sensitive child, I think I knew that wasn’t true”

• [contrasting hand-made toys, painted natural colors, eg] “…plastic pink, and poisoned red dye - that’s not true. If you give this child this truth, reality, honesty, authenticity, then guess who grows up?”

• “Rudolf Steiner would say, Teacher, do you love your students? Students, do you love your teacher?”

• “Are we trying to grow human ‘doings’ or human beings?”

• “People would come to the kindergarten class, they might think nothing’s happening ‘cause mostly the children are playing. That’s when all the right wiring is taking place, for this whole human being”

• You might not have the best parents but are they striving to do a better job for you?

• “I had no capacity to deny things…life was very intense”

• Is Waldorf for privileged kids? “We’ll pitch a tent near the school…”

Books mentioned in this episode: How To Know Higher Worlds, Your Are Your Child’s First Teacher, Festivals Throughout the Year [this link one of various possibilities]

Other mentions this episode: Foundations Study [this link one of various], Dr. Douglas Gabriel [interview]

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Practical Steiner is a new-ish podcast addressing the question “What might Steiner say?” about this or that topic that is of interest to me, the host. I am a fairly new Steiner student and have felt in these past two & a half years that finally, after decades of wondering about the “why” of many things, I have finally come across someone with comprehensive knowledge enough to answer many of those questions.

My podcast is conversations - the more candid and honest the better - with various people who have been studying at least as long as I have and who have taken up Anthroposophy, in one measure or another, as a way of living. My over-arching interest is not in presenting “expert” opinion/interpretation of Steiner’s body of work but rather lies at the interface of the guidance from Steiner’s books and lectures with how someone lives their everyday life.