Jeff and Ruth led us into different gestures of sympathy and antipathy as part of our ongoing study.

This week in our Monday morning gathering, Fanny read to us this week’s ‘Calendar of the Soul’ verse and then everybody shared their weekend. After that Gundula and Scott looked back at last week’s weather and then John spoke to us about the stars. On Wednesday afternoon, everybody gathered into Circle Hall to listen to Jana read a Polish story called ‘The Eagle’. Then everyone acted it out.
In our Thursday morning College, which fell on Valentine’s Day, we sang ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Love You’. After that Patricia told us the story of Saint Valentine. She told us that Saint Valentine was a priest in Roman time who performed many marriages. The Emperor at that time felt that single men were better soldiers so he ordered no one should marry. Saint Valentine continued marrying young couples. Because he disobeyed the Emperor’s orders, Saint Valentine was executed. But in prison he had taught a young blind girl named Julia. They became good friends, and before Valentine left to meet his tragic fate, he left her a note signed, “Your Valentine”. Legend has it that Julia’s blindness disappeared when she looked at the letter, and that she could read it. That is one of the many stories about the origin of St. Valentine’s day.
After that Ruth and Jeff showed us what sympathy and antipathy looks like in eurythmy. Ruth performed the eurythmy gestures of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ with her feet. She first put her left foot forward to show us ‘yes’ and then she stepped back on her right foot representing the word ‘no’. Then Ruth showed us two sounds in eurythmy. When we make the sound of the letter ‘M’ we show sympathy. We don’t have sympathy when we make the sound of the letter ‘N’. Instead we show antipathy. After that we all stood up and did the letter ‘E’ in eurythmy by raising one hand up in the form of an ‘e’ and having the other hand down at your side. In the afternoon, we played games in circle Hall.
On Friday afternoon we did singing with Jim.