Anthony’s Blog January 23, 2015

Anthony’s Blog January 23, 2015

Art Week

This week in our special Monday morning circle, we began our five day art week. To start off, Patricia told us that we will be doing art for one whole week leading up to Carlo Pietzner’s 100th birthday. Carlo was one of the founders of Camphill in Scotland, and then came to America to found Camphill in the early sixties. After that we sang three songs, ‘We Three Kings,’ ‘January Round,’ and ‘Battle Gestures’, which was composed to lyrics Carlo wrote. Patricia told us that Carlo loved all kinds of art. Then Patricia introduced us to Laurel’s sister and then we welcomed back our good friend Scott who has been recovering from an operation.

Then Patricia did speech with us. She told us a story about how she wakes Susan up in the morning. When she wakes up Susan, she opens the blinds and then Susan opens one eye and sees a little light and then she opens the other eye and she sees the sun shining through her window. Then we practiced saying words with light in them like: sunlight, moonlight, starlight and candlelight. After that John talked about the theme of the day which was light. He told us that there are many different kinds of lights. We can see sunlight, moonlight, starlight, candlelight, camera light and firelight.

Then we went into our five art groups which were art, sculpture, charcoal,
felting and transparencies.

Tuesday morning, Patricia’s speech lesson had to do with the theme of the day which was darkness. She read to us a poem and we repeated all the words like ‘swiftly wall over the western wave, spirit of night.’ We also recited the lines from our Shepherd’s play “God bless the sun and the moon and the stars of the night, and God bless the darkness that makes them so bright”. Then Felix told us that the color black is not a real color but instead it is a mixture of all different colors. He also said that there is no real darkness because light does shine through.
Felix, Helena, Bridget, Laurel and John did eurythmy while Patricia read this week’s verse.

On Wednesday morning, some of the companions practiced their bell playing for Thursday evening. After that Patricia created a poem with us that had to do with light and darkness. On the left side of the room everybody repeated the words of lightness and on the right side of the room everybody repeated the words of darkness. Then some of the co-workers did the Soul Calendar verse in eurythmy.

During our lunch break, we were introduced to our new co-worker, Golnaz.

In a special Thursday morning college, Patricia reminded us of the ‘’light and dark.’ Patricia reviewed most of the lines and then she added two more lines to the poem which were morning light, and twilight. Then Patricia added, God bless the sun, the moon, the stars and the darkness that makes them so bright. After that we spoke about the theme for the day which was how the light enters into darkness. Daniel told us the story about when he was twenty years old. He used to live in Florida. One day Daniel and his friend were on a boat on the ocean. When he saw a turtle swimming in the water, he wanted to reach out and touch it but he couldn’t because the turtle swam down into the deep water. So Daniel decided to follow him down and as he went down into the darkness, he could see beautiful yellow water above him. He swam further down to the very bottom where the water turned very dark black. He could easily touch the turtle and then both Daniel and the turtle swam back up to the clear blue water where the light was shining.
Then Aiden told us the story about how one time the earth was nothing but darkness, but then a raven came down and brought the light from the sun and the earth was no longer covered in darkness.
William told us about an eclipse, the moon covers the sun, it becomes a lot darker and colder than normal.

In the evening our family and friends came to Circle Hall for the West Coast Art gathering. Patricia welcomed everybody and told them what we have been doing during this week’s art program. Lorna’s bell choir performed two songs composed by Mozart. Then Patricia talked about Carlo, the founder of Camphill.

On Friday morning, Patricia introduced us to visitors from California Camphill and Glenora Farm Camphill in Duncan. After that we presented our poem about light and darkness. Then Jason presented the new theme light through darkness by leading us in an experiment using only water and light. He showed us how the light was a clear white color when we looked at it through the clear water. When the water was dark, the light became yellow. Next he did the very same thing with a candle. The flame of the candle was yellow to start off but then it turned orange when we looked through the cloudy water.

On Friday afternoon, we gathered into Circle Hall where all five groups presented their work to our visitors. Each leader from each group talked about what they did and then everybody walked around to look at each workshop’s art.