A letter on the world situation

Dear Colleagues,

Do you have time?

I asked our caretaker at the kibbutz.

No, he says.

I asked him, but his answer took 25 minutes.

In the end, he said, “Now you’ve learned how to fix something.”

I replied, yes, and you learned that you always have time.

What actually is time?

That’s the human being! – Isn’t it? His warmth, his mind, his soul, his body.

You take time – means – I give myself time.

Time for my humanity, for you, for other people.

And war? War, Charb, Michama, Guerra…

What is war?

People take time for it. Then it must be important, right?

Especially in war, people don’t take time for themselves, they don’t connect with their humanity, not with other people. You separate…

What does this have to do with music?

Because I know what it’s like when bombs go off near you – there’s a big BANG!

It is not to be expected, it does not build up like a crescendo in music, in Mozart or Beethoven.

No, it’s sudden and unexpected, anxiety-inducing – BAM. In the middle of the night, at breakfast, in the shower.

People are hurt in the process, emotionally and physically.

People leave their time on earth because they die. Their humanity lives on in our time, in our humanity.

This wounded echo lives in us, and from them comes the cry – STOP!

All the people in the war zones are shouting, “Stop it!”

LISTEN TO EACH OTHER.

Listen for your time, for your humanity – listening requires alertness, as in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Little Donkey”, where the second king says: “… he stayed up all night, listening.”

Alertness, the whole person is involved, actively with body, soul and spirit.

And at the end of the fairy tale, it says, “…said the young man. I will stay with you.”

That is my plea – and I think it is also the plea of all people in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Israel, Russia, Palestine and other war zones.

Stay with us – please.

Stay with us for the time it takes to be human.

silence

“A significant impulse in the development of humanity in the age of the consciousness soul must be the growth of interest from person to person.” Rudolf Steiner