A letter on the world situation
For the opening of the international conference on 02.10.2024
by Srulik Sivan, Israel
Dear colleagues,
Do you have time?
I asked our housekeeper in the kibbutz.
No, he says.
I did ask him and his answer took 25 minutes.
At the end he said, now you’ve learned to repair something.
I replied, yes, and you’ve learned that you always have time.
What actually is time?
It’s the human being! – Isn’t it? His warmth, his spirit, his soul, his body.
You take time – means – I give myself time.
Time for my humanity, for you, for other people.
And war?
What is war?
People take time for it. Then it must be important, right?
Especially in war, people don’t take time, they don’t connect with their humanity, with other people. They disconnect …
What does that have to do with music?
For I know what it’s like when bombs fall close to you – there’s a big BOOM!
It’s not to be expected, it doesn’t build up like a crescendo in music, like Mozart or Beethoven.
No, it’s sudden and unexpected, spreading fear – BOOM.
In the middle of the night, at breakfast, under the shower.
People are hurt, mentally 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 on in us, and from them comes the cry – STOP!
All the people in the regions of war are crying out STOP!
STOP AND LISTEN – to each other.
Listen carefully to your time, to your humanity –
listening requires alertness, as in the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale “The Little Donkey”,
where the second king says: “he stayed awake all night and listened”.
Wakefulness, the whole person is involved, active 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 request – and I think it is also the request of all people in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Israel, Russia, Palestine and other war zones.
Stay with us – please.
Stay with us with your time to be human.
Silence
“An essential 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
by Srulik Sivan, Harduf, Israel