We are pleased to announce that we are now taking applications for our 2022-2023 Internships ! You can read more or begin the application process, here.


The Pfeiffer Center and its farming collaboration with The Fellowship Community offer a three-month Summer Farm Internship and a nine-month Extended Farm Internship. Successful completion of the Summer Farm Internship is a prerequisite to be considered for the Extended Farm Internship. Together, the two internships offer a complete farming experience, from planning to planting to harvest, at a busy, diversified, community-based biodynamic farm. Interns will have an opportunity to learn the principles and practices of the biodynamic method of agriculture and land care on a Market-garden, field-scale vegetable production, and within Rockland County's only operating Dairy. Interns will also practice cow care and milking, handling and distribution of raw milk, pasture management, horse care, greenhouse care, composting techniques, and much much more. Based upon the three pillars of education, care of the land, and agricultural production in service to the community, our farm has nine acres under cultivation, 39 acres of pasture and hay, the only dairy herd in Rockland County, NY, a team of draft horses, and an apiary, all centered in a community of people and institutions working from the insights of Rudolf Steiner. Our produce and dairy products supply the Fellowship Community’s 150 members and co-workers, a 30-share CSA, and local outlets such as Threefold Café and the Hungry Hollow Co-op.


The Pfeiffer Center’s educational programs for adults include the One-Year Part-Time Training in Biodynamics and one-day workshops. Along with milk and produce, our farm provides our community with a rich festival life and opportunities to be involved in the life and work of the farm. Our biodynamic land-care practices foster a farm individuality that can receive wisdom and guidance from the biodynamic preparations, trace substances and vital forces from the air and soil, cosmic influences, and the activity of the elemental beings.

We encourage you or anyone you think may be interested to apply. We look forward to reading your submissions, and please feel free to email info@pfeiffercenter.org with any questions. Submissions are due by March 15.

How do trust, warmth and autonomy arise in the interaction between adult and child?

International early years conference on pregnancy, birth and early childhood

June 15-18, 2022 at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland

Dear Colleagues,Always when we have a sense of insecurity and fear, the danger is greatest that we will lose precisely the gaze that Matisse reminds us of in this short sentence. Yet taking account of the perspective and needs of the small child are so crucial for the world of tomorrow. The child in this phase of life is as open as a sensory organ, all impressions "trickle" deeply into them and are formative.
It is becoming increasingly clear how strongly the maternal experience and the professional support during pregnancy and birth affect the child. In the first phase of life, the parents have the greatest influence on the child. For us as educational and medical professionals, it is important to always be aware of this and to work accordingly.
Many parents are searching anew for their path and the longing for inner security and a meaningful context for the big questions makes itself felt. Parents at the beginning of their journey are very exposed, vulnerable and often insecure. But one of their characteristics is also that – as described by Matisse – they suddenly rediscover the world as if through the eyes of their child.

• What skills do we professionals need in order to avoid shutting down this space of wonder with hasty routine and the corresponding answers, and instead to support the great opportunity of change in parenthood?
• How do we inspire parents to give their children the right tools for their healthy development and for the challenges of the world of tomorrow?
• How do we succeed in making space for the resilience-creating factors of attachment and security and actively promote them from the very beginning?
• How can we reduce anxieties, strengthen confidence and enable the experience of self-efficacy?

The early phase of life is shaped to a very great extent by the mood of the people who form the surroundings at the beginning. The Covid-19 pandemic has particularly affected parents and children all over the world and has made us even more aware of the importance of protecting this phase of life. Therefore the CARE I working group of the Medical Section (Pregnancy, Birth and Early Childhood) has also launched the campaign "Here you can thrive". Our attention belongs to the child and we protect its developmental space.
We are delighted that it will be possible in 2022 for us to meet internationally at the Goetheanum, share our experiences, strengthen our relationships, and work together on central questions about the healthy development of the young child. Please also mention the conference to people from other professional groups around you who are interested in this topic.
We have reorganised the 2022 programme so that the two lunches are a fixed part of it and are included in the conference fee. We would like to use these meals together as a meeting place for the different professional groups and nationalities.
For the preparatory group of the CARE I working group, the Medical Section and the Pedagogical Section, 

Ina von Mackensen
Working Group for the child of the German Association of Waldorf Kindergartens

Georg Soldner
Medical Section at the Goetheanum

Click here to read the informative 20 page conference brochure.

Catherine Read, PhD takes on homeschooling with the Waldorf Curriculum in her new book The Genius of Home. She brings readers through the journey of how she made the 12 year-curriculum her own. Throughout the book Dr. Read carefully notes just how this path of education was an opportunity for the soul life not only of her children but their entire family. View on YouTube.

From notes taken at a lecture by Virginia Sease, PhD, at the Waldorf School of Princeton, on December 12, 2010, commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Princeton Group. Dr. Sease is a member of the Executive Council  (Vorstand) at the Goetheanum. in Dornach, Switzerland.

Rustic Nativities 

Rudolf Steiner received his initial impressions of Christmas from the festive atmosphere of the Austro Hungarian villages in the latter nineteenth century of his childhood. As Christmas approached, these neighborhoods were suffused by a mood he later described as magical breath that filled the homes and streets with joyful, hopeful anticipation. Even the poorest peasant householders would dedicate a corner of their dwelling to a crèche populated by wooden figures they carved themselves to represent the Holy Family and its pastoral or regal visitors, and above the scene always hovered an ingeniously suspended angel protecting the domestic setting of miraculous newborn. 

As a boy, Rudolf Steiner enjoyed repeated opportunities to view such humble vignettes when visiting his neighbors. In light of Steiner’s towering cultural innovations, we can easily forget that the rural working-class comprised the social milieu of his upbringing. As an adult, he spoke of his sympathy (which today we might term empathy) with the proletariat as a natural result of having grown up among them. 

The villagers of Steiner’s childhood went further than decorating their homes to welcome Christmas, celebrating the Nativity not only in consecrated space but also in dramatic time: The peasants enacted traditional seasonal pageants centered around the two archetypal narratives; every Christmas Eve they re-enacted the biblical stories of the Creation of the World, the Temptation of Adam and Eve, and the Expulsion from Paradise, and on Christmas Day the story of the Shepherds as recounted in the Gospel According to St. Luke. 
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Seventeen Austin Waldorf High School students created Winter Fair chalkboard drawings in the first to fourth grade classrooms

Paintings by Laura Summer, Poems by Mary Szybist

From Laura: In this time of extreme experiences and questions of polarity, fear, silence, justice and community I am grateful to have worked with the poetry of Mary Szybist. These poems have opened new perspectives for me and washed old ways of thinking out, replacing them with complex tones of meaning and relationship.
 
These paintings were created from January through August 2021. I chose a poem for each month that spoke to me about the feeling of that month. Unexpectedly each poem generated two paintings. I am very grateful for having started this work not knowing where it would take me and having to trust the flow of creative force.
 
I am deeply grateful to Mary Szybist for her poetry, her support and her willingness to have a painter work with her poems.
 
All poems are from Incarnadine by Mary Szybist, copyright 2013. Reprinted with permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org
 
May these poems and paintings accompany you through 2022, bringing you light and life.  Calendars can be ordered from LULU. Use code SAVE30 at check out to receive 30%off.

“Nature is the standard of beauty,” said Emerson, and the Nature Institute website is displaying some beautiful fall foliage at the moment. Alongside that are words of H.D. Thoreau which may be helpful in connection with the previous paragraphs:

“The question is not what you look at, but how you look and whether you see.”

How you look. Whether you see. The metaverse will not be prevented, but it will help us to withstand its unwise motives if we can look at it in the right way. What is this new reality? What does it intend to do for us, or to us? How will it do that? What will we gain by overcoming its seductions?

The other encompassing challenge today is the global pandemic, and the Institute site offers “Ways of Looking at a Virus: Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic” by Jon McAlice and Craig Holdrege. This outstanding “long read” (an expression drawn from the attention-shortening power of our artificial mass media) is worth your time and attention.

Returning to the Institute’s front page, there are several other offerings of the highest quality. A new foundation year program coming. A new monograph—the more traditional term for long read—from Craig Holdrege: “Living Perenniality — Plants, Agriculture, and the Transformation of Consciousness.” Buy it in print or download a free PDF. Plus a new podcast episode which explores posing the question, “Who are you?” to animals.

In January Henrike Holdrege will lead a course, “Taking Appearances Seriously — Visual Experience and the World of Light, Darkness, and Color” for the M.C. Richards Program. Doesn’t that sound like a direct response to this metaverse project? And there is a video of a talk by Steve Talbott on the matter of purpose in evolution, and a new chapter for his book in progress, Evolution As It Was Meant To Be. This is a battle that Steve has been fighting quite tenaciously for living, receptive thinking about life.

Finally, there is a short video on the Nature Institute’s mission, asking “the fundamental question, ‘Do we really see the world?’” It is both confounding and inspiring to behold this tiny team in Ghent, New York, working with such care and penetration to awaken us to the sublimity of nature, maya, at just the moment when a corporation worth a thousand billion dollars and hosting two billion customers, and controlled by one man, has turned to summon us into an artificial replacement for nature.
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Do spend some time at www.natureinstitute.org

November 12-13

Keynote Speakers:

Anjum Mir- "Care for the Child in These Times"
Experiences in the early years build a child’s foundational perception of the world and bring them into relationship with themselves and with other human beings. The bedrock rhythms and routines that support this critical   development have been disrupted by the insecurity of these times and the changes they have necessitated in the way we live. They have deeply impacted the child’s development in predictable ways that we can already observe and in long term outcomes that have yet to reveal themselves. What insight can we take from the healing tools of Waldorf Education and our constantly evolving understanding and observation of the child’s needs, to care for children that are just beginning their lives during this uncertain time? 

Dagmar Eisele- "Care for the Classroom Environment
In our uncertain world, how do we ensoul our classrooms in support of the wellbeing of the child? Our loving care of the classroom environment aims to foster a sense of security, harmonious order and consistency. The young child unconsciously experiences the intentions, artistry and meaningful care that imbue the space, enhancing the powers of imitation and supporting the child's feeling, "the world is good'.

Sage Nunutsi Otterson- "Care for the Child in Nature"
Caring for the child in nature safely brings about familiarity with the natural elements of water, earth, air and even, upon occasion, fire. A hands-on connection with nature can bring a sense of unity as well as a growing courage and trust in oneself to engage with the world. Four early childhood practices of the Tsalagi (Cherokee) can be found mirrored in Waldorf Early Childhood education and can provide practical inspiration for modeling and introducing caring activities. These practices include formal address of nature ( inclusive of blessing ), the practice of closely tending bodily needs, the practice of giving over something which starts a cycle of reciprocity, and the practice of daily appreciating the beauty of nature.

Ken Smith- "Care for the Community"
The picture of our era that we have from Rudolf Steiner is of an increasingly strong experience of individualism and a corresponding increasing need to deliberately, consciously work to build a healthy social life and be awake to the anti-social forces that are everywhere entering into our relationships. The recent increase in our use and dependence on digital technology has highlighted the need for us working in school communities to pay attention to the changing conditions of the human soul life.

For more information, visit bacwtt.org.

An experimental study coordinated by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) showed, for the first time in the world, that the immune system of daycare children of three to five years improved its regulation when forest undergrowth, lawn turf and planter boxes were added to yard areas of daycare centres.

A high level of hygiene, an urban lifestyle and an insufficient contact with nature reduce diversity in the organ system’s microbes. Homogeneity in microbes increases the risk of disorders in the immune system, such as atopy, diabetes, the coeliac disease and allergies.

Dozens comparative studies have previously found that children who live in rural areas and are in contact with nature have a lower probability of catching an illness resulting from disorders in the immune system. A recent study shows that repeated contact with nature-like elements five times a week diversified the organ system’s microbes that offer protection against diseases transmitted through the immune system in daycare children. “This recently published study of daycare children is the first in which these changes offering protection against diseases have been found when adding diversified aspects of nature to an urban environment”, says Aki Sinkkonen, research scientist at Luke, who led the study published in Science Advances. More ...