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On
Forgetting to Wear Boots by Steve Talbott... Sometimes we
need help from the least capable.
"I have no doubt that Camphill is an expression of a
great intuitive thrust out of the deep heart of nature
which has us in its keeping and knows that both we and it
are in mortal peril". Sir Laurens van der Post
Whenever
friends visit Phyllis and me, one of our favorite places
to take them is the nearby Camphill Village in Copake,
New York. The village is part of a thriving, worldwide
movement for the care of people with special needs. You
will find here villagers with Down Syndrome and a great
variety of other mental handicaps -- all pursuing their
lives in a beautiful, restful, productive, socially
supportive, and artistically rich setting. If there is a
place that can bring healing to a high-tech society,
surely this is it.
Dignity and Laughter
One of the first things likely to strike you about most
any Camphill community (there are more than ninety of
them worldwide, from Ireland to Botswana to India) is the
beauty and craftsmanship evident in the buildings and
their furnishings. Much of the craft work issues from
shops where the villagers are employed -- there are
facilities for weaving, pottery-making, woodworking,
candle-dripping, bookbinding, and jewelry-
making, as well as dairies, bakeries, and gardens. At
Camphill Copake a seed-saving venture has recently gotten
under way, together with an herb garden and a laboratory
for the preparation of herbal remedies and salves. There
is plenty of healthy and fulfilling work to satisfy the
villagers' strong need to contribute something worthwhile
to society.
Camphill villages spring from the same roots as Waldorf
education, and they share the Waldorf emphasis upon an
artistically shaped life. This emphasis extends from the
long, beautifully carved, wooden tables in many of the
living units (where the resident villagers eat regular
meals with their house parents and any children who live
there), to the celebration of seasonal festivals, to the
frequent gathering for artistic performances in an
auditorium that is typically the architectural crown of
the village. (In Copake, pianists Andre Watts and Peter
Serkin are among those who donate their time to perform
for the villagers and staff.) Drama, dance, dramatic
speech, music -- there is always something to bring the
community together in consciousness of the spiritual
background of life in which we all are united. As a
Camphill worker in Great Britain, Sybille Alexander, has
put it, " The atmosphere in the villages is
determined by the recognition of the dignity of each
human being, the inner, spiritual work done by the
leaders -- and, of course, humor, without which the
community life would be unbearable."
I can vouch for the place of humor. A few years ago, on a
slushy winter day, we took a visiting friend for a walk
through the wooded village in Copake. Loafing along a
muddy path, we were overtaken by two of the villagers,
women of older middle age securely bundled up against the
weather and walking to their jobs in the bakery. As they
passed us, they caught sight of our sneakered feet and
broke into a fit of hilarity. "You forgot to put
your boots on!" they exclaimed, pointing and
laughing. We acknowledged our folly and joined in the
merriment. After a brief exchange they passed on ahead,
still laughing and chattering gaily. We cracked up, too,
as we reconstructed their conversation for ourselves:
"Imagine letting people like that in here!"
"Yeah, don't have sense enough to wear boots in the
mud. I bet they wouldn't even come in out of the rain!"
"If you ask me, they're an ace or two short of a
full deck."
Trying to Communicate
More recently, I had a rather different encounter in the
village. The staff had invited me to come speak on
technology as part of a lecture series they were putting
together. Knowing how deeply Camphill workers were in the
habit of thinking about social issues and the human
being, I put together an ambitious and fairly abstract
talk. But when I arrived at the appointed hour in
Fountain Hall, with its high-arching wooden beams and
stained glass windows, I was disturbed to find the
auditorium seats full of villagers.
I expressed my concern to the organizer, explaining that
I had expected to speak only with staff and had not
prepared anything appropriate for the villagers. (Not
that I would have known how to prepare even if I had been
forewarned.) She quietly replied: "Just speak your
real concerns out of heart-felt conviction. That is what
they need. They will hear what is important".
"What is important?" I wondered as I sat down
to await my introduction. Then, at the podium, gripped by
self-doubt, I proceeded to deliver the hour-long talk I
had prepared. "At least", I thought, "only
the staff will be in any position to ask questions
afterward". But when the time came, it was the
villagers who thrust their hands eagerly skyward.
I called first on a lean, intense-looking gentleman in a
suit and tie. Upon being recognized, Robert (whose name I
learned later) stood up and began to speak earnestly
while vigorously gesturing with arms, face, and body. But
nothing came out of his mouth. There was only the sound
of muffled struggle as inchoate words, trapped somewhere
in the man's throat, tumbled over each other on their way
into some deep, internal void.
Yet he spoke with all the vivid force of a hellfire-and-brimstone
preacher, and he began to move from his place as if
carried along by the momentum of his own gestures. He
traversed his row to the aisle and, still gesticulating
with a message urgently demanding expression, began to
approach the podium. Alarmed by the man's almost violent
and growing intensity, I began to wonder whether I might
be in some physical danger -- a puzzling sort of question
to ask while you're looking out over an audience that
seems as serene and undisturbed as ever.
In the actual event, someone rose easily to meet Robert's
advance and gently ushered him back to his seat -- a
guidance he did not resist. Apparently, it seemed natural
to everyone that he should have had his say.
Of course, I owed Robert a reply. So I told him that I
envied his ability to speak with such force and passion,
since my own great limitation lay in my inability to do
so. And it was true. Robert's force of conviction was
fully on display, while his words remained bottled up
inside him. My own intellectual work is in fact driven by
great passion and conviction, but I learned long ago to
choke off any outward expression of feeling. My words
flow freely enough, but their passage into the outer
world is cut off from the furnace of their forging.
Other questions and comments came. One villager told of
enjoying a game of computer solitaire when she visited a
relative's home. Another confided to me afterward that
the questions I raised were so gravely important that he
would carry them into his nightly bedtime meditation.
Some other comments I could scarcely understand --
perhaps because I was not as attuned to what is important
as my audience had been.
Gift-Bearers
Karl Koenig, founder of the Camphill movement, once wrote
that ' I can help my brother only if I see the helper in
him, [and] the receiver of help in me.'
You will find throughout the Camphill movement a strong
sense that people with special needs bring special gifts
to the planet -- perhaps exactly the needful gifts in our
time. These folks can teach us the virtues our culture
has largely disregarded -- for example, the virtue of
attending fully to the person immediately in front of us.
Rose Edwards, a former Camphill worker, once told me,
" I worked for eighteen years with extremely
disabled children, and to this day I can recommend it as
a tremendous background for life. Everything had to be
exaggerated: you have to speak more slowly, be more
patient, plan more carefully, be more present in the
moment."
Her own manner of deliberate, thoughtful speech gave
uncommon emphasis to her testimony. Hearing her words, I
couldn't help thinking of the contemporary habit (often
proclaimed a virtue) of divided attention. I also thought
of the fabled ethic of Silicon Valley, with its pride in
raw efficiency, in supreme technical ability, and in
"don't get in my way or I'll run you down"
aggressiveness. At Camphill the whole point is to allow
the other person to get in our way. That's how we begin
to see him for who he is, and thereby discover something
about who we are -- something other than what our
preferred mirrors tell us.
When you create an environment like that, remarkable
things begin to happen. What often catches people's
attention about Camphill is the extraordinary and
unanticipated development their loved ones undergo there.
Part of this is owing to the special gifts the villagers
bring with them. Koenig has remarked that, while we can
often gain efficiency and speed by ignoring those with
special needs, in some matters they may possess a speed
and ability far surpassing our own. As a writer at the
Camphill in Botton Village, U.K., has put it:
'All kinds of issues can be discussed with far more grasp
by people who are normal, yet the generosity of nature,
the power of commitment to ideals, the capacity of
forgiveness in those with special needs can be
disconcerting to say the least. In the end, living with
people with special needs is living with people and this
is a symphonic task in which, at any time, any instrument
can soar upwards and lead the melody to the accompaniment
of all the other instruments in theorchestra.
Serving the Other
A great deal depends on an environment that supports,
believes in, and encourages individual gifts and
individual development. Koenig describes the "College
Meetings" at Camphills for children, where every
week the staff of a house or entire facility come
together to discuss a particular child. The child's case
history is read, and then the teachers, helpers and
nurses give their reports and impressions of the child in
question. Many symptoms, signs and features are collected
until -- usually under the guidance of one of the doctors
-- the image of the child arises. His habits,
achievements, faults and failures are laid out in such a
way that gradually a complete picture of his
individuality appears.
In this picture the staff find guidance that enables them
to clear a path for the child's continued growth.
All this echoes the way children are assessed in Waldorf
schools, where the College of Teachers will often hold
meetings to discuss the problems and opportunities facing
a particular student. The contrast with the mentality
behind standardized testing could hardly be greater.
Certainly teachers must assess student performance -- and
in the most profound and intimate way possible. The
problem with standardized testing is that it avoids any
such rigorous assessment. It is a hopelessly crude tool,
a means of studied ignorance rather than deep
understanding. And, as a side effect, it removes all
flexibility, the living qualities, from classroom
engagement. When you know in advance exactly what
knowledge the student-container is supposed to hold,
there's not much incentive to attend to the particular
gifts and developmental needs, or the consuming
interests, of the individual learner. Standardized
testing is not student assessment; it is the refusal to
assess.
No student's needs and timing and achievement and
potential can be assessed in exactly the same terms as
another student's. I suspect that, where teachers
willingly acquiesce in the demand for standardized
testing, two factors at work are laziness and fear. It
can be both difficult and disturbing to confront what
lives deeply in another human being. This, of course, is
exactly the burden that Camphill workers take upon
themselves. But the principle of the distinctive
character of the individual is hardly less important in
mainline schools.
Of Accident and Destiny
Whether it accords with our philosophical disposition or
not, most of us have had some sort of an experience of
destiny -- for example, we have (perhaps unwillingly)
felt that a horrific accident or dramatic change in
fortune or a significant personal encounter was somehow
"prepared" for us. What we met on these
occasions was ourselves, or something that belonged to us.
The events were "fated", answering as if by
some hidden intention to a need or potential of ours.
In other words, the accidents were not really accidents;
they were integral to our lives. But, at the same time,
we could not feel ourselves reduced to these strokes of
destiny, for we also stood apart from them; it was we who
chose how to make them into material for further
development. If they were part of us, it was because they
presented us with the opportunity to exercise exactly the
capacities that needed strengthening. All such events
shape us, but they do so most crucially by giving us the
opportunity to transcend them.
Of course, the prevailing, scientifically informed
culture leaves little room for any very significant
reading of these unusually freighted experiences.
Nevertheless, given that the purpose of sound science is
to elucidate experience and not merely to dismiss it, our
inattention to these inklings of destiny is much more
problematic than the effort to bring them into greater
clarity.
But my purpose now is not to argue such matters either
way. Rather, it is merely to point out that, without a
strong sense of human destinies, Camphills would not
exist. What is true of the "external" events of
our lives, Camphill workers will tell you, is also true
of your and my bodies as physical instruments for the
expression of our selves: the instrument of my earthly
existence is not an accident; it belongs to me. But at
the same time, I am not just the instrument. There are
many ways I can use it, and in the using I can to one
degree or another grow beyond its limitations -- grow by
means of its limitations.
It is not hard for us to realize that the crushing,
outward circumstances of life may have kept hidden from
us some of the most powerful, ingenious, and significant
personalities ever to inhabit the earth -- a Mozart,
perhaps, who never laid hands on a piano, a Gandhi whose
crippling accident and unenlightened society left him in
institutional darkness.
What you will find among many Camphill workers is a sense
that this same truth applies to those individuals coping
with the severe constraints of a defective physical
organism. The self whose destiny it is to wrestle with
such daunting limitations may be a self whose hidden
resources and powers of development far exceed those of
its helpers. The close connection between genius and the
breakdown of normal function is well known. We are not
just our handicaps. We are not just our symptoms.
A Parent's Disconcerting Revelation
Carlo Pietzner, who helped found the Camphill movement in
America, has spoken of the experience, both striking and
shattering, when parents realize their child is more than
his symptoms. They suddenly find themselves utterly alone
in a society unable to appreciate their revelation. No
one is prepared to help them understand why there is more
in the child than the symptoms of stammering, stuttering,
not being able to learn to read, not being able to walk,
not being able to feed themselves, to complete toilet
training. Surely, yes, these are the describable
symptoms, the incapacity of the instrument. And yet they
can see and feel that thereis more to it; there is the
player to it. And if there is a player to it, it cannot
be only an accident. This player must have the
possibility of finding a way to play his sonata, however
hollow the instrument may sound, or however many notes
may be missing. (From Questions of Destiny. Slightly
paraphrased.)
Whose life is not a broken song? Camphills are a
testimony to the conviction that even the most troubled
songs need singing -- and more, that these may be, in
their own way, songs of genius, giving voice to some of
the most critical melodies and counterpoints in the sung
destiny of earth itself. As I say, I am attempting no
explicit justification of such a view, remote as it is
from conventional understanding. But Camphills are real
places of practical effectiveness -- remarkable sites of
healing and inspiration exactly where the surrounding
society would be least inclined to look for anything of
much importance. My own inclination, in trying to glimpse
a tolerable social future, would be to look at least as
hard at what is going on in a Camphill village as to look
at the excitements of Silicon Valley.
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