Linda Thomas
This article was published in the British journal, Kindling. Contact information is at the end of the article.
When it comes to housekeeping, the concepts of disorder and chaos often get confused. In our households, order is often related to a certain regularity and clarity. I call a room orderly, when everything is in its place and I can easily orientate myself and find my way around without fuss. However, as soon as I start working in the room, or the children start playing around in it, the order very soon turns into disorder. Order seems to have this special quality of merging into disorder without much effort, yet the opposite never occurs. I have to consciously intervene in order to re-establish the lost order.
In the Kabbalah, the story of Creation tells us that God withdrew Himself, thus producing a void. The chaos that arose within this void formed the substance from which the world was then created.
In our homes, we very often face chaos. The mere fact that we have countless ways and means, in which we can structure our daily lives, puts us face to face with chaos. We have the opportunity of purposefully re-establishing order and structure where formlessness and haphazardness have taken over.
EDUCATION AS AN ARTBULLETIN OF THE RUDOLF STEINER SCHOOL ASSOCIATION Vol. 22 Winter, 1962 No.2
From about the age of three children begin to be full of questions, and it is sometimes a matter of great difficulty for their parents to find the right answers to them. Every question demands its own individual answer, but it can be of great value, in deciding what answer to give, to have a clear idea of the kind of answer which is required. For it is altogether wrong to imagine that a little child should be given the same kind of answer as would be suitable for a child of eleven or twelve, but in a simpler form.
Susan Perrow 2015
This article challenges the modern parent to rethink how to celebrate such occasions with simple and creative ideas for gifts – gift ideas that, like a healthy dish of food, can nourish our body and soul
Footbaths help to stimulate the circulation, and have a calming and relaxing effect, allowing time for nurturing and promoting healing within the body. Suitable for anything respiratory or head related, including over thinking, fevers, influenza, ear pain, coughs and colds.Lemon footbaths are also beneficial when someone is well but experiencing, sleep troubles, lacking focus, difficulty settling or unwinding.
Movement is the foundation for all early childhood development. Healthy independent movement and sensory engagement gives children the basis for inner strength and harmony, and for later freedom of thought and action in adulthood.
One parent shares some thoughts about the personal struggles of being with a three year old and having a sense of 'self'.
Kurt Gray is an associate professor of social and moral psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and director of the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding.
The article is published in Psyche, a new digital magazine from Aeon that illuminates the human condition through three prisms: mental health; the perennial question of ‘how to live’; and the artistic and transcendent facets of life.