| 261. Our Dead: Address at the Grave of Marie Leyh
14 Jan 1919, Arlesheim Rudolf Steiner |
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| 261. Our Dead: Address at the Grave of Marie Leyh
14 Jan 1919, Arlesheim Rudolf Steiner |
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After the priest's words of consecration, which should lead the soul of our dear Mrs. Leyh to spiritual heights, may my mouth express what the loving friends, who are standing here for the last farewell to earth, feel for the reception of the spirit in the eternal light. A life of suffering, at least for the last few years, which was full of suffering and pain for her, is over for this earth for our dear Mrs. Leyb. In our hearts, in our souls, there is a glimmer of hope that she will grow up in the realm into which she now enters through the gate of death, from the noble power of endurance, with which she has truly proven herself in the strictest sense of the word here in earthly life, the power to work on those heights and on those paths where, through the will of the divine spirit, man is to work in invisible heights, as he works here through his hands and through his mind in earthly life as in the visible. You, the loving, caring souls who took care of her in her last weeks, in her last days, who shared her suffering with love, who also shared her hopes, her confidence, her spiritual strength and power and love, you looked up with her to those heights, to which she shall now ascend through the strength of her soul. You were united with her in love. You know best what it means to live together with this dear soul, who is only separated from us for the time being. Oh, we may be certain, dear friends, who have cared for her in the last few weeks, in the last few days, that a spark will continue to fly in your souls in the future, emanating from the strength which the dear departed has given you, a source from which something noble will flow for you. And you will feel this nobility, more than a reminiscent togetherness, in a right spiritual life with her. And she will not be lost to you. You will not need to find her, because you will not doubt for a moment that you have her. And looking back, what can the closest dear friends who have cared for her and watched over her in the last months and days say, looking back at what the friends of the wider circle who are here around the earthly resting place have to say, to think? The closest friends said that after our dear Mrs. Leyh had passed through the gate of death, that on the last day of her earthly life, on which so often in a person's life there is a last awakening when the soul's spirit has detached itself from the body, life and zest for life, that she, our dear friend, was able to gather together what her closest friends said, she could summarize in thoughts of her mind, in feelings of her heart, that she turned to the reception of those spiritual truths that had become so dear to her in life, that for everyone who knew her, it is truth, deepest truth - became the strength of life. And you, friends from the wider circle, who were united with her in the common spiritual life, you know that how, even in the last days, when her body could no longer carry the soul to the place where she so gladly lingered, to hear what could be proclaimed with weak words at this place by the spirit, that she let herself be carried when the body could no longer carry the soul that longed for the spirit, that she let herself be carried to what was allowed to be spoken about the spirit. Yes, in some of us, dear grieving friends, there was something like concern. She wanted to leave the place of external physical healing, where she had been lovingly cared for by loving friends during the last months of her life, because she could not find healing for her body. She believed, in her pure, strong, childlike and at the same time pure and strong spiritual faith, that she was receiving the healing of the message in which she sought to perceive the Spirit. So she looked from the place of physical healing to what was for her the place of spiritual healing. And the friends, who might have felt some concern about her leaving her physical place of healing, could only be reassured by the fact that the doctor was able to follow her and take care of the physical healing as well, since the dear departed only wanted to seek what would trickle into her soul and heart like a spiritual and soully balm for life. Now we all look back on this life in that which we can believe was the deepest thoughts, the most intimate feelings of this soul, this heart. We look back on a life of which we may truly believe that it had struggled through to three sacred convictions that had connected its earthly being with the realm into which its soul, its spirit, is now going. And the first truth, she had probably drawn from her knowledge of the illness that was allotted to her in such abundance. From her noble life of suffering she knew illness of the body. But we may believe that she knew that there can be an illness that is worse for human salvation and human goal than any other illness of the body, that illness that could only come from a destroyed body, but which often works insidiously, even through deception as well as truth, that disease which does not allow man to recognize that out of all weaving, out of all striving, working and being, it is precisely the human body in the orbit of earthly existence that speaks the eternal, only great truth: the body of man proclaims the divine being and working in the deepest, most earnest way. The greatest illness that could affect the physical body would be to develop a mind that wanted to deny this. This was probably the first conviction that this life had come to through illness. And the second of her basic convictions was probably that she knew: however healthy this body may be, however healthy the body may be from birth to death, there is one thing it needs when it calls even the greatest health its own, it needs one thing: that awakener, which always reminds the soul of its spiritual origin when it must feel too tied to the perishable body. By turning to the spirit, by accepting the spiritual word, she had come to know Him, that great awakener of the soul, who gives the soul the strength to know: When you go through the gate of death, I, the Christ, who is with you, in you, for you, will lead you to the light of the spirit. Through the passage through the mystery of Golgotha, who, by conquering death, has gained for man the power to be awakened in death with the light of the spirit, to pass through the dark gate of death. Truly, modesty was your own, dear friend. You truly did not ascribe superhuman powers to yourself. You were not inspired by blind pride and vain arrogance; you knew your weaknesses. But you would never have been able to forgive yourself if you had had to call a weakness your own, that weakness of spirit that is dullness and stupor and which does not allow one to see up to the eternal reign of the Holy Spirit itself through all human weaving and human will, through all natural work and natural forces. God the Father you had won for yourself by knowing that God the Father would not be recognized as man's strongest earthly disease. You had won God, the Son, the Christ, by trying to interweave your soul with the power of the living word that speaks of eternal bliss. You had won God, the Holy Spirit, by feeling obliged to strengthen your soul so that it could not fall prey to the weakness and dullness that says: There is no spirit. Now you have passed from a life that has achieved this, through the gateway of death. If we are to bid you farewell, let it be only the farewell that is at the same time the greeting in the spirit. The close friends who surrounded her in the sorrowful months, sorrowful weeks and sorrowful days, the wider circle of friends who are now looking up, how the spirit wants to receive them for further work, will never forget the dear face of our dear Mrs. Leyh, that dear face that for years has looked at us as if all the inner waves of human striving, of human longings, were smoothed out on this dear face. Pure harmony was poured out over this face, which will be unforgettable in its own essence. And let us remember the look, that strangely yearning, searching look, turned towards the riddles and secrets of the world, which looked so peculiarly beyond the immediate things and matters of life, and which seemed as if it wanted to send the heart's yearning out beyond all this, to the eternal reasons for existence. And we will never forget the sound of your voice, dear friend, which overflowed with a true ray of light and true human love. We have heard it through the years. And then we saw you in the last days of your suffering and endurance: suffering had only poured out the peculiar aroma of the eternal over your harmonious face, it had only placed the spiritual-soulful internalization in your soul-searching gaze and it had sunk into your voice, which sounded so mild to us, that mysterious, enigmatic tone, which is often sunk into human voices by suffering and out of which the undertone of the divine and eternal can be heard, which can resound through all the temporal and transient aspects of the human being, even when we are confronted with an earthly human being. That is how we saw you. What spoke from your countenance will not be lost on us. We will know ourselves united with it for all more distant times, for it has so seized us that you are not lost to us. Your gaze will live in us. And we will remember this gaze. It will quicken in us that which longed from this gaze toward the eternal, where we will seek you in order to be united with you. The sound of Your voice will resound in us and remind us that You shall not be abandoned, but shall live on, united with us in spirit, as we will feel obliged to do when the opportunity presents itself to be united with You in these days of Your spirit and soul, as we were united with You in Your days on earth. This, not a farewell greeting, shall be the last, this greeting of the spirit shall be what rises to you from the depths of the human heart, from which the human spirit may speak to the world spirit by seeking the souls that pass through the gate of death before the world spirit, when it calls them to a work that could not be completed here in physical earthly existence. And so we call after you, dear Frau Leyh, with this greeting of heart and spirit: They follow your flight of the spirit In soul union To spiritual will goals. |
| 261. Our Dead: Eulogy at the Grave of Johanna Peelen
12 May 1920, Arlesheim Rudolf Steiner |
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| 261. Our Dead: Eulogy at the Grave of Johanna Peelen
12 May 1920, Arlesheim Rudolf Steiner |
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Arlesheim, May 12, 1920 Now that the priest has escorted this dear soul into the realm of the spirit, I would like to express the feelings of those who are here as mourners:
Yes, we found You. It was many years ago, back then You came and united Yourself with us. You had seen the suffering of many people, You had seen the striving of many people, the joy of many people, the work of many people, their disappointments. You came with the sincere feeling that there must be a light that would shine into it, not only comforting, but also enlightening in the confusion of life, in the struggles of existence. Probably more of the suffering had made an impression on your soul at the time than people's happiness. You connected with us, we may say so, out of your Christian heart, Christian mind. Above all, you had learned to find mercy for all human beings, for all human suffering. You had found the way to take human joy not from the surface of existence, but to lead it to the depths of the world's feelings. Your Christian spirit, which accompanied you from childhood until your death on earth, is living proof that what you found in our ranks cannot be un-Christian. You brought us a real, true, justified knowledge of the resting of the human soul in the divine spirit in your deeply feeling soul. You knew you were safe in the nature of Christ, you walked in the nature of Christ, you died in the nature of Christ. We found you again and again on our journey through life within our aspirations. We found you in the circle of friends on the Rhine, we found you there, how you were sun through the mild kindness, through the loving power of your nature, to the circle of friends there. And then we saw how You, loving and blissful, went to Your life companion's side, and how he, loving and blissful, went to Your side. We stand here with You if the pain of these days can be alleviated a little for him through the awareness that we sincerely and deeply share his suffering with him; he may truly have this awareness. He may have it because we have it from the knowledge of His own nature. We have seen You in the days when You were allowed to alleviate human suffering through Your willingness to make sacrifices in many cases. We have seen You how You were happy when You were also able to direct human joy to where human joy can deepen into the spiritual, into the soul world. Out of this realization of Your nature, we love You and will always remain united with You. You have gone through difficult hours with us. You were united with us in hours when we were confronted with the most difficult, one may say world-historical moments. You then found yourself reunited with us here in this circle, where you were once again able to radiate happiness and spirit through your loving, mild soul. We then had to experience how your soul, tired of the body, merged with earthly life here. But just as your entire mild soul nature rose in a bright vision to the divine spiritual existence, as your heart's strength rose forever to what the Christ had prescribed as a human being on earth, so you were strong and powerful when earthly suffering embraced you. And there will be a deep, meaningful feeling in the soul of those who knew You better, as You foresaw Your earthly end, prophetically foresawing almost to the week when it occurred, spoke about this change in Your Being from the conviction of Your divine origin, from Your consciousness of living in Christ, comprehending death as a change of life, already sensing in earthly existence the worlds of spiritual being. Thus, in your deepest being, you were suffering and yet happy at the same time. We saw a happy man, in deep suffering, happily finding his way out of the narrowness of life into the vastness of the spirit, into the expanses of the soul. Thus You will live in all of us forever; thus our thoughts will illuminate You when they seek You. And they will seek You in the spiritual worlds that You had aspired to during Your earthly existence, that You had found and will continue to find from this day forward. We will seek You and we will find You because we love You. And You will find, from the consciousness of Your divine origin, from the consciousness of Your life in Christ, You will find the life in which Your soul will resurrect in the vast light of the Spirit, who shines through the world, to whom You have longed to live, in whom You will continue to live. That which united us with you is not a weak earthly bond, it is the bond that spiritual knowledge binds for eternities. So we will seek you, so we will find you, knowing that you have lived, aware of your resting in the divine bosom of the world, aware of your walking until your death on earth, through your death on earth and further beyond into the paths that Christ has laid out for earthly life, has laid out for the human being, has laid out for all human thinking and all human feeling. You will find yourself resurrected in spirit, and we will see you there as ours in the eternities.
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