“Dying touches us all deeply. We all die and so, in our ordinary lives, in the midst of the joys and sorrows we experience, in our work and play, the relations we form, and the children we have, we are continually accompanied—if not consciously then unconsciously—by our own mortality. We are reminded of this daily by loved ones we lose, friends and acquaintances who die, as well as by the myriad anonymous deaths that fill the newspapers, films, and television....

“Truly, there is a great life. Life is boundless; it is greater than our wildest dreams. And we are part of it—forever. What a puny notion it is to believe that meaning and love in the universe are restricted to what we can achieve with our brain and brawn during the few brief years allotted each lifetime on earth!

On the contrary, life goes on, life continues, life is endless. We live it now. We live it every moment. This means that all life is always here, now, and that the dead, as well as the unborn—and the hierarchies of angels and Jesus Christ and Mary and all the divine beings—are always with us, seeking our participation and help in the ongoing work of God in the universe.”

—Christopher Bamford, from his introduction to Staying Connected

Read a brief biography/obituary of Christopher Bamford, SteinerBooks' Editor in Chief Emeritus.

1. The Story of the Root Children

2. Summer (board book)

3. Spring (board book)

4. The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World (CW 110)

5. Water Talks: Empowering Communities to Know, Restore, and Preserve their Waters

6. Spring: A Collection of Poems, Songs, and Stories for Young Children

7. Mistletoe and the Emerging Future of Integrative Oncology

8. Agriculture: Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture (CW 327)

9. Children of the Forest

10. Waldorf Alphabet Book

11. The Flowers' Festival

12. Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution

13. MindShifting: Focus for Performance

14. My First Root Children (board book)

15. Hello Farm, How Do You Do? (board book)

16. Winter (board book)

17. Initiative: A Rosicrucian Path of Leadership

18. Pelle's New Suit

19. Rosalind and the Little Deer

20. How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation (CW 10)

Educating Traumatized Children: Waldorf Education in Crisis Intervention

Reviewed by David Kennedy, Waldorf Today

Our book reviews are arranged many weeks in advance. I had no way of knowing that current events in Europe would make the review of Educating Traumatized Children all the more relevant. 

Teachers and parents will both sense the relevance of this book in the modern educational landscape. Trauma, much as we might hope to relegate it to the purview of special educators and therapists, has become a daily facet of life.

Gone are the days when only one or two children in a class were in need of "special help".

Bernd Ruf found his calling at the time of the 2006 Lebanon War. Since then he has facilitated the development of "Emergency Education". He and teams of teachers, doctors, psychologists, and therapists have taken part in crisis interventions around the world. They work with psychologically traumatized children and young people in war zones and disaster areas. 

Bernd Ruf presents an anthroposophical understanding of trauma itself. There is a an extensive examination of psychological trauma and healing the frozenness of trauma. The book contains many vignettes of their trauma work and concludes with emergency education as threshold education. 

Although the book is written primarily out of the experience of emergency educators in trauma situations, I would imagine that many classroom teachers and parents would find much they recognize in their "normal" world. 

Five stars. Great book.

READ AN EXCERPT: "EMERGENCY EDUCATION"