Why live, study and work in a community?
Many people are looking for ways to bring healing to society and to the relationship bentween man and the earth: many are actively working, publicly or in their daily lives for a more peaceful world, and the number of environmentally friendly companies is on the increase.
Big business and large firms bring ever growing wealth to the world, more and more people commit themselves socially and develop an earnest interest in spiritual matters.
Why then, may one ask, is the divide between rich and poor growing? Why do so many people feel lonesome and keep searching for meaning in their lives?
Answers to these and other questions require funda
mental changes in man himself as well as a fundamentally new
approach to life.
Why in a community? Because the required individual abilities and social forms for a community can be trained, through human interaction and trust, in the making of decisions and determining of individual needs. The encounter with others, in the daily tasks and activities, and the interaction between the responsible members of the community, in their weekly meetings, offer an invaluable opportunity to become conscious of one’s own shortcomings and to work to overcome the forces of self-interest.
We found a basis for dealing with the challenges facing mankind, in the writings of Rudolf Steiner, in which he deals with spiritual, social and economic issues, and describes a paths of human self-development, which aid man, earth and the environment. We try to bring to life the wisdom of his insights in all aspects of our work and to develop (new) social forms out of them.
Our focus centers on three fundamental areas:
The spiritual-cultural life: self and world knowledge through individual and joint training.
The rights life: joint responsibility for all rights issues.
The economic life: joint management of funds, money, land, property, cars
The tasks born out of these fields of activity are managed and carried out in the community as a living organism, including members in need of special care, who cannot live by themselves.
The training that we offer was conceived to give people the opportuntiy to learn and to work out such social forms and also to deepend anthroposophical issues.
The community crosses borders: St. Luc was founded in 1979 as the "Secteur Thérapeutique Spécialisé" in the social therapeutical centre Association La Branche near Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Freiheithof near Lake Constance, in Germany, was founded in 1981 and Vaudésy, a house in Dornach, near Basel, in 1986.
There is, in addition an affiliated house in the city of Basel in Switzerland, where this impulse is also carried. More locations are intended.
Who are we?
A group of approx. 30 people of all ages (from 18 on), who joined the community for the above mentioned reasons, and 16 mentally handicapped people, who live with us. We come from many countries and have the most varied professional backgrounds: the arts, farming, medicine, education, technology, industry.