The Burning of the Ephesian Temple and the Goetheanum

One has but to speak these words, and thoughts unutterable surge up in all our hearts and souls. But whenever it has happened in the evolution of mankind that something sacred to that evolution has been torn away, then there have always been a few who have pledged themselves, after the dissolution of the physical, to continue the work in the Spirit, to which the physical was dedicated. And gathered here as we are in the moment that marks the anniversary of the tragic loss of our Goetheanum, we do well to remember that we shall bring our souls into the right attitude for this gathering when we pledge ourselves one and all to bear onward in the Spirit on the advancing wave of human progress that which was expressed in physical form and in physical image in the Goetheanum, and which has been torn away from physical sight by a deed like the deed of Herostratus. Our pain and grief cling to the old Goetheanum. But we shall only show ourselves worthy of having been permitted to build this Goetheanum, if we fulfil the task that yet remains to us, if we take to-day a solemn pledge, each one of us before the highest, the Divine, that he bears within his soul, a pledge to hold faithfully in remembrance the spiritual impulses that have had their outward expression in the Goetheanum that is gone. The Goetheanum could be taken from us: the spirit of the Goetheanum, if so be that in all sincerity we will to keep it, can never be taken from us. It will least of all be taken from us, if in this solemn hour, that is divided by but a short space of time from the actual moment a year ago, when the flames burst forth from our beloved Goetheanum,—if in this solemn hour we not only feel a renewal of our pain, but out of the very pain pledge ourselves to remain loyal to the Spirit to which we erected our Goetheanum, building it up through ten years of work. If this resolve wells up to-day in all sincerity from the depths of our hearts, if we are able to change the pain and grief into the impulse to action, then we shall also change the sorrowful event into blessing. The pain cannot thereby be made less, but it rests with us to find in the pain the urge to action, to action in the Spirit.