VI. A Lecture for Public School Teachers

When we mention such things, we must always note that human life is a whole. What we plant into the human life of a child often first appears after many, many years as a fitness for life, or as a conviction in life. We take so little note of this because it emerges transformed. Let us assume we succeed in arousing a quite necessary feeling capacity in a child, namely the ability to honor. Let us assume we succeed in developing in the child a feeling for what we can honor as divine in the world, a feeling of awe. Those who have learned to see life’s connections know that this feeling of awe later reappears transformed, metamorphosed. We need only recognize it again in its transformed appearance as an inner soul force that can affect other people in a healthy, in a blessed, manner. Adults who have not learned to pray as children will not have the powers of soul that can convey to children or younger people a blessing in their reprimands or facial expressions. What we received as the effect of grace during childhood transforms itself through various, largely unnoticed, phases. In the more mature stages of life it becomes something that can give forth blessing.