A Festival of Unbornness— The Journey Toward Birth

by Kathy Neely, Barbara Rosen, Dory Rindge, and Roger Rindge

for the Helen Hecker Group in Santa Barbara.

“Not only do we pass through the gate of death as immortal beings, we also enter through the gate of birth as unborn beings. We need the term unbornness, as well as the term immortality, to encompass the whole human being.” Rudolf Steiner

In the wake of an atmospheric river over much of California’s Central Coast, Mary Stewart Adams and Christine Burke safely made their way to Santa Barbara from Santa Cruz to lead a presentation in the form of an invitation to create a festival on the theme of “Unbornness,” a festival so new it was a challenge for the local anthroposophical group to find words for the advance invitation. It was held in a beautiful classroom at the Waldorf School of Santa Barbara on February 6, 2024.

Because of its newness, Mary and Christine expressed the need for an ongoing creating of such a festival, which was inaugurated in February 2020, in Spring Valley, New York (Mary Thieme and Kathy Neely from Santa Barbara had attended that event). The Festival of Unbornness is meant to be a complement to the All Souls Festival that occurs each autumn, during which we honor loved ones who have died. Celebrated in early February, this time of year marks the halfway point of winter and coincides with the traditional celebrations of Candlemas, Groundhog Day, and the Celtic festival of Imbolc. Rudolf Steiner described this time as the season when all the souls that will come to earth in the coming year are gathered together in the moon sphere. Together, All Souls Day and the Festival of Unbornness honor those going, and those entering, across the threshold.

Christine began by leading us in speech exercises, and then Mary spoke about the importance of this festival as a way of balancing the preponderance of attention usually given those who have died. She described the constellation Cetus (the whale), significant at this time of year, and then told the richly imaginative

Old Testament story of Jonah. A reluctant prophet, Jonah underwent a three-day initiation in the belly of the whale, a womb-like space surrounded by water, that confirmed his destiny as a prophet of the spirit.

Mary added that the very word unbornness rattles the adversarial beings, who would much prefer that human beings consider their Earthly life to be bounded by nonbeing, nothingness, on either side of birth and death.

Christine led us on an equally rich and imaginative journey, dramatically telling a chapter (“Diamond’s Dream”) from George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind . MacDonald (1824 – 1905), a prolific writer, was a mentor to Lewis Carroll, and an inspiration to C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle, among others.

Water plays a part in Diamond’s story as well; it is an entry into the world of Unbornness, as it bathes the steps by which he goes down in order to rise up into the spiritual world. He is a young lad who works hard to help support his family, lightening his day by indulging in whimsy and nonsense verses. He asks his mother if the angels too might speak nonsense poems; she says she couldn’t see why not. Falling asleep at the end of his day, he dreams of cavorting with angels, who look much like boys with tiny budding wings on their shoulders. They dig for stars, and if each happens to find just the right one, he slips through the hole and descends. Importantly, Diamond is described as having learned “to look through the look of things,” a fairly concise picture of anthroposophy.

At the end of the evening, participants were given a small bag containing a candle, a poem, and a golden star, in the hope of creating a sacred space in which to remember our own star, and always to welcome those souls waiting in heaven, who will at last find theirs. One significance of this festival is for us to welcome them back to Earth lovingly. These souls have great courage to come here, and we can dearly hope they are greeted with open hearts upon arrival.

Christine closed the evening with a call-andresponse of MacDonald’s lovely poem “Baby.” Its first two lines:

“Where did you come from, baby dear?

Out of the everywhere into here.”