By Michael Thiele, The Melissa Garden
From The Melissa Garden’s “April Greetings” (Apr. 10, 2012)
Anise Swallowtail on Echium (©The Melissa Garden)
Historically, living with bees was ritualized, ensuring harmony between bees and apiculturists. In our de-ritualized world, we face the challenge of finding the means to reconnect with core aspects of life and of finding guidance for being with the bees. In his bee lectures, the Austrian philosopher and spiritual scientist Rudolf Steiner describes the bien (a term defining the bee colony as one being) as being permeated with life based on love. To meet the bien on that level and be touched by it will bring forth a new way of living with bees. The bien can become a metaphor for our interconnectedness with the world and it can make the oneness of our life palpable. Infused by a radical different sense of self, it resonates within the depths of our own hearts. The bees can change our sense of who we think we are and instill in us a wish to serve.
