Images that bear messages

At the Waldorf school my daughters attended, I always received gifts during that dark time of year – moments of calm, anticipation, poignancy. This might be in the year 3 classroom during the bustling Advent bazaar, where some children propelled along little walnut-shell ships bearing a candle using wooden sticks in the room darkened for that purpose. Only the whispering of the children and the softest lyre sounds could be heard. Or during the Advent concert, in which the music teachers succeeded year after year in turning pubescent refuseniks into singers who brought tears of emotion to their parents' eyes.

I will never forget the first nativity play I saw as an adult. The scene in which the angel standing behind Mary takes the newborn baby, visible only in my imagination, from heaven and places it in Mary's lap touched me greatly. An archetype for the miracle of new life, love and the connection of the human being with the divine.

Images make us happy or comfort us, they frighten or scare us. They have power to convey messages to us without words. At Waldorf schools there is a large repertoire of archetypal images that our children and we encounter consciously and casually.