This is your treasure and your wealth. It will free you of all care. You will be close to nature. You will live with the flowers and the birds, and you will not worry about your clothes or food. You will be one with the birds that find their food, and in harmony with the flowers that are clothed more beautifully than any vain men or women.
- Eberhard Arnold
- Eberhard Arnold, January 1920 From an EssayJustice and love demand that everyone take part in simple practical work with a spade, hatchet, or rake. Everyone should be ready to devote a few hours every day to this practical work; those who have done purely mental work till now will feel its humanizing effect especially. In this way it will be possible for each person’s unique gifts to be kindled. The light that flickers within each heart will then exhibit its once-hidden glow in scholarly research or in music, in expressive words, or in the craftsman’s art in wood, stone, or paint…such work will reveal the joy in life that is in each person. Only death knows idleness and tedium. Where there is life, the mind’s creative will remains alert and comes to expression in the service of the whole.
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Jesus tells us not to gather riches on this earth, but to gather the fortune found in love. Let your whole fortune be love, so that wherever you go hearts will open to you. You will be met with hatred because you bring justice, and you will be persecuted and hounded to death for not taking part in injustice. But you will be received with great love in huts which are open for you, and you will be taken in because you bring love.
- Eberhard Arnold
Therefore we take no active part in politics or in the use of violence. We make no concessions, we refuse to get involved; but we are not indifferent. Every politician interests us, whoever he may be. And we wish everyone in politics could hear about us and realize that there is a life of justice and peace, where people have joy in one another. We wish that all policy-makers might be guided by these goals and not stray too far from the way of peace and justice.
- Eberhard Arnold, March 1935