12 Dec General Secretary’s Letter – December 2017
Dear Friends,
At the beginning of September, Christiane Haid, head of the Section for Literature and the Humanities at the Goetheanum, paid a visit to Montreal. She gave two lectures, one on Faust and the second on the role of the Section for Literature and the Humanities. Christiane explained how Rudolf Steiner had insisted on the importance of the “belles lettres”, stating that aesthetics, in the fields of language and of artistic creation, played an essential role in linking the world of matter to the world of spirit. This has become particularly true for our consciousness soul era. The work of the Section aims towards finding a new aesthetics for our time in the way Schiller and Goethe attempted to do for their era. We sense how language has lost its connection with the spirit world; examples abound in which language is considered to be merely a means of communication and can therefore be used as a tool for propaganda, for spreading lies and for exerting control over entire groups of people.
The role of the Section for Literature and the Humanities
This Section is now active in several countries. At the Goetheanum, it organizes various lectures and conferences each year. The work of the Section focusses specifically on the following areas:
- Presenting the importance of Rudolf Steiner’s work as an essential integrative science for our 21st
- The study of ancient civilisations in the context of universal cultural and spiritual evolution.
- Actively encouraging creative production in the fields of poetry and literature.
- And finally, the fourth field of research of this Section focusses on the components of language itself. Indeed, the origins of language are connected to the forces of creation, to the divine Logos. The work of the Section strives therefore to renew our relationship to language in the above-mentioned fields, and indeed in all spheres of social endeavour.
Following Christiane’s visit, a group has been formed in Montreal with the intention of meeting regularly to organize events and carry out research in connection with the Section for Literature and the Humanities. It is hoped that this impulse will spread to other members elsewhere across the country.
The November meeting of the Collegium of the School of Spiritual Science
Since the Michaelmas conference held in September, 2016, the Foundation Stone Meditation has been suggested to all members as a tool for taking up the challenges facing the General Anthroposophical Society in the near future. The theme for 2017-2018, as you are aware, focusses on Light and Warmth for the Human Soul.
How can we develop our capacity for peace through working with the Foundation Stone Meditation, now that it has been 100 years since the idea of social healing through a threefold social order was brought forward by Rudolf Steiner?
The year’s theme concentrated on working with the first panel of the Mediation: Practice spirit recollection.
Our 3-day meeting took up this thread as we looked forward to the year 2023 and directed our attention to the following themes:
Firstly: how can we strengthen the School of Spiritual Science? Throughout the years, the School and the Anthroposophical Society have gradually been growing apart. Emphasis will now be put on Rudolf Steiner’s original intention, that of placing the School in a central position, so that its impulse can then become a source of inspiration for the various Sections.
A “research action” group was formed to collect knowledge stemming from the results of meditative work and to explore how these can then complement each other, particularly in the fields of education, medicine and agriculture.
Another project, concerning the work of the General Anthroposophical Section, consists in supporting the study and teaching of anthroposophy. It is a question of promoting the collaboration between the different Sections, the various initiatives and society at large. To help in this, there was also put forward a plan to enhance the quality of communication with the School. A final aspect is the urgent need to manage the economic situation of the Goetheanum and a plan to create a true partnership with the nearly 30,000 institutions working according to the indications of anthroposophy.
The theme for 2018-2019 will once again take its inspiration from the Foundation Stone Meditation. Although the final wording is still to be determined, it will centre around the second panel of the meditation.
We also spoke of the motion to rehabilitate both Ita Wegman and Elisabeth Vreede. Swiss laws are being thoroughly examined so that the legal process can be final and transparent. The members present at the last general assembly had already approved this process as representing an essential healing gesture for the General Anthroposophical Society. At the AGM next March, the Executive Committee should be able to announce the results of the process and allow the decision to be finalized.
Symposium with the leaders of the Christian Community.
Each Fall, the Collegium of the School of Spiritual Science holds a retreat with representatives of the Christian Community. This year, the General Secretaries were also invited to join the gathering to explore the following questions: How can we experience a Christlike quality in our work in the outer world? and, What do we mean when we speak of guidance coming from the spirit? This gathering unfolded in an atmosphere of warmth as we worked together in small groups.
Our personal relationship with the Christ determines whether or not a Christlike atmosphere is present. It comes to be when we are truly open to one another and when we discover the true nature of the other person. These experiences can be special moments in which we begin to build a temple together. We can experience how the meeting of an “I” with another “I” can be raised to a higher level in situations of mortality, artistic creation or great suffering. The complexity of the themes explored allowed us to make a step forward towards an eventual collaborative effort. How then can the Society and the Christian Community mutually support one another while at the same time respecting their distinct approaches?
Prospects for 2018
In taking the second panel of the Foundation Stone Meditation as its leitmotiv for the theme of the year, the General Anthroposophical Society is directing its attention not only to commemorating its founding, but also to looking towards the future in an attempt to be able to respond to the needs of the world. The next Annual General Meeting will be held at the Goetheanum from the 22nd to the 25th of March, 2018. It will take place in a festive atmosphere supported by a conference for which the working title is: On what foundations can we build the future of the Anthroposophical Society?
The second panel of the Foundation Stone Meditation –
Human soul!
You live within the beat of heart and lung
Which leads you through the rhythms of time
Into the feeling of your own soul-being:
Practice spirit-sensing…
This part of the Meditation urges us to consider our relationship to our own selves and to the world. This spirit-sensing through the rhythms of time becomes a gesture of healing. Finding the balance between the “I” and the “I” of the World “In balance of the Soul” can be seen as an archetype of the breathing process. A balance in which “The Christ-will encircling us holds sway”. And the world has great need of this healing. The Christmas season is a time eminently suited to introspection, to gazing deeply into our own souls in order to deepen our connection with the universe. May this contemplation support us in whatever we choose to undertake in 2018.
My best wishes to all for an inspiring Christmas.
Arie van Ameringen
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