30 Mar General Secretary’s Spring Letter
Dear Friends,
In preparation for our Encountering our Humanity conference, I have been meeting with the various artists and performers who will be taking part in the event. While en route for the North American Collegium meeting in Kimberton, I made a stop in Spring Valley to finalise the plans for the eurythmy troupe’s performance at the conference in August. Sea-Anna Vasilas, who is in charge of planning the group’s tours, had just returned from China, where the troupe had performed with great success in several cities as well as in Taiwan.
For the Ottawa conference, the troupe’s main piece will be an excerpt from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, planned to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the great poet’s death in 1616. Shakespeare’s exploration of all the facets of the human soul has a direct connection with the overall conference theme of the universal human.
Youth Section conference
This event is beginning to take form. Ariel Paul Saunders and Nathaniel Williams, together with the head of the Youth Section, Constanza Kaliks, have planned a meeting for the weekend of August 6-7, just prior to the beginning of the main conference. They will take up questions relating to our modern era, and particularly issues pertaining to spiritual matters. They will then take part in the full week of conference activities. During the time scheduled for the Class Lessons each morning, the youth group will be offering a parallel time for reflection and meditation for those who wish to take part. We feel it very important to offer the Youth Section as much financial aid as possible. Please let those around you know that these activities will be taking place. If you wish to offer financial support for this initiative, we urge you to send a contribution, earmarked specifically for the Youth conference, to the Anthroposophical Society. Your generosity will be much appreciated.
Michael Schmidt
In early February, Doug Wylie took me to visit Michael Schmidt in Durham, Ontario. Michael welcomed us with great generosity and gave us a tour of his cheese making facility and his herd of some thirty cows with their impressive horns. He amused us by recounting how certain government inspectors who came to the farm were astonished to discover that cows actually had horns!
This courageous farmer has been fighting for years to have the authorities allow the production and distribution of raw milk, and this legal battle is still ongoing. Fortunately, he has the support of the co-owners of the cows and of many friends and supporters who believe that consumers should have freedom of choice. Michael will be with us at the conference in August to give a talk on biodynamic agriculture.
Douglas Cardinal
The week prior to that visit, Sylvie Richard, an Ottawa eurythmist and painter, introduced me to Douglas Cardinal. He is primarily known for having designed the Museum of History in Gatineau. During the conference, he will give a talk on the social art and community building. Douglas is a member of the Blackfoot Métis (Algonquin) nation and is originally from Alberta. In spite of his advanced age – he is 82 – Mr. Cardinal is a passionate spokesperson for the cause of living architecture. He also recognises Rudolf Steiner’s important contribution to the field of architecture. He showed us a current project for an apartment complex with towers resembling bird feathers and in which the air element actually seems to become visible. During our conversation, Douglas reflected upon ways to link the traditional wisdom of his people with life in our modern world. We also touched on the subject of Turtle Island. This sacred place, where all the tribes in the area came together to seek a way to co-exist harmoniously, is one of our inspirations for holding this conference in Ottawa. It may even be possible for us to organise an afternoon excursion to the Island during the conference.
Elizabeth Carmack and the Cambridge Music Festival
Finally having resolved the issue of finding an adequate venue (on the campus of Ottawa University), we can now confirm the performance by the Cambridge Music Festival, a joint project involving the conference organisers and Elisabeth. She carries this happening in her soul with such energy that we were delighted to be able to find a way to include this public event in our conference. The programme will centre around two leitmotifs: the situation of the Native Peoples of Canada and that of the war-torn zones of the Middle East. This artistic event will include musicians, composers and eurythmists. The English composer Neil Osborne, who works with children in Syrian refugee camps, has agreed to compose a piece especially for the conference. British Columbia performer Wendy Charbonneau will use traditional native music as a way to introduce the audience to the soul mood of the First Nations peoples. As a preparation for the concert to be given on Saturday, August 13th this group will be offering a workshop during the week. For more information, please visit the conference website.
Julie LeGal and Peter James Haward
Julie LeGal will be giving a theatre workshop (relating to the conference theme of the universally human) involving characters from Shakespeare’s plays.
She is a stage performer who has worked for many years with the Chekhov acting technique. She and her partner Peter Haword, also a well-known actor, are preparing a play to be premiered at the conference based on an autobiographical essay by Nicolas Tolstoy entitled “A Confession.” In this text, the famous Russian author reveals some of his innermost thoughts – his doubts and questions pertaining to the meaning of life. I would like to share here some of the images contained in this narrative.
The traveller
Tolstoy recounts a fable from the East in which a traveller is being chased by a wild beast. He manages to save himself by grabbing onto the branch of a bush overhanging a well.
At the bottom of the well, an enormous dragon is waiting for the right moment to pounce and devour him. Meanwhile, a white mouse and a black mouse are patiently gnawing at the branch. The traveller discovers several drops of honey on the leaves of the shrub and manages to reach some of them with his tongue. As he enjoys the taste of the honey, he completely forgets for a second the danger facing him.
Tolstoy recognises in this tale how a situation of impending danger can bring us to ponder the following questions:
Do I allow myself to fall and be devoured by the dragon, since life on earth has no meaning? Would it not be better for me to enjoy the pleasant experience the honey procures me and shut my eyes to the dangerous situation in which I find myself? Would I not be better off forgetting my situation and remaining innocent of the fate awaiting me?
These are questions we can all recognise as having applied to our own personal situation at one time or another in our lives. We all are travellers (in danger) and these questions are certainly relevant to our lives insofar as we are called to meet the threshold. They urge us to know ourselves as spiritual beings caught in a state of tension between the forces that would tear us away from the trials of earthly life and those forces that would chain us to earthly conditions.
The theme for the year 2016-2017
The theme proposed this year by the Goetheanum once again takes up the situation of the “I” in its relation to the world, but this time from a new angle: World Transformation and Self-knowledge in the Face of Evil. This is not an easy subject to deal with. We could perhaps reformulate the second part of the theme in these terms: self-knowledge in the face of present world crises. It is possible to understand the notion of good and evil from the point of view of the evolution of consciousness.
Among the reading material suggested we find lectures IV and V from the cycle From Symptom to Reality in Modern History given by Rudolf Steiner in 1918. These texts have also been chosen as suggested preparatory reading for the Ottawa conference. Steiner describes in these lectures how the challenges we discover in ourselves and in the world are there to oblige us to develop the consciousness soul, and how in this respect the opposing forces play a preponderant role. On the one hand, they press themselves upon us from the outside in the form of death and destruction; and on the other hand they lurk within us as latent forces of evil. To prepare for the coming sixth cultural epoch, it will be essential that we become aware of these forces in order to transform them and develop ourselves in such a way that we learn to truly open up to our fellow human beings.
During the week of March 14th of this year, the Goetheanum Executive Council and the Section leaders, the General Secretaries and country representatives are meeting to exchange further on the theme of the year and to plan this year’s Michaelmas Conference. I shall report on this gathering in my next letter.
We must also mention the new production of Goethe’s Faust that will be performed in Dornach with simultaneous translation in English, French and Spanish.
In the mood of Easter Time, full of new hope,
Arie van Ameringen
General Secretary
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