Interview with Micah Edelstein, President, Anthroposophical Society in Canada Conducted by Geraldine Snowden and Robert McKay April 25, 2020

12 Oct Interview with Micah Edelstein, President, Anthroposophical Society in Canada Conducted by Geraldine Snowden and Robert McKay April 25, 2020

This interview contains Micah’s personal thoughts, experiences and opinions and no part of the interview represent views or opinions of the Anthroposophical Society of Canada. 

Since the interview was made, Micah has stepped down from the board of the South Shore Waldorf school to focus on building the next phase of the school. 

Geraldine: 

Micah, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, a bit of your biography?

Micah: 

Sure. I was born into a family that was already at the Toronto Waldorf School (TWS). Both my parents were active Anthroposophists and still are. My dad was teaching Biology and Woodwork and was also helping finish the building because the school had just been built and wasn’t completed yet. My mom was working in the kindergarten, then she joined the doctor’s clinic when it opened in Hesperus. She is trained in Germany as a doctor’s assistant and helped Dr. Kenneth McAlister for 22 years at the doctor’s clinic. So I was totally surrounded. I was at the Waldorf School during the day, and then often I would walk over to the doctor’s office and usually hang out until my mom was finished work. And also at Hesperus. So I was immersed in Waldorf Education, Anthroposophical medicine, retirement living, and an amazing community from birth. 

Geraldine: 

Can you identify some experiences that prepared you to meet Anthroposophy or lead you to Anthroposophy?

Micah:

I came to Anthroposophy as an adult, or returned to it. I was brought up in it, really immersed in it. But then I went to university and I went as far away from it as I’ve ever been. I will describe it in terms of cosmic imagery. We are on this orbit, a deep orbital swing, the perigee, and apogee. My apogee, the farthest out, was during my university years. 

I’m on the perigee right now, going ever deeper, as I get more and more involved in Anthroposophy and that includes the Society work. I was asked to join the Society by Judy King who was finishing her 7 year term on Council. Eventually I agreed after a year and a half of her asking. I worked for about a year with the Council. I was also asked to be on the board of the South Shore Waldorf School in Nova Scotia. And now we’re building the next phase of the Waldorf School. So the journey is continuing.

Rob: 

When you grow up with Anthroposophy the way you did, it’s not yours yet. Was there a point at which you identified yourself with it? You could have rejected it but decided not to. Was there some pivotal point?

Micah: 

Really good question. There was. It was a very clear moment. I realized, when I was in university and far away from it all, that I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I realized that it was a big part of me, like destiny or karma that was really waiting to be fleshed out. I also wasn’t going to find real nourishment out there in the world away from these centers and communities where Anthroposophy has become the foundation of our activities. I just knew that I had been given something, and that my path in life was not to reject it. It was actually to go into it, and work with it. And as soon as I realized that, I just felt like it was the right decision. I mean, it continues to impress me, how enriching it is, how much we can actually do if we consciously work with Anthroposophy. It’s like a force in the world. But of course, the art is learning how to work with it.

Geraldine:

Could you tell us what Steiner book that you have read that has profoundly affected you?

Micah: 

Every book I read has a profound effect. I remember Steiner writing that it’s not right that anthroposophists read every book he’s written, but that they read a book that speaks to what they’re doing in their lives. So I’m always aware that it can’t just be reading, because that’s not Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy needs to be living, brought into our activities. The book that’s really inspired me recently is The Mission of Christian Rosenkreuz. It’s a wonderful book about the being and incarnation of Christian Rosenkreuz and his mission, and what he has made possible for humanity. If we didn’t have this personality, then we actually wouldn’t be able to have certain experiences. It’s because of him that humanity is able to, for example, choose lives of great suffering that ultimately bring us and others towards higher truths. It has a profound connection to the Parsifal story and to events in our biography when viewed as chapters of significant soul suffering that lead us to understand Christ in our own way. 

Geraldine: 

Why do you think that pursuing the study of Anthroposophy is so worth the effort and important for the world?

Micah:  

Anthroposophy is working homeopathically in the world. People have been exposed to it. Almost everybody has been exposed to it. But they’ve either quickly rejected it or become aware of it. Either way it keeps poking at them. And that’s kind of how I see it. It is stimulating us to wake up and really question things that, if you don’t have Anthroposophy, you might just adopt unconsciously. A lot of the time I think, it’s an untruth that would be adopted. Anthroposophy is bringing truth and a foundation of truth, and that’s really what it is. It’s not that it’s the only way. It brings the soil, you could say, that enables truth to flower.

Rob: 

I would love to hear you talk about biodynamic farming, because I know you’re involved in various ways. And I know there’s some interesting stuff going on down in Nova Scotia. 

Micah: 

Biodynamics seems to be an entrance into Anthroposophy. I keep hearing people discover biodynamics, and then they get very excited about it. In that way they’re brought also into contact with Anthroposophy. Personally, I haven’t been so practically involved in biodynamics recently, only because of the work I do for the Society and for the South Shore Waldorf School. But today I was helping build a garden here at the Robert Pope Foundation near the school. It’s a foundation in honor of Doug Pope’s brother who died of cancer. Doug wants to bring health awareness and offer a place for artists to come and study and be in nature and do various artistic retreats. Doug and I are great friends. I’m also helping Kaitlin Brown, the new Kindergarten teacher, create the Land of Milk and Honey. It is a 25 acre biodynamic farm near the school with milk goats, a donkey and sheep. Next year there will be a cow. It’s a farm for the school community. Kaitlin is adamant that human requires daily animal contact. I milk the goats for her. 

Rob: 

What’s it been like for you to be on the board of the Waldorf School?

Micah:

It’s been good. I have to say, I’ve never really been a fan of boards. And now I’m on two!  I’ve been able, for the most part, to work in the way that I prefer to work, which is actually to bring something new and to work out of the will, which also means into one’s karma. I don’t think boards are particularly effective, for example, in cultivating a healthy spiritual life. They can actually interfere with spiritual progress. The problems we see arising in many Waldorf schools now are issues related to the inability of boards and faculty to work out of anthroposophical life. Rudolf Steiner articulated how essential anthroposophical life and work are for the success of Waldorf education. The two are intimately related, like night and day. It’s also understandable how the two cannot be separated either at the board or faculty level. Anthroposophical life brings Waldorf pedagogy and culture into a healthy relationship with the earthly, material decisions boards are tasked with. What I bring into my work at the school is my experience of being nurtured by an anthroposophical community and education. The wonderful benefits of working with the spiritual being of the school and holding away awareness of overly material mindsets that can bring something unhealthy into spiritual life or destroy it to a degree. Katja Rudolf is also a member of our South Shore Waldorf community, and helped to rescue the Toronto Waldorf School during its financial crises. The two of us are drawing on our experiences to try to avoid similar pitfalls of ideas and decisions that work counter to what nourishes Waldorf schools and communities.

Rob: 

Can you give me an example? Can we put a little meat on the bones there in terms of what these dangers look like?

Micah: 

One of the biggest dangers in this whole movement is that Waldorf schools don’t stand firmly as anthroposophical grounded Waldorf education. There tends to be a bit of a timid-ness especially on the board level to really stand firmly as a spiritual education. Boards are usually populated by professionals, they bring wonderful skills like legal and business knowledge. But when those things become the drivers for decisions, that’s the beginning of the end, in my opinion. That’s not working consciously with the being of a Waldorf school. We have to meet some legal requirements and some financial disclosure needs to be there, but at the same time, the school needs to be active, vocal and confident in its spiritual work and foundation. 

Rob: 

So any attempt to, you know, hide Anthroposophy under a bushel in a way, is going to get in the way of a school becoming what it can be?

Micah: 

I would say that’s what most schools right now are dealing with, this question of how much Anthroposophy is in the school and at what level. I bumped up against AWSNA planning the Waldorf alumni conference and I think that it can become a challenge for Waldorf education. Fixed views are not in the spirit of Waldorf education in my opinion. It’s about diversity and freedom and putting these great souls (teachers) in the driver’s seat. Each school can be allowed to be independent and unique and different in many ways. Each one is the expression of the faculty body. And of course, no two human beings are the same. So we’re going to have a different psyche in every school but Anthroposophy is what grounds and connects it all. In Steiner’s lectures on education he speaks to the experiences within the teacher. If the teacher’s teaching math, they have to connect the math to their own biography, their own life experience or it’s not going to be received the same way by the student. And that’s really saying the opposite of what standardized education is all about, where it doesn’t really matter who’s delivering it. It’s just about getting through the curriculum. So then you just have a mouth talking versus an actual life experience being presented to the student.

I can give you another example. I agreed to work on the school building, with the expectation that the community would participate because I felt it could be a community building initiative that would strengthen the being of the school, the school would continue to grow and the students would benefit. To my surprise It didn’t really happen from the parents. It happened from the grade four and five students. They would come out during recess and say, can we help? Initially I thought, no, I can’t say yes. But then I had no choice because we needed to fill in a large hole. I looked around, there’s all these rocks and I said, “Hey, kids, grab all the rocks and throw them in the hole.” And it took about 20 minutes. Then they just kept coming back and asking for more work.

Two days ago, one of the kids was helping put the shingles on the siding and he said he had experience. He’s only eight years old. I set him up and he starts nailing the shingles on and then he asked me if he could set up the measurements. And I said, yeah, you have to measure four and a quarter inches. Do you know how to do that? And he said no. So I showed him the tape measure and I said, you know, these are inches and an inch has four quarters. It’s written with the four on top and the four on the bottom. The bottom tells you how many are in the whole. Then I said, are you old enough to learn fractions? And he didn’t really say anything. Then I went back to what I was doing, and then I kind of panicked, and I thought, oh my God, I just left him, and he’s already on the next row. And I went over and checked it quickly and he had got it perfect. He understood perfectly the four and one quarter measurement. And I thought, oh, that’s Waldorf education, because it was coming through my experience. It was very grounded. There was no abstraction. 

Geraldine: 

So the child knows and feels now that this is his school.

Micah: 

That’s it! It’s a very deep connection that he’s going to have his entire life. When you give kids direct experience, it’s a solid foundation for their entire life. No matter what they’re asked to do in life, they feel they can do it.

Rob: 

A great story, I love it. So let’s talk a bit about your voyage into working with the Council. You’re the president of the Society at the moment. It’s a big part of your life these days.

Micah: 

Yeah, it is actually, especially in the last month, because we have this AGM coming up and I was really pushing with Michaelic enthusiasm to plough forward. We’re going to do this. We’re not going to be stopped. But then it became clear that it would actually cause more harm. So the question arose, do we do the AGM at a later time in the year? We didn’t feel good about that because actually in the bylaws there has to have been an AGM by June. So we thought, let’s just try to do it virtually. We had to really think about that. What does it mean to do a virtual AGM? How do you do it? The length, for example. People are not going to be online for eight hours. So how do we do this in a much shorter time?

I was really against the idea initially. But I’m actually excited about it now. I think it can be a fun experience and we might actually have the largest AGM attendance ever because people from across Canada can come, not just those in one city. Some people are not going to like the idea and they’re not going to want to join. We understand that because we do recognize the importance of face to face. There’s no question there. There’s a motion to allow for this type of AGM now in the bylaws, which we didn’t have. My original wording was to allow for it under exceptional circumstances, because I think there’s always the danger that future Councils could, just out of convenience, say they want to do a virtual AGM. Not necessarily out of necessity. So that’s something we have to just carry. 

The Council work has been great. It’s interesting how my role as the president came about. Dorothy Lebaron was passionate about choosing the next president before she left. She did wonderful work. And I really enjoyed having Dorothy as president. She worked with Jeff Saunders to pick one of the existing Council members as the next person. As we do with the selection of the general secretary, we put some names forward. We really consider them individually before voting. It usually goes through three rounds because we all have our first, second and third preferences. And then, based on the consensus, we decide.

I told everyone I really think we need to find a different way of managing the Society. I don’t believe in the structure we have. It would take some work, but we can change the structure. We don’t have to be a Not for profit corporation (NFP). We could just be a society. That’s why we have the current structure, because the government expects certain things from a NFP. We have to deliver on those. We need financial statements, to hold an AGM, and elect a treasurer, secretary and president. But we also have the option to create everything on our own within the framework of a society. We would be free to come up with everything. And we’re still legally recognized including as a charity, which is how the Waldorf School here in Nova Scotia is set up. It’s set up through the Society Act. So I said to the Council that they are asking me to do something I don’t believe in. I can’t select another president. Then there was this debate about whether I could actually abstain. We decided I could. So I abstained. And then enough people put my name forward as president. I was in an awkward position because now you are asking me to do something I don’t want to do. 

I thought about it for two months before I agreed to it. Jeff Saunders suggested I say yes and then work to bring a new governing model. So I agreed to do it for the interim, if the Council was willing to work together to find a different way of structuring the Society. That’s where we are now, I hope we can follow through but we are working in that way. For example, one of the other motions coming forward is to allow any Council member to sign membership cards. That’s been the president’s role and I’ve been doing it. But I felt it would be nice to share it with other Council members if they want to do it, because it’s a very nice thing to do to welcome somebody into the Society and sign the card for them. 

I was a little concerned though, that the current Council really wants a leader, somebody in the driver’s seat. And that’s something I picked up in the AGM work because when I wasn’t stepping forth as the president and making those decisions, things got chaotic and confusing. I think there is a need for that type of decision making. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a president’s role. It could be worded and carried out differently. 

Rob: 

It sounds to me like your understanding of what it means to be a leader in an anthroposophical context is going through a kind of development.

Micah: 

Yeah, it’s very much a gesture of the future. What’s being asked, what’s coming from the future and how do we move away from what’s been shaped by the past? I don’t think it can be a radical change. There are a lot of people who are used to the current way of working. It has to be done in a sensitive way, but in a way that really brings the Society forward. If we really want young people in the Society, this old model is the first deterrent to that, for example, for younger generations joining a Society with a president might be a scary idea.

Rob: 

How is it working to have both a president and a general secretary? That already is something unusual for non-profit organizations. Most organizations would not have two leadership roles like that. Corporations even join the role of board chair and CEO to simplify the decision-making structure. So how do you understand that? And what is it like to actually work as, on the one hand, the president, but also with the general secretary?

Micah: 

It’s unique because we have our national society and yet are part of the world society. So Bert Chase is really the representative of the Canadian Society with respect to the world Society. When he goes to the Goetheanum, he represents Canada. He brings back his experience of the world Society to us. That’s a great thing and I think the title “General Secretary” is a wonderful, warm title. It doesn’t convey any sort of hierarchy or duty other than to be in service as a communicator: somebody who is experiencing and communicating between these two levels of the world Society. And that’s something we’ve noticed when visiting with local members. The connection between them and the world is not so clear. People don’t understand that the work they’re doing in the world is made possible because of a world Society. It’s possible by the fact that people around the world are also working in the same way. It’s like geography doesn’t really have a say when we’re talking about spiritual work, spiritual effects. Those things transcend distances. If we’re working spiritually, we can be influenced by other people’s spiritual work as well regardless of nationality. The general secretary has a good important role, and now we need to find the right term for that role which currently is called the ‘president’.

Rob: 

Successive general secretaries have interpreted this role quite differently. When Arie van Ameringen was the general secretary, he was probably the one who was instigating a lot of things. He instigated, for example, the big Ottawa conference. Dorothy LeBaron in her role as president, certainly supported that in lots of ways. But Dorothy did a lot of wonderful work with the website and other things. But she wasn’t somebody necessarily instigating major activities in quite the same way. I’m not sure that it’s necessary that there be a single way. But it is at least interesting to explore the different ways that people are doing it.

Micah: 

Well, Arie is just a force of enthusiasm. I think if we put him in any role, it wouldn’t matter. Anything he gets involved with he really inspires through his enthusiasm. Being the general secretary at the time helped. It gave him a lot of support for the Ottawa conference, which we’ve learned was inspirational around the world. The people who came from Europe and the Unites States experienced a version of Anthroposophy that really was awakening for them. They couldn’t believe it. Paul MacKay’s words were “Anthroposophy was in the air.” I understand that to mean this was a living forum of Anthroposophy. This work wasn’t theoretical, you know, up in the heavens. This was on earth – here. It was perceptible. You couldn’t deny it. He was picking up a lot of strong Michaelic energy in the conference. 

Rob: 

Any chance we’ll do another one?

Micah: 

For sure. We need all these stars to line up. I remember in Ottawa, I said the next one should be in Halifax. This led me to the alumni conference idea. But it didn’t happen because it didn’t have the team that Arie had. Our team was really a two-headed monster. In the end, it was two ideas, two separate initiatives, trying to create one event. There was a bit of hesitancy to become one body and one idea. Also, alumni are hard to reach and to inspire because they are out in the world living their busy lives. It was a hard sell to convince them to come to a conference. One of my hopes is to create more activities in the Society. I’m most vocal about the need for activity and less administration. 

Rob: 

What future activities might you be thinking about? 

Micah: 

We can’t come to ideas for activities abstractly. We’re very aware an idea can be amplified if there’s other people who are excited about it. It’s got to resonate with a larger group and then we can say, OK, this is it. The next big project that keeps poking its head out and saying, you know, this needs to be done, is a teacher training in Nova Scotia. Within the last year there are ten people who want to take the teacher training, and if we had a program here, they would be enrolled. However, they can’t make it work financially to go to Toronto so then they just don’t do it.

Another thing that we’re exploring is community housing development. People can invest in it and then it would provide housing for faculty members, housing for seniors and also rental income for the school. It could eventually be a source of capital funding for practical arts classrooms, for example. We need space for woodwork and metalwork. The students are already asking for this. 

PART 2 WILL BE PUBLISHED NEXT MONTH