Summer Heart-and-Spirit-Sensing

22 Sep Summer Heart-and-Spirit-Sensing

Cowichan Valley Anthroposophists and the Anthroposophical Society

of Canada Council members review a time of retreat together.

 August 17, 18, and 19, 2018

 A sunlight, deep nature,  

and soul-warmth gathering –

moving sense-free thinking

into spirit and heart sensing.

Olaf Lampson:“The atmosphere was of warm goodwill, with “spirit sensing” living noticeably among us.

 In the way that spiritual community friends from afar can do, Canadian Anthroposophists bridged some continental distance this summer in the lush Camphill setting of Glenora Farm, Vancouver Island. Dedicated western friends and acquaintances, working devotedly with Rudolf Steiner’s indications, some for decades, brought hints of the hearty, eclectic, First Nations integrated, arts-thriving rural community by the sea and tall cedars. This, while tucked protectively away from the smoke of wildfires pressing all around the island and province this season.

Council individuals from Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and Vancouver brought distilled sensitivities as gifts, from meeting many members across the country over the years, as well as exercises for getting to know each other through their connections to Anthroposophy past, present, and future. Working in triads, members strung some understandings together for others about how Anthroposophy has been moving and developing in their life timelines.

Kim Hunter: “It was clear that people felt  

 a deeper connection to Council members and had a sense of them as people. There were conversations, and I think I speak for many when I say that we are grateful to feel a part of the larger picture of Anthroposophy in Canada with others serving the organization, since it is easy to feel a little remote here. We feel grateful to the council to open the door for these meetings.”  

Hosts Nicolette Genier, Olaf Lampson, and Adola McWilliam, offered some foundational insights into the working of the new Trillium center at the farm. Annette Lampson and a number of Camphill companions warmed members into the day with the fine resonance of a bell choir. Members learned of the foundation stone that lies beneath the evolving Trillium building and arts center.

For twenty-five years, Adola, her husband Charles, Olaf Lampson and his wife, Martha Mueller, and Kathrin Batje led the ensouling of a curative healing and social therapy vision in the Cowichan Valley. Adola spoke of Ita Wegman’s insight decades ago that the British Columbia coast had important healing potential.

 Adola shared how the children of Waldorf community members helped to create the vision for the fine, wood-crafted building, and how Waldorf graduates constructed much of it. For the heart-sensing weekend retreat, community gathered in the center that will receive a founding benediction this autumn with retiring Christian Community Priest, Susan Locey.

On Friday of the gathering, twenty-one First Class members worked together with the council on insights prepared by Class Leaders Kim Hunter and Donna Huston, as well as former Class Holder, Olaf Lampson.

Saturday was dedicated to work with anthroposophical community member understandings, and with the Foundation Stone Meditation. 

 In general conversation together on living anthroposophy today, musicologist and accomplished singer, Cari Burdett, raised the challenges of parenting and fostering teenagers, and the task of bringing awareness of the Anthroposophic movement to the larger community members in the Waldorf schools, where many may have not even heard of the word Anthroposophy before arriving at their school.

Cari Burdett: Hearing Olaf discuss the second panel of the Foundation Stone meditation, was another wake-up call, to remember that my struggles as a parent, in relationship to my teens,  can be viewed perhaps as a meditative gift. He spoke about “sway”, and the inner and outer work we are called to realise in our own way. As a parent, that demands total commitment and trust, that sense of letting go, knowing that there is a God and a Christ holding us – a light shining brightly that embraces each of our struggles.

People learned also of the Sol Center for Anthroposophical study, cultivated by Nicolette and other members of the community. Others talked about bringing the anthroposophical community closer by tuning up communications.

Adjunct to the Cowichan Valley community members, were members from neighbouring communities and Salt Spring Island. Psychotherapist, artist, and Waldorf teacher, Yiana Belkalopoulos, brought consciousness of anthroposophy’s role in world traumatic events. Her new psychotherapeutic book, on child-of-divorce trauma in the light of Anthroposophy, will be available in the new year.

Michael Gallant had returned recently from a technology conference with Philippine anthroposophist, Nicanor Perlas. Hannah Hudson Miles, working with theatre and puppetry in China; along with Swiss-Canadian anthroposophical entrepreneur, Helen Bishof, and American-born, Waldorf mom, Leah Winders; offered quiet presencing.

In closing the retreat, community pianist, Marilyn Lange, led vocal rounds in the mood of the fifth of “Pure as the Finest Gold” by Rudolf Bigler and Angelus Silesius. Members emerged carrying an imagination from the second panel of the Foundation Stone Meditation, contemplating what it means for Divine Grace to “hold sway” in their lives.