Dear Members and Friends,
The holidays are over and the new school year has started – or depending on where you are in the world, the second half of the school year. Yet, where we could be looking forward with positivity to new encounters and ventures, there is uncertainty – and fear. This cannot be ignored; it asks us to take hold of and shape society’s task towards children and young people in new ways: to receive them on earth and enable them to actively participate in the world that is being renewed by them.
Ways to unite
This task of taking hold of and shaping society in new ways is not restricted to schools, but is one that is everywhere and that asks us to unite. It applies not least to our working together in the Anthroposophical Society, in anthroposophical organizations and in the globally linked spheres of life and work.
In this respect, too, the performance of Goethe’s Faust Parts 1 and 2 at the Goetheanum was a great experience: after the extended closure of the stage, it was possible to present the new production by Andrea Pfaehler and Eduardo Torres three times during the European summer, each time with full or almost full audiences (within official restrictions) who received the outstanding artistic achievement with gratitude. The response was positive throughout.
Space for current impulses
We also look forward to uniting and working together at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. Given the fact that conditions have changed so much, we envisage this meeting as a space for concerns and impulses that are currently prevalent. The call to “willingly unite with the world in love” is more urgent now than ever – and is often more difficult to put into practice. It needs strong and renewed mutual trust.
We warmly invite you to participate – virtually or in person – in the AGM on 31 October. This is where the Society can perceive itself through you, dear members, and where we can take the next steps forward.
Warm greetings,
Constanza Kaliks, Goetheanum
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Supporting Anthroposophical Initiatives in Canada
A Message from Your Council
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left to right - Bert Chase, Micah Edelstein, Susan Koppersmith, Catarina Burisch
John Glanzer, Claudette Leblanc
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Your Council finds its central task in supporting Anthroposophical initiatives born out of a Canadian impulse. Our ability to support initiatives comes in many forms, from moral and public support, communication and fostering awareness, providing advice and a connection to the Goetheanum, and monetary support in the form of grants and short term bridge funding.
Financial resources to fund initiatives typically come from member donations where the Society connects donors to general or specific projects. The coordination of these monetary flows is not always exact, creating deficits one year and surpluses another year. To manage these ebbs and flows, the Society is blessed with a reserve fund that originally came from the sale of Hill House, the national Society headquarters in Toronto.
The fund has been kept in secure, liquid investments to both protect capital and make it available when needed. Its value fluctuates according to those withdrawals and deposits to the fund each year. As of year-end 2019, the fund value was approximately $254,000. There has been an ongoing discussion of different perspectives around the role and use of the fund. Lately, questions have come up at recent AGMs. Members ask, how can we put this money to good use and keep it flowing? Below is a characterization of the process to access funding, and a list of recent initiative support activity.
Members can apply for grants or bridge financing for anthroposophical initiatives. Bridge financing acts as a "float”, where cash is provided to get an event started. This is normally fully repaid right after the event income can cover it.
Whether funding is given temporarily or as a grant (no repayment) needs to be agreed upon upfront in writing (before there is a problem or misunderstanding). The Council understands that not all initiatives can generate enough income to pay fully for themselves. Important initiatives such as the Encountering Our Humanity conference of 2016 drew people from across the world; this initiative incurred a deficit of $29,000 which was initially covered out of reserve funds and substantially restored over subsequent years.
From May 2019 to May 2020 Council supported or funded the following requests:
- •Vancouver Mystery Drama Group
- •Nicanor Perlas visit to Vancouver
- •Two Class holders attending a Class conference in London, England
- •Visual Arts Section
- •Auriel Eurythmy
- •Tuition support for a Eurythmy student
- •Parzival Project (Emmanuel Vukovich)
- •Foundation Stone Meditation Book project from Les Éditions Perceval
- •Demeter (in process)
Council looks at each request individually. Rather than a rote, mechanical process, each request is weighed against the entire Canadian landscape in the context of finding the highest good. We are particularly interested in financially helping initiatives that have a “multiplier effect” — eg they involve and support entire groups of active and energized ASC members wanting to promote initiatives out of the work of Rudolf Steiner. For example, receiving a request to help an individual student with tuition, but rather funding faculty travel costs and bringing tuition fees down for all students.
To access funds, members can send an email to our President, Micah Edelstein.
Finally, ongoing discussion on the future of our policy around the reserve fund may shape and evolve our approach to requests.
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Interview with Micah Edelstein, President, Anthroposophical Society in Canada
Conducted by Geraldine Snowden and Robert McKay April 25, 2020
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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 ....................
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Associate!
September 2020
Newsletter of the Economics Conference of the Goetheanum
Part of the Social Sciences Section of the School of Spiritual Science
September greetings to all, whether in Spring or Fall!
It is with enthusiasm that I introduce this September 2020 issue of Associate! How true it is that the sun shines even on the darkest day, even behind the heaviest clouds. From my standpoint as Administrator of the Economics Conference and editor (in consultation with Christopher Houghton Budd) of its newsletter, there is much hope to be derived from the tools made available via the Economics Conference for courageous activity in today’s world, some of which are reported on in this issue. The main point today is that human beings, not market forces, act. We are not the victims, as Carlos Jaime Loch wisely states in his article but the authors of our circumstances. It makes a great deal of difference what one person does (or does not do) economically; therein lie empowerment and hope (or helplessness and despair.)
In this issue, readers will find work linking the economic thought of John Maynard Keynes with that of Rudolf Steiner, both contemporaries who, in their own right, forged new and practical pathways toward a society that honors all of life. To aid our understanding, Carlos Jaime Loch analyses three kinds of money in a way that calls into serious question the use of surplus for speculation, which he suggests is “an important cause of social damage.”
Next, we report on Xavier Andrillon’s recently completed thesis linking sustainability to Rudolf Steiner’s true price formula. Meg Freeling comments on the far-reaching significance of Xavier’s achievement, including for teachers and other professions.
Young people can take heart in the work Daniel Osmer champions, promoting economic history as the pedagogical background necessary for teachers stewarding young people’s awakening to their future. His article, along with the other resources and the financial literacy events mentioned, introduce the tip of an iceberg of what’s possible when youth of today become financially literate entrepreneurs.
Such tools all beget economic consciousness that, as elaborated in Patrick O’Meara’s piece, goes hand in hand with “money as moving bookkeeping,” to use Rudolf Steiner’s words.
The final article celebrates a new understanding of property and finance that Marc Desaules makes visible in his description of L’Aubier’s evolution. He makes clear that the priority in financial arrangements must be to ensure that the entrepreneur is left always and forever free and thereby responsible. In other words, ‘to trust is better than to control.’
Many more tools for the road are available to be discovered in the Associative Economics Bookstore with resources now increasingly available in several languages, reflecting the worldwide activity of Economics Conference researchers. Once found, exercised and replicated, these are resources on which we can rely to support our first steps into the future we see before us, a future of our own making.
All courage for the road ahead! With best wishes,
Kim
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BOOK REVIEW
Fine Matter, by Philip Thatcher; (Perceval Books, 2020, direct order at percevalbooks2001@gmail.com, $27 including postage), 102 pages.
Review by Fred Dennehy
Owen Barfield, in characterizing the experience of poetry as “a felt change of consciousness,” goes on to pinpoint poetic pleasure to be “rarer and more transitory,” something dependent upon the precise moment of change itself. If you pass a coil of wire across two magnetic poles, you will generate a current of electricity, but only during the moment of transition, when the coil is being brought into the lines of force or being taken away. At rest, the current disappears. It is the movement that is all important.
The poems in Philip Thatcher’s collection Fine Matter live and breathe in this movement. They take us through places alive with elemental forces that connect to what is stirring within us just beneath the surface, as well as swimming in the far cosmos. Thatcher’s landscapes are northern, of the Pacific Northwest, or Finland, or Russia, or the Canadian Shield, stretching from the sparse provinces of west and central Canada, down to the Great Lakes and up through Hudson Bay to the Arctic and as far east as Greenland. This is geography as old as the Precambrian and as new as the unexplored frontier. His lyrics delight in Native place names like Kaloloch, Naikoon, Nunavut, and in words from the Gitxsan people of the Skeena Watershed of British Columbia – words like adaawk (stream of story); amlax (Old Salmon); and ‘Nax’nihl (listen). Everywhere you encounter stones, and along with stones, snow, tundra, and the long snaking fogs of some of the world’s most demanding terrain. We feel the challenge of the emptiness, the openness, and the sheer possibility that arises when the familiar is left long behind us.
Thatcher’s verse can curve like a river, with rhythmic word recurrences unfolding through narratives of sentient surprise. He is also an accomplished novelist (The Raven’s Trilogy), and he speaks to us in pitch perfect tones, while refusing to allow his lines to say anything not truly heard. In three poems that follow one another in Fine Matter, “Dawn Reconnaissance,” “Holy Saturday” and “About Creation,” Thatcher conjures an almost preternatural mood of expectancy, sounding along the edges of doubt, through Good Friday, Holy Saturday and into Easter Sunday. When Easter arrives, it is not with the ringing of bells and the unqualified joy of Resurrection, but instead with keener questionings, finer longings:
Borne on the first sharp
rush of Easter breath
can I speak only
words about creation?
Or can I start
to stammer water to wine
wine into warm
living blood?
Transitions of all kinds are recurring themes. Here is a commencement address that I wish had been given to my own graduating class:
FOR THE CLASS OF ‘92
Listen between every line
Jump at
nothing and doubt
only what you want
to hear
Despise nothing but
your need to despise
Know your hands are
not tied, though
they may fumble at
what they love
yet even the tip
of a finger can be
touch enough
A word may mean
what it says
or close enough
or its opposite
sounding its own truth
between the lines –
Listen
The very last poems in Fine Matter unfold almost entirely in a mood of passage. They include “Aging,” “This Late Winter Tree,” “Towards 81” and the delicately graceful “To the End of the World,” reminiscent to me of the delicate sorrow of Antonio Machado.
There are diverse voices here: the intimate admonitions of a spiritual teacher in the selections from Mask of the Sun; the calm accepting tones of age for what it knows will have to be; and the taut, controlled sketching of the wonders of frozen, barren vistas. Always there is resonance between outer landscape and inner experience. Thatcher’s north can open to hidden events of the past, or to wordless inner discoveries; or to a sudden restoration of purpose and resolve. My own favorite is “An Arctic Fox Odyssey,” the story of the 3500 kilometer, two and a half month journey of a female fox from Norway to Nunavut, in the Canadian Arctic Circle. We see her losing her trackers as she finds at last an ice bridge to Canada. I suppose there may be better feminist poems, but it is difficult to recall them. Thatcher dedicates this poem to Joan Almon.
The 57 poems of Fine Matter, spanning fifty years, are arranged into five collections: “AboutCreation,” “Along the Edges,” “Turning the Earth,” from Mask of the Sun,” and “A Brush of Light.” Revelation is their medium. Don’t deny yourself the experience.
Reprinted with kind permission from Being Human
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Vancouver Island, BC
House Coordinators needed to join energetic, life-sharing community
Glenora Farm (www.glenorafarm.org) is a residential community on southern Vancouver Island where caregivers and companions with developmental challenges share life and work in extended family-type houses, in a variety of craft workshops and on our 100-acre biodynamic farm. We are part of the international movement known as Camphill, and a member of the Camphill Association of North America (www.camphill.org)
House coordinators oversee the safety and well-being of everyone in their household, coach new coworkers in their duties and responsibilities, and work together to create a balanced, caring environment. They also participate in the overall functioning of the community through involvement in group/committee work, seasonal and social events, and bring their own ideas and creativity to the process.
Applicants should have Canadian status or a visa that allows them to work in Canada, and be open to a commitment of two years or more. Start date October 1st, can be moved for right applicants. Further details and a full job description can be found at https://glenorafarm.org/current-openings/ or by emailing us at admissions@glenorafarm.org.
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The life story of a grain of sand:
A short downloadable story on pdf by member J Duncan Keppie.
He offers this for free and you can click on the link below to download.
He also suggests if you would like to make a contribution, please donate a free will amount to the Society at CanadaHelps:
and put Antoni contribution in the note
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Trinus Waldorf School, Guatemala |
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Branch Information and Upcoming Events |
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Branches & Groups
(many updated this month)
Calgary Branch
Contact: Christine at
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Cantons de l'Est
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Confluence of Three Rivers (Ottawa)
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Duncan
Contact:
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Edmonton
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Huronia Branch (Barrie)
Contact Janine at
705-728-1443
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London
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Montréal (Français)
Institute Rudolf Steiner Quebec
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Montreal Branch (English)
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Nelson, BC
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Nova Scotia
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Polaris Branch (Thornhill)
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Saugeen Cedar Branch
(Durham)
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Sherbrooke (Français)
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Sunshine Coast (BC)
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Thornhill Group
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Toronto Branch
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Vancouver
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Val David (Français)
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Victoria
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Membership Update
Deceased
Elaine McKee, 18/09/2020 (Powell River, BC)
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Editorial Notes
The eNews is published 10 times per year for members of the Anthroposophical Society In Canada.
Please send correspondence and articles in either Word doc or iWork pages without formatting except for paragraphs to before the 15th of the month before publication
BACK ISSUES are available on our website:
You will need the password: ASC
Contact Info
Anthroposophical Society in Canada
# 130A - 1 Hesperus Rd.
Thornhill, ON
L4J 0G9
Membership Administrator
Christine Tansley
416-892-3656
877-892-3656
Communication Administrator
Jef Saunders
Members website
please note you will need to use the password ASC to access the members only page.
Council
President
Treasurer
Secretary
General Secretary
School For Spiritual Science
For list of Class Holders,
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South Shore Waldorf School, NS |
Eurythmy by the Sea Outside in!
October 17, 2020
9:30 AM-2:30 PM South Shore Waldorf School
Summer's lingering warmth melts into radiant Fall colours! Days darken. When winds blow cold and leaves fly, it's time to retreat!
Our Eurythmy work this session, will use the rich store of Autumn poetry and stories for children and adults.
We will practice the confidence building copper rod exercises and move forms for the 'Calendar of the Soul' by Rudolf Steiner!
Judy King again will present a story with puppets....
Looking forward to being together!
Bring your own lunch but light snacks will be provided.
Don’t forget to Book Nov.14 and Dec. 12, as we continue professional development through the art of Eurythmy
Thanks also to the Nova Scotia Anthroposophical Group for kindly making this on-going work possible!
There is no charge, but donations gratefully received for expenses!
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WALDECK WEST, NOVA SCOTIA |
Anthroposophy Worldwide - 2020
If you would like to see the archive of past issues, go to: Archive
then, if required, enter password AWE-2018
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