From the World Society
On Verticals and Horizontals
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Dear Members and Friends of the Anthroposophical Society in Canada,
For twelve months the sun has traveled through the houses of the zodiac to return once more to the place where it stood a year ago looking down upon an unraveling world. For all of humanity the familiar paths of life have folded in upon themselves, becoming knotted and confused. All that had given our days order and constancy; the paths of family and friends, work and leisure, began the journey that has led our lives into cramped circumscribed existences. Life has become a silent chaos that collapses in upon itself.
As we step into a new year, from beneath this silent chaos rises a profound longing. Universally we seek the community of others. We long to overcome the experience of being hemmed in - to breathe freely once again. This longing rises from a deep golden way that runs straight and true beneath the confusion of what life now seems to be.
This deep guide has led us throughout our lives toward all that is possible, all that life might become. This golden way calls us into movement, calls us to participate. It is this deep need to engage with life that we now experience has been choked off. This binding of our ability to act can also be calling us to perceive more than what our ‘normal life’ would show us. Is this ‘binding’ offering access to what is usually concealed by life’s activity?
We bring this golden way with us as we make the crossing out of our life before birth. With our first breath, with the first awakening of the primal experience of being alive, this guiding way ushers us, carries us into our sense existence. The first significant occurrence, rising up from this ‘path of life’, is beholding the one who cares for us. When the newborn child first sees its mother, against the ocean of undifferentiated sense impressions, is a point of profound significance. It sets in motion the journey that leads us to seek our own being in this new world. This bond between child and mother awakens the foundation of relationship that throughout the years of childhood and youth slowly prepare the ground for us to recognize ourselves, to recognize who ‘I’ am.
What is so extraordinary is that this journey toward finding ‘my self’ lies beyond myself. The infant turns toward its mother, looking up. This deep mood of joy, of anticipation, of completely open receptivity, has a distinct gesture that is fundamental to this journey into life – it is a turning upward. This vertical, lifting up of our inner being is essential for the healthy development of this delicate possibility for a unique individuality to unfold itself.
The infant looks up to its mother, the young child to its parents and family. The toddler looks up to those who nurture it. The student looks up to its teacher. This is an essential and remarkable force in the human soul, one that Rudolf Steiner points out as crucial for the human being to take the first steps toward spiritual development. This is the first essential condition that he points to in the first pages of Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment. This vertical, upward striving within the human being is the essential inner gesture that comes with us across the threshold of birth. It leads us to seek for our self in the world. It leads us to seek for the self in the quiet inwardness of our souls. Our fundamental longing for life is forever drawing us to those who we seek as our teachers, as our guides.
So it has been throughout time. Arising out of this journey into life has come the longing toward what lies beyond life – the greater journey into life beyond this life. Throughout the ages this greater quest has been cultivated, fructified, by those we have turned to as our spiritual teachers. This turning of student to spiritual master, as all life turns to the sun, has immense power. It is the force that builds what becomes our human civilizations. It is this power to seek to fully unfold what it is to be truly human that is the force that calls culture into being. As the infant needs its relationship with its mother in order to take up the journey into life, so the evolving human being needs its relationship with the human community to take up the journey that leads to our true being, to the greater self. Then a new longing rises out of the fabric of life, the fundamental need to ‘be with’ the other – to seek the community of those who we recognize as fellow seekers along our golden way.
In the time of Michaelmas in 1923, an extraordinary event took place. Rudolf Steiner traveled to Norway to found the first group of an Anthroposophical Society that did not yet exist. For us who are accustomed to these ‘country groups’ we can forget how significant this event was. During the previous decades, anthroposophical life had a distinct structure that conformed with spiritual institutions as they had existed in earlier ages. This earlier Anthroposophical Society had followed the form of the Theosophical Society, an earthly association built around a common interest. It was structured vertically with its central organization and chapters, an organization in the outer world. This was an institution to which Rudolf Steiner did not belong. Instead, he called to himself his spiritual students for whom he was their teacher in the Esoteric School. This School for inner development also followed the vertical forms of earlier mysteries.
All of this was to go through a fundamental process of metamorphosis after the burning of the Goetheanum. With the inauguration in Norway of the first of what would become a circle of ‘country groups’ came the first manifestations of a newly evolving organism. This developing entity would only fully appear with the Christmas Conference. What then came into being was the remarkable family of communities that we have all been drawn to throughout our lives, guiding us to the circles of fellow students that form our groups.
At the heart of this fundamental transformation is a completely new way of finding those for whom we have sought throughout life. We are now called to seek for those with whom we can stand together in the journey toward ‘our selves’. Rather than turning outward to the spiritual teacher who we look up to with reverence, we are now called to turn in reverence to each other – becoming each other’s teachers, each other’s fellow pupils.
At the base of the great stairway that leads up through the Goetheanum is an enigmatic form. This form is what we meet as we turn to begin our ascent. It has two distinct aspects, gestures. What first catches our attention is a form that seems to be lifting itself up as if seeking for the light. It calls us into up-rightness. We become aware of our spine, as if unfurling from a fetal position. The second aspect of the form sweeps around the first horizontally. We can experience how each gesture is only complete with its complement. The vertical form has its place within the encircling one. The horizontal form is awakened by the upright one. Rudolf Steiner has given us a sign, a glyph for what was to become the foundations of our shared life in the care of Anthroposophia. This sculptural form is the outer expression of what is hidden in the structures of our inner ear - structures that enabled us to stand upright and in so doing find our orientation to the world around us.
As we complete the ascent up the staircase and enter the great space of the Goetheanum, we enter in a most powerful way into the experience of the strength and the mystery of this new Anthroposophical Society of striving individuals. About us is the mighty circle of columns that together create the space that surrounds us. Each individual column lacks significance when separated from the whole. Each has its place, specific and exact. Each stands where it must be within the circle, bearing the weight it is destined to bear. Only in so doing is the whole present. This is the signature for all of our groups, whether they are the groups of people to whom we belong, or whether they are the groups that we long to meet or be with once more – the community that is inseparable from my journey to myself.
It is the loss of this community, that the golden way through life has brought us to, that we experience as a profound soul ache. Does this experience of loss provide us a window through which we are given the possibility of seeing the profound significance that we each play in the lives of each other? Is this great longing a fleeting gift for seeing anew? Can we receive it?
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FROM THE GOETHEANUM
Dear members,
Breathing With the Climate Crisis – is the title of the forthcoming climate conference at the Goetheanum. Given the situation we find ourselves in at the beginning of 2021, one could ask in more general terms: ‘How can we breathe in the time of Corona?’ The Goetheanum and the Anthroposophical Society are particularly concerned with social breathing. The social breath is coming to a standstill, in the wider and narrower sense. Many people are losing close friends and relatives. Waves of lockdowns pass through the countries. Lockdowns mean personal isolation, they mean closed places of work and culture such as the Goetheanum, and they mean travel restrictions between the regions of the earth.
No cancellations, no silence
At the Goetheanum we ask ourselves how we can, under these circumstances, keep the breath alive that connects us with you, the members of the Anthroposophical Society, and those working for the Sections around the world. Week after week we make a virtue of necessity by offering events and meetings online. The alternative would be to cancel and remain silent. Out of this necessity, the Sections and Departments at the Goetheanum have taken the decision to replace in-person conferences and meetings by digital events. This does not imply that we are deaf to the questions that come with this increasing digitalization. But we are also conducting practical research: how can we digitally open up spaces where the courage for knowledge, warmth of heart and seeds of will can live? These are qualities we are striving for in our work and they enable us, week after week, to bring new breath to the working together of the global Anthroposophical Society and movement and the Goetheanum. With this in mind, we would like to call your attention to current digital opportunities, such as the climate conference mentioned above, the online course Beyond the Third, glimpses into the work on Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas, the lecture series The Signature of Our Time and the web seminars on the Great Conjunction. We will, in addition to all that, stay connected with you personally, using the routes available to us at this time.
Warm greetings,
Ueli Hurter, Goetheanum
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Jane Elisabeth Faint Kieran- *May 13, 1951, + January 15, 2021
Dear Family and Friends of Jane,
A true local, Jane was born here in Toronto on May 13, 1951. Her dad was a hard working factory man and her mom cared for her and her 4 sisters. Family was a big theme for Jane in her early years and throughout her adult life. Like most of us, her greatest joys as well as her most difficult sufferings all had to do with family. That this was true for Jane can remind all of us of a universal truth- that there are deep reasons why we choose our families and why our families choose us.
At the age of 30, Jane married Michael Kieran. And while she described her marriage to Michael as the most difficult suffering of her life, shortly after they were married Chris and Andrew came down. She loved her sons and cared for them in a selfless way. She would give wonderful gifts at birthdays and Christmas. She took Chris traveling to London, Chicago and Montreal. They would go to the zoo together. She cared for both of them at significant times, when they really struggled. The boys took comfort from her as she always was able to offer them a bigger perspective on life. She seemed to the boys to be in possession of a strange peace, a peace that made her secure and comfortable with her place in the world. But perhaps the most important quality that she showed her sons and showed us was her commitment to learning, always learning. She was always taking some new course or engaged in some furthering capacity project. Healing the earth or healing bodies.
We are grateful to you, dear Jane, for reminding us that our hearts are meant to be in a continual process of learning.
Just a few weeks ago, I was privileged to have an intimate conversation with Jane. And when I asked her what the biggest gift in her life was, the first things she described were that in the last few months, the love and care that she received from her boys was unbelievable. She sat there with me, tears in her eyes, in awe of how loved she felt from them, from her close family and close friends. The biggest was love. And so often our truest gifts come with the spirit of death. The Spirit who opens us to receiving what is most important: real love through our most cherished relationships.
But she also mentioned other gifts. She felt strongly gifted by the Spirit to heal. Her boys and everyone who was able to experience her healing practice recognized this gift. It came through her hands and through her heart. Chris described being astonished at how many friends she developed through her healing gift. And while this healing gift could be described as something merely mysterious, the boys noticed that she would always attract the most difficult cases. It was like she needed to be close to unsolvable pain. She needed to bear them, simply to bear the suffering in her heart and through that bearing, her gift of healing would awaken. Jane was healed through deeply connecting to the pain of the individual.
And this is how she lived her name. For our name is so often connected to the signature of our lives. Jane means Gods' gift and Elisabeth means being committed to God. She lived her healing gift. And was committed to holding the sufferings of those who destiny brought to her.
In this light, it is no coincidence that her favorite picture is of Mother Mary. It is no coincidence that at her last anointing just a few weeks ago, she wanted to stare into the eyes of Mary.
Jane’s healing gift, her work in this world, was like Mary in Michelangelo’s famous sculpture, the Pieta. There, Mary is simply holding Jesus’s body after its death, before it is transfigured by resurrection. Jane’s gift was holding. Bearing. Being present with the suffering and thereby opening her heart to the powers of new life. She did this bearing with her patients, she did this bearing with her husband, she did this bearing with her boys.
Another life gift she described was her spiritual path. She was so thankful for Anthroposophy for helping to broaden her perspective on all things including healing, the stars and the spiritual reality of nature and our universe. She was so thankful for Geomancy which blessed her and gave her a way to bring healing to the earth as well as human beings. She was so thankful to Biodynamic craniosacral body work, which she learned at the beginning of the century. Through this healing method she would have her most profound experiences of how the power of healing is truly a gift of grace that comes through human beings when they are open and present and the time is right.
Dear friends, may we be inspired by Jane’s life. May we be inspired by her Mary-like commitment to bearing one another in our pain. May we be inspired by her dedication to the mysteries of creation and her capacity to love and be loved by the ones closest to our hearts.
Yes, so be it.
Rev. Jonah C. Evans
Priest of The Christian Community, Toronto
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In Memory of Barbara Sparling
May 17, 1933 – January 26, 2021
My neighbor Barbara Sparling used a cane as she walked. Are you picturing a frail person, a hesitant person? She walked with confidence, firmly planting each foot. If she spoke to you her eyes meet yours directly and whether she agreed with you or not her words conveyed respect and intelligence. She was a rather small person who exuded good humour and strength.
Before the sky fell in March last year Barbara and I were enjoying dinner in a restaurant after which we were going to see a play. I asked her what she did in her working years. She said with a smile, watching for my reaction, “I started out as a professional dancer!” I don’t know what I was expecting, but dancing would never have entered my mind.
Barbara Sparling was born in Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois in 1933. Her early years were spent in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago and the site of Northwestern University. Her father worked in the oil industry. He owned the company which would become the Quaker Oil Company. During WW II he was Chief Coordinator of the fuel industry. Her mother, Nelda Holmgren became a noted microbiologist, completing her PhD at Northwestern University in the same year that Barbara graduated from Evanston Township High School. Nelda was involved in the establishment of the first Cell Science Centre in Lake Placid, N.Y.
When Barbara was six years old her father left his family. Her mother suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. Barbara and her brother were sent to separate boarding schools. Her brother remained in a military school through grade eight. Barbara spent one year in a Catholic boarding school. She was eight years old and was not Catholic, so it was an unsettling year for her. When she returned home, her mother was working and studying, and her brother was away at school. The next five years were very lonely ones.
At nine years of age Barbara knew she wanted to be a dancer. She awoke early every morning and did her stretches, as all ballerinas must. She studied dance at a small finishing school in Evanston for four years. At thirteen she went to a modern dance camp on Washington Island, Wisconsin. She was enamored with modern dance and so studied with Sybil Shearer, (Sybil Shearer had also been drawn to ballet at a young age but built a career in modern dance which took off after an acclaimed solo performance at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1941. She eventually settled near Chicago). Shearer’s studio was in Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago. Barbara’s father lived in Winnetka with his second family and she would often babysit his two boys. Barbara financed her studies with Ms. Shearer by teaching dance to children.
With Barbara’s drive to become a dancer and her mother’s preoccupation with her studies Barbara became quite independent. She went back to studying ballet in Chicago, which necessitated traveling downtown on the elevated train at least three days a week. Her mother didn’t support her dancing ambitions financially but allowed her to accomplish what she could on her own as long as she maintained her grades. During this period she had one very good friend, Phyllis, who also lived alone with her mother. As high school students the two girls loved attending high school basketball and football games and sitting in Coolies Cupboard after the games enjoying chips and a coke.
When Barbara graduated from high school, she moved into the ‘Y’ on the north side of Chicago and studied daily with Stone & Camryn. Stone taught ballet and toe and Camryn taught character dancing. She took classes from other teachers when possible. To pacify her mother Barbara did complete one year in a liberal arts program at Northwestern University.
Barbara first came across Anthroposophy when she was nineteen years old. She purchased Knowledge of the Higher World and its Attainment by Rudolf Steiner from a second hand bookstore in Chicago. Over the years ..................read on below
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The meaning of financial literacy as I have come to understand it as used in the context of the Economics Conference of the Goetheanum – knowledge and practice of double-entry bookkeeping, accounting and economics to facilitate the fulfilling of one’s destiny via entrepreneurial activity – takes on particular relevance when considered both from the standpoint of the pedagogical needs of adolescents and as a tool for modern human beings to gain orientation in an increasingly disorienting and disoriented world. This issue of Associate! presents an informative overview of the pedagogy of adolescence as well as specific curriculum indications for teaching financial literacy.
Daniel Osmer’s article draws on years of personal research of adolescent development – the phase referred to by Rudolf Steiner as ‘earth maturation’ – which we use as the topical background. Then there are several reports given by participants who attended the Colloquium on Financial Literacy, which was finally held in-person at the Goetheanum in October despite several postponements. This was a collaborative event organized by the Pedagogical Section and the Economics Conference. In his original piece, Oliver van der Waerden, Waldorf teacher at the Steiner School in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, offers teachers much grist for their mills with specific grade-by-grade curriculum suggestions. Fionn Meier and Arthur Edwards both also share their extensive teaching experience. And as a plea to teachers and those responsible for schools, Camila Panain points out that nothing can be taught that is not already known by the teacher, exhorting the adults to learn first what has been so conspicuously absent for the students, who, she says, must not leave (the lower) school without it!
All in all, it is quite heartening to learn, as Christopher Houghton Budd also describes, what has quietly been taking place in many different settings in the world by way of financial education. If this work is taken up with the urgency necessitated by the times, undergirded by the macro policies that it implies, instead of the false images in numbers that Leif Sonstenes’ insightful piece depicts, ever more young people will hit the ground running, knowing what and how to achieve what they came into life to do. Such a vision is also embedded in L’Aubier’s Ecole Autrement entrepreneurial training contributed by Anita Grandjean.
This issue of Associate! was put together for educators who may find in it a source of inspiration to follow through with what Rudolf Steiner said in 1919: “In fact, no child ought really to reach the age of 15 without being led from arithmetic to a knowledge of the rules, at least, of the forms of bookkeeping.”1 We look forward to hearing from you, your experiences, challenges and questions and wish you the greatest possible success in your endeavors. We plan to circulate this special edition widely to teachers around the world. If you know of someone who might appreciate a copy, please let us know. That said, see Note for non-Waldorf teachers on p. 16.
With warm wishes for your continued work on behalf of a bright future for all!
Kim Chotzen
PS: Because we decided to focus this issue on financial literacy, other news from Economics Conference colleagues is absent. If there is anything anyone wishes to share, please send it in and we can issue a Digest. One thing of substance already concerns developments in Latin America, which may well require another special issue.
PPS: In the references, GA stands for Gesamtausgabe, Complete Works in English.
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GOETHEANUM COURSES 2021/2022 |
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GOETHEANUM ANTHROPOSOPHY STUDIES
The "Goetheanum Anthroposophy Studies" provide, especially for young people, the possibility of getting to know the foundations of Anthroposophy. The Goetheanum as a cosmopolitan place, provides the space for human encounters, spiritual discovery and skills training.
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GOETHEANUM ADULT EDUCATION PROGRAMME
Teaching Anthroposophy today
Practices - Challenges - Paradigms
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GOETHEANUM LEADERSHIP COURSE
Entrepreneurial Leadership in a Complex and Challenging World.
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28 Days of Insights, Art and Encounter
Online-Studies
Creativity, autonomy, dialogical work and mutual concern are fundamental factors for the Special Online Course, 'Goetheanum Anthroposophy Studies'. Having learned from the COVID-19 crisis and also wishing to reach out to you under these special circumstances, we designed this new online course aimed at a globalaudience. The interactive study work takes place in separate groups in German, English, French, Portuguese/Spanish.
The joint courses are in English.
NEXT SEMINAR
31.5. - 27.6.2021
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Branch Information and Upcoming Events |
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Branches & Groups
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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
New Members
Clotilde Ollier (Canton de Hatley, QC)
Jan Driessen Van der Lieck (Halifax)
Myrthe van Nederveen (Burnaby, BC)
Re-instated
WELCOME
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Deceased
Jane Faint-Kieran (Richmond Hill, ON)
Barbara Sparling (Thornhill, ON)
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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 ipages without formatting except for paragraphs to before the 15th of the month before publication. If you are including photographs please also attach a pdf showing placement. Articles over 2,500 words may be edited.
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Jef Saunders
Members website
please note you will need to use the password ASC to access the members only page.
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President
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School For Spiritual Science
For list of Class Holders,
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The Anthroposophical Meditative Path: Seven Interactive Zoom Sessions
You are cordially invited to a seven week Zoom workshop on anthroposophical meditation. These sessions are open to all but assume some familiarity with anthroposophy. The purpose of these sessions will be to understand and practice anthroposophical meditations and to discuss our experiences of the work. The sessions will be held on seven consecutive Sundays from 7 pm to 8:30 pm (ET) beginning on January 24th. Each session will include a brief talk, some experiential work, breakout groups, and plenary group discussions. Optional reading materials will be sent out prior to each session for those who want to prepare for the sessions. Each session is a standalone event so you can come to one or all of them as you wish. There is no fee for the event but a donation to the Toronto Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in Canada would be greatly appreciated. To make a donation please see https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/the-anthroposophical-society-in-canada-inc/ (in the Message box write: Toronto Branch).
Please RSVP to Toronto.ASC@gmail.com to be included in the workshop email list and to receive the Zoom links.
Sunday, February 21 - 7pm to 8:30pm
Your Higher Self and the Great Rosicrucian Mantra:
The Mystery of the Trinity in Human Unfolding with Filip Karadzic
Sunday, February 28 - 7pm to 8:30pm
The Rose Cross Meditation:
Opening and Strengthening the Higher Self with Lois Macaulay
Sunday, March 7 - 7pm to 8:30pm
Building an Effective Meditative Regimen:
The Path of Knowledge as Relationship and Service with Robert McKay
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ANTHROPOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN CANADA - ONLINE |
The Consciousness Soul in Personal Development and World Events
The Consciousness Soul in Personal Development and World Events
Rob McKay and Mark McGivern, active members of the ASC Branch and Membership Development Mandate Group, will offer a three-part participatory workshop on distinguishing between sentient, intellectual and consciousness soul, the role we play in developing our own consciousness soul, and the emergent symptoms of the consciousness soul in the events of our time.
Within each workshop time will also be devoted to branch development activities. We will offer a series of possible focus questions for coordinated branch work and ask members to individually prioritize them, and collaboratively in small groups. From this we will collectively ascertain the themes and topics of future gatherings.
Join Zoom Meeting
March 14th, Mother's Day,
1pm PST, 4pm EST
Personal Development of Consciousness Soul
April 11th, 1pm PST, 4pm EST
The Consciousness Soul in World Events
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Dear Friends,
Writer Leigh Glenn, who completed the Foundation Year course in Encountering Nature at The Nature Institute in 2018, asks Craig about the roots of his vocation in biology, how he came to Goethean phenomenological science, and why a practice of contextual observation matters in a world that, increasingly, focuses too much on the parts of things:
“Context influences everything I do. It’s not a static or abstract idea, but a sense of how life plays itself out dynamically in a web of relations, and those are always new and different and interesting. Living becomes very alive through that…”
We hope your time and attention allows for a read of this thought-provoking conversation between Craig and Leigh, posted on our website. Your comments or questions are always welcome at info@natureinstitute.org.
With all good wishes,
Elaine Khosrova
Outreach & Relations
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Anthroposophy Worldwide - 2021
January & February edition
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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