Spiritual Science in Metamorphosis
A half-day workshop in Harlemville, New York coming up this August 2nd
I am so pleased to be offering this workshop with Michael Howard, an amazing artist, friend and long-term colleague. Our main goal is to hold space for a conversation that we think is long overdue in the anthroposophical movement. Are we up to the task? Do we have the courage and generosity of heart? I hope you will join us and help make this quantum leap possible.
All movements and institutions, including anthroposophical ones, partake in the laws of metamorphosis, and in the forces of growth and decay, health and illness, hardening and dissolution.
How do we experience these polar forces working in the anthroposophical movement at this time?
The spiritual breakdown in all spheres of human life, in all corners of the globe–sometimes referred to as the meta-crisis–calls for a profound metamorphosis of how we collectively cultivate and embody spiritual science.
But this renewal of anthroposophy will require conscious intent, openness to new ways of working, heightened discernment of the working of evil, and a commitment to a profound transformation of our own shadow nature and the collective shadow forces of our movement.
As we move toward the pivotal year of 2033, many questions press upon us:
Can we learn to work with the metamorphic, upward-striving forces at the heart of spiritual science so they can more widely serve the cultural and social needs of our time?
Do we have the will, vision, social, and soul capacities necessary to bring spiritual science to a new octave of potency?
What is the unique contribution of the anthroposophical community to the deeper penetration of the Christ Impulse within humanity so urgently needed at this time?
These are some of the questions we will explore through conversation and artistic exercises, in this highly interactive, half-day workshop.
When: Sunday, August 2nd, from 12:30 to 5:30 pm
Where: Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School, 330 County Route 21C, Ghent, NY
Cost: Sliding Scale $10 to $50, no one turned away
Space is limited; pleaser register early
This is right before my AAP seminar that week, but this seems very important! I'd love to give some thoughts and ideas leading up to this meeting, that maybe could be represented through you in some context(if it makes sense in the context of the meeting). I think the main issue of our time is the younger generation and their uphill battle with technology. They are not joining our movement at high enough rates currently, in what i believe could be a path to recovery for them, from growing up with screens(leading to cognitive decline). I think Anthroposophy can be a source of cognitive development that can be explained as something that can differentiate young people from AI and that can help them communicate, understand themselves better, and make clearer decisions in their life. This is the first generation (gen z) where there's been documented and noticeable cognitive decline from a previous generation. Now AI is here to make it easy for them to not build up that cognition(spirit in some sense) because it gives them the option to have AI write and think for them as well as complete tasks for them. They are weakened by the educational system and through technology. Anthroposophy is an anecdote not only through the essential exercises and meditations, but through the actual content, which lives and works on in the human being all the way down to the physical body. This is the only full restoration process they have left to counter the evil they've faced. Yet only 1680 under 40 Anthroposophists. Idk what Gen z numbers are. Some initial thoughts after interfacing with many higher Ed folks this week at a conference. Thanks!
I am sorry I can't attend, believing strongly in your ways of working and listening, and the questions you raise. I think about the BD practice of stirring, of crumbling horn manure into water, then giving movement, listening into it... Time, an hour, to hear the swish of the circle, then the brief rumbling chaos before turning and creating order again, going the other way. Centrifugal and centripetal forces, self and cosmos and the beauty envisioned. I think back on the 2018 BD conference, what a model of expansion and inclusion that was -- the groundwork laid for a heartfelt connection with the Pueblo values and dances -- or for having Karen Young Washington as keynote speaker (learning about urban food deserts and actions bravely taken). Centrifugal and centripetal flowing of water, outward and returning... Oh, but that outward!! As a middle school teacher of ecology and farming (in public school) -- for its own dynamism I would wish to see anthroposophy continue to embrace the eclectic collective, not draw too much into its own unique, crucial, but insular language (yes, Ahriman, etc.) -- but if it wishes to stay both deep and old and young and loving, to look at its outreach to critical issues of our time, like justice! Think about the words -- yes-- diversity, equity and inclusion! -- and what they mean now in a broader sense, as in a reaching out of hands, and a searching of the heart. Once Steiner spoke to a group of earnest farmers; he gave them some odd, beautiful prescriptions, and the vision of a farm as a living organism; one farmer who learned there moved to Wisconsin. Eventually Ruth Zinniker was giving out the egg-shaped clumps of transformed humus for some of is to crumble between our fingers into the water which, when stirred, became that translucent presence in droplets whisked over the land. Why? Certainly (in part) so we could know the joy of stirring, of feeling, singularly or together-- connecting the inward with the outward in a real way, watching life unfold in harmony. I wish you great stirring together at this meeting, adding to that clump of humus just a speck of critical awareness to find its way movingly in the water. Will you think about what a teenager would make of the language and concerns you share? How DOES the anthroposophical movement connect to crucial questions like eternal war in the Middle East or Sudan, to climate and refugeeism - or to the recent creation of concentration camps in these States? Anthroposophy has an arresting view of the individual within a cosmic sweep of time, but right now, how will its movements continue to ray out (conserving its identity and energies and identity) -- to harmonize with other entities (with diverse languages) who are also trying to address the rolling "polycrisis" affecting all of our neighbors -- human and "other than" human, in our time?