The Guelph Research Group - 100th Meeting!

- submitted by Elizabeth White

"The conversation group must make itself a magic circle; the least break in its Grail-Cup wholeness would let precious light-substance, generated by the meeting, drain away. Sensitive participants will feel asides and interruptions to be nothing less than a cutting off of the meeting from the spiritual world."
- from Marjorie Spock’s “The Art of Goethean Conversation”

In June 1999 a group of five people met together and decided to start a study group. They were Doug and Helen Cass, Elizabeth White (a newcomer from England) and Roger and Susie Smook, who offered their home as the venue for the meetings. There was a feeling in the initial group that the study should take place not in the conventional way we had all been used to, but in Goethean conversation around different research questions. The meeting would be held once a month and a subject might last from two to four months. In this way the members of the group would have time to do their own research on the subject in order to bring contributions to the meetings. Strict Goethean conversation in a group was a discipline that challenged us all; we succeeded, we failed, we succeeded and again we failed, but by perseverance and dedicated hard work we continued to meet every month and give it our best!

Our first meeting was on September 17, 1999 and in the group were the above mentioned five people and Eileen McMorris. Because our desire was to work deeply out of anthroposophy it was considered a necessity that every contributor would be a member of the anthroposophical society. Over the years different people joined and left. We had a visit from Heather Thomas in June 2004 and from Philip Thatcher in January 2005. Doug Cass passed over the Threshold on November 19, 2008.

We feel enriched by this work as we study the different topics in preparation for the meetings and have found it to be an inspiring and challenging way to work with anthroposophy. Over the past eleven years we have researched twenty one topics including each member’s biography. And so on Friday February 19th 2010 we gathered to celebrate our one hundredth meeting. Present were Chris and Margaret Wilson from Woodstock, Linda Nagel from Waterloo, Helen Cass, Roger and Susie Smook and Elizabeth White. Members unable to attend this meeting were Linda Fairburn, Mark Ross and William Caldwell.