Thursday, March 19, 2015

Changement d'Administration

- Judy King

IMPORTANT – VEUILLEZ PRENDRE NOTE!

Chers amis,

Mark McAlister termine ce mois-ci son mandat d’administrateur de la Société anthroposophique au Canada. Pendant les sept dernières années, il a assuré la liaison avec les membres et a été responsable de la gestion des communications; or, il remettra ces tâches entre de nouvelles mains dès la fin mars 2015. Les membres du conseil tiennent à lui témoigner toute leur reconnaissance et à exprimer tout le respect qu’ils éprouvent pour le dévouement énergique que Mark a consacré à ce travail.

En 2008 le conseil a reconnu qu’il devenait essentiel d’engager quelqu’un pour gérer le nombre grandissant de tâches reliées au volet administratif de la Société. On a proposé ce poste à Mark, et il a relevé le défi. Étant donné que le poste en question était quelque chose de nouveau au sein de notre Société, le conseil n’avait pas encore une idée claire de l’envergure de la tâche. Les éléments essentiels du travail étaient pourtant évidents : tenir à jour le registre des membres et se charger de la communication avec les membres en assumant également la tâche de produire le bulletin des membres (Glimpses/Aperçus).  Il est vite devenu apparent qu’il y avait des zones grises que l’administrateur et le conseil allaient devoir éclaircir ensemble. Cet aspect du travail s’est avéré souvent ardu, et nous sommes profondément reconnaissants à Mark d’avoir fait preuve de persévérance et d’avoir eu le courage de s’aventurer dans ce qui devait souvent avoir l’air d’une forêt impénétrable! Un des aspects qui s’est grandement développé pendant ces années, c’est l’expérience d’un véritable travail en commun, et nous remercions très chaleureusement Mark de nous avoir aidés à faire avancer ce processus.

Il a rendu un énorme service à la Société et au conseil. Parmi les multiples aspects des responsabilités que Mark a assumées, on peut souligner : assurer la liaison avec les membres avec un esprit de bonne volonté et avec bonne humeur; susciter l’enthousiasme chez les membres (anciens et nouveaux); s’acquitter des tâches administratives avec assiduité et chaleur; mettre sur pied et produire les bulletins électroniques; être attentif aux nouvelles exigences gouvernementales et assurer la conformité de nos règlements avec les nouvelles dispositions légales régissant les organismes de bienfaisance; être animé d’une vision contemporaine de la nature de la Société et s’exprimer vigoureusement pour indiquer les choses qui avaient besoin d’être changées; servir et soutenir avec dévouement la Société et le conseil.

Nous envoyons nos vœux les plus sincères à Mark pour la réalisation de ses nouveaux projets!

Pendant les deux dernières semaines de mars 2015, il y aura une période de transition pendant laquelle le poste d’Administrateur responsable des Membres et des Communications passera de Mark à son successeur : Jef Saunders. Nous vous invitons à exprimer à Mark un grand MERCI, et à Jef nous souhaitons chaleureusement la BIENVENUE!


Les membres du Conseil de la Société anthroposophique au Canada :

Arie van Ameringen (Secrétaire général), John Bach, Jean Balekian, Judith King, Dorothy LeBaron, Douglas Wylie.



Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Mot du Secrétaire général - mars 2015

- Arie van Ameringen

L’assemblée générale annuelle à Toronto
Le  congrès annuel de la société aura lieu du 17 au 19 mai prochain sous le thème de Et l’obscurité se change en lumière (And darkness becomes light). Les organisateurs du congrès de la société ont voulu se relier au thème de l’année 2015 /2016 du Goethéanum où la connaissance de soi et le développement de soi favorisent un engagement actif. :Le je se reconnaît lui-même à la lumière de l’affirmation et le lien michaélique au monde.  Dans ce sens, comment le je peut-il rencontrer l’obscurité dans un geste michaélique et le porter dans sa lumière? Le congrès ainsi que L’AGA dont ouverts à tous . Pour participer aux votes lors de l’assemblée, il faut, toute fois, être un membre en règle. Je tiens à vous souligner qu’il y a des fonds pour soutenir le voyage des membres ainsi que pour les voyages de jeunes, amis de la Société ( fonds des jeunes) ; pour en bénéficier, il s’agit de faire une demande auprès de l’administrateur ou à un membre du conseil. Curieusement, très peu de personnes ont fait des demandes jusqu’à ce jour.

La visite Bodo von Plato
Bodo Von Plato est membre du comité directeur au Goethéanum. Bodo a accepté avec enthousiasme l’idée de voyager à travers une partie du pays pour rencontrer les membres. Il nous offrira une conférence, un atelier sur le travail intérieur et il rencontrera également les membres de L’école de la science de l’esprit. Je l’accompagnerai de Vancouver à Montréal.  En voyageant à travers le pays, nous aurons la possibilité de relier les membres à travers des thèmes communs. Rappel des dates :
  Vancouver, 24-26 juillet
Toronto,  le jeudi 30 juillet et les 1-- 2 août
  Montréal, 7-9 août (en français uniquement)
Dans chacune des trois villes, il y aura une conférence publique sur le thème : Philosophie, Anthroposophie et Vie quotidienne.
  Le samedi,  nous co-animerons un atelier sur le développement intérieur. Le matin, le travail portera sur les six exercices. Le thème traité en après-midi sera : Concentration, Contemplation et Méditation. 
Le dimanche, il y aura une rencontre pour les membres de l'École de Science de l'esprit.
Nous regardons la possibilité de faire un arrêt à  Nelson et à Calgary si le temps le permet.

Le congrès À la rencontre de notre humanité, 2016
Notre comité s’est réuni régulièrement depuis l’automne dernier. En font partie, Jean Balekian, Douglas Wylie, Dorothy LeBaron, Robert McKay  et d’Ottawa, se joignent alternativement Sylvie Richard et Hamo Hammond. Nous avons ajouté une journée pour permettre des conférences spécifiques sur les arts. Après l’ouverture, le dimanche  7 août,  chaque jour sera consacré à une thématique particulière :
•             Biographie et Karma
•             Éducation
•             Médecine
•             Science et science de la terre (biodynamie)
•             Les arts 
•             Art social,
•             et pour terminer le dimanche 14, le travail intérieur et la méditation.

 Il y aura quatre fins  d’après-midi réservés à des présentations de recherche personnelle. Tout participant qui voudrait partager le résultat d’une recherche à partir d’une question qu’il a approfondie, aura 15 min allouées. Les exposés pourraient porter sur des phénomènes observés, sur la mise en route d’une initiative, d’un processus artistique ou d’un travail de réflexion méditative.
Le motif des spirales développé par Jean Balekian sur l’affiche en préparation du congrès fait référence à ce mouvement de l’âme à la recherche de l’esprit, à l’intérieur de soi et dans l’univers.  C’est une façon de se représenter la rencontre de l’universel humain,  la rencontre de notre humanité.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Updates From The General Secretary - March 2015

- by Arie van Ameriungen

The Annual General Meeting in Toronto
The annual conference of the Society will take place from May 17th to 19th with the theme And the Darkness Becomes Light. This theme was chosen by the conference organizers to connect with the theme for the 2015/2016 year as proposed by the Goetheanum. Self-knowledge and inner development foster active commitment: The “I” knows itself in the Light of Michaelic World Affirmation and World Connection. How then can the “I” encounter darkness and in a Michaelic gesture bring this darkness into its own inner light? The conference and the AGM are open to all. However, in order to be able to vote during the meeting, one must be a member in good standing. I would like to remind you that there are funds available to help pay the travel expenses for members and that young friends of the Society can benefit from the special Youth Fund. In order to take advantage of this funding, you need only contact the administrator or a council member. Up to now we have received very few requests for financial assistance.  

The Visit of Bodo von Plato
Bodo Von Plato is a member of the Executive Committee at the Goetheanum. He has enthusiastically agreed to travel with me to several cities across Canada in order to meet with members. He will offer a lecture, a workshop on inner work and will also meet with members of the School for Spiritual Science. As we visit several centers around the country, we shall attempt to build a connection between members in all regions by taking up common themes in the places visited. Here is a reminder of the dates:

Vancouver, July 24-26
Toronto, Thursday, July 30 and August 1-- 2
Montreal, August 7-9 (in French exclusively)

In each of these three cities, there will be a public lecture on the theme: Philosophy, Anthroposophy and Everyday Life.
On Saturday, we shall co-host a workshop on inner development. During the morning session, the focus will be on the six exercises, and the afternoon session will explore the theme: Concentration, Contemplation and Meditation.
On Sunday there will be a gathering for the members of the School for Spiritual Science. We are looking at the possibility of also making stops in Nelson and in Calgary, if the schedule permits.

The Encountering our Humanity Conference 2016
Our organising committee has met regularly since last fall. The committee members are: Jean Balekian, Douglas Wylie, Dorothy LeBaron, and Robert McKay and, from Ottawa, the committee is joined alternately by Sylvie Richard and Hamo Hammond. We are adding an extra day dedicated specifically to the arts to the conference schedule. Following the opening on August 7th, each day of the event will be devoted to a specific theme:
•             Biography and Karma
•             Education
•             Medicine
•             Science and Earth Sciences (biodynamics)
•             The Arts 
•             Social Art
•             And to close the conference on Sunday, August 14, inner work and meditation.

At the end of the afternoon on four of the days, space will be reserved for individuals to present the results of their personal research. Each participant wishing to share the results of the research he or she has been carrying out will be allotted 15 minutes. These presentations could focus on things such as: observation of phenomena, starting an initiative, results of an artistic process or work concerning meditative reflection.
The spiral motif developed by Jean Balekian for the poster being prepared for the conference evokes the movement of the soul as it seeks for the spirit within the self and in the cosmos: encountering the universally human, encountering our humanity.

Arie van Ameringen
General Secretary

Thursday, March 12, 2015

The Freedom Mystery Quest and Conference (3)

Join us for the Adventure

- by Tim Nadelle

Two independent initiatives which have been in hopeful conversation since September 2014 have now  firmed up their collaborative intentions.  A conference devoted to the exploration and experience of the path of knowledge which is implicit in the Philosophy of Freedom will take place from Friday 23 October to Sunday 25 October 2015 at the Christian Community Church in Thornhill, Ontario.  Interwoven into the fabric of the conference, TQuest Productions of Toronto will perform the first third of the Portal of Initiation, from the prelude (Friday night) through scenes one and two (Saturday), up until scene three (Sunday afternoon).

Accompanying us on this journey, Christian Community Priest Daniel Haffner will open and close the conference with lectures which are intended to awaken a spiritual dialogue between the two initiatives.  Over the course of many years of study and activity, Daniel has worked deeply with both of these works, lecturing and leading workshops in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.  Daniel recently delivered four stirring lectures over the course of the festival and conference in August 2014 in Spring Valley, NY, where all four mystery dramas were performed.

These two masterpieces which were developed so long ago - The Philosophy of Freedom and the Portal of Initiation – are both works which carry us into the distant future.  In April 1922, Walter Johannes Stein asked Rudolf Steiner: "What will remain of your work thousands of years from now?"  He replied: "Nothing but The Philosophy of Freedom.”  The mystery dramas portray the life journeys of a circle of individuals who are in the process of developing the imaginative faculties of perception which humanity will increasingly evolve in the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch.

Our assay to bring these works together creatively, our imagined “Freedom Mystery Quest” is, therefore, an attempt to reach both backwards and forwards and to fashion through their interweaving a present moment where a new impulse can unfold, inspired by our anthroposophical heritage, yet carrying us into the future.

Join Us for an Epistomological Quest with The Philosophy of Freedom…
Rudolf Steiner wrote and spoke repeatedly throughout his life about the importance of the Philosophy of Freedom.  For example, in the introduction to Occult Science he wrote, “…The path leading through acquaintanceship with spiritual-scientific truths to sense-free thinking is completely reliable.  But there is another even more dependable and, above all, more exact, through for some people it may prove more difficult.  It is described in my books, The Theory of Knowledge Based on the Goethean World Conception and The Philosophy of Freedom.  These books point out what human thought achieves when thinking becomes absorbed in self-activity instead of working on impressions of the physical sense world…. A person who allows these books to work upon his entire being is already experiencing the spiritual world, although he perceives it only as a world of thought.”

As Steiner points out, this path is more difficult for some people and in fact the struggles which many anthroposophists encounter when working with the Philosophy of Freedom lead them to give it up altogether.  Happily, there is a way forward for even those who find the book too challenging to take up individually.  That way forward is to take it up with colleagues.  Now one way to do so is, of course, the study group and many people have found their progress quickened by the stimulation of such communal engagement.

While recognizing the value of the study group, the avenue of exploration we intend for the conference is different.  Here we wish to take up some of the many exercises for spiritual development which are implicit in the Philosophy of Freedom, exercises the discovery and fashioning of which are a process of individual, creative, epistemological experimentation.  While the exercises themselves emerge through working with the living content of the book, the performance of the exercises leads to a rediscovery through experience of the truths to which the book points. 

And - in a surprising and encouraging discovery - the engagement with such exercises is profoundly enhanced through working together.  In this spirit, the conference is an invitation to connect with others who wish to discover together how we can walk the spiritual path which is implicit in the Philosophy of Freedom, to strive to practice the Philosophy of Freedom.  This process of mutual engagement is essential to this endeavour, for the conference is not intended to be a sharing of received wisdom.  Rather, we are looking for colleagues who wish to engage with us in the work.  The work is experimental, not a finished product. 

And it is only a beginning.  There will be sufficient time at this conference to experiment with the exercises which are implicit in the seven chapters which form the first part of the book, entitled “Knowledge of Freedom”.  Whether we continue this work in a subsequent conference devoted to the second part of the book “The Reality of Freedom” will depend upon the momentum developed during this initial endeavour.

Join us for an Experience of the First Third of the Portal of Initiation
The cast of the mystery drama has been toiling since September 2014 to bring the production of the first third of the Portal to life.  Steiner said in a lecture on Oct. 31, 1910, “I have stated the fact that many, many things of an esoteric nature would not need to be described, that lectures would be unnecessary on my part, if only everything that lies in the Rosicrucian Mystery [i.e. the Portal of Initiation] could work directly on your souls…  I would have to use the enormous number of words necessary in my lectures and speak for days, for weeks, even for years, in order to describe what has been said and what could be said in the single drama…”  The experience of the watching a mystery drama is a unique and powerful experience, a kind of concentration of anthroposophy.  Anyone who sees one performed will attest to how moving it is to experience it “live” as opposed to merely reading it.

From another perspective, what’s unique about the mystery dramas is the depiction of individual experience in spiritual development.  On September 17, 1910, Steiner said about the Portal of Initiation, “This Mystery Drama exists now as a picture of human evolution in the development of a single person [Johannes Thomasius].  I want to emphasize that true feeling makes it impossible to throw a cloak of abstractions around oneself in order to present anthroposophy; every human soul is different from every other and, at its core, must be different, because each one undergoes the experience of his own development.  For this reason, instruction to the many can provide only general directions. One can give the complete truth only by applying it to a single human soul, to a soul that reveals its human individuality in all its uniqueness.”

And later, on October 31, 1910 he observed, “In a book like How to Know Higher Worlds, one can only speak about human development in a way that is more or less applicable to each and every human being… That means that no matter how concrete such a presentation is, it takes on a certain abstract – one could even say theoretical – character.  One thing we need to keep in mind: development is not simply development in general!  There is no development in and of itself, no generalized development; there is only the development of this or that or a third or a fourth or the thousandth person.  There must be as many processes of development as there are people on the earth.”

Perhaps it is because the drama portrays the unique development of a single, imperfect individual, who is nevertheless on a spiritual path of development – that witnessing its performance stimulates and challenges each of us at such a personal level.  The experience of the painful progress of Johannes Thomasius over the course of the drama is a deeply hopeful portrayal, for are we not all fundamentally flawed individuals aspiring to spiritual wholeness?

Actively Participate in the interweaving of these 2 initiatives
This evocation of the development of a single individual in the Portal resonates deeply with the work our planning group has been doing in preparation for the conference.  We’ll be sharing the various exercises we continue to discover in the pages of the Philosophy and inviting you to join us in experimenting with them.  However, these exercises – as fruitful as they have been for us individually – are merely examples.  Our hope is that the weekend will inspire participants to develop their own exercises, their own paths of exploration, with the Philosophy of Freedom as their guide and treasure map. 

Our imagination for the weekend is that conference participants will come to find in the experience of the mystery dramas a path to freedom and to discover in the Philosophy of Freedom a fundamental point of entry into the experience of the mystery drama which is at the foundation of every individual’s life.

If you’re intrigued, please visit the conference website: www.philosophyfreedom.ca.  And if you’re interested in attending, leave your contact information.  We’ll let you know when we’re ready to receive pre-registrations.


Tim Nadelle 

Important News - Please Note!

- by Judy King

Dear Friends,

Mark McAlister is stepping out of the role of Administrator of the Anthroposophical Society in Canada. He has carried the work of membership and communications administration for seven years, and will pass this role to new hands at the end of March (2015). Council members wish to take an opportunity to show our gratitude, respect and appreciation to Mark for the lively dedication he has brought to the task.

In 2008, with an acknowledgement from Council that help was needed with administrative work, the decision was made to hire someone who would be in charge of keeping membership records and communication with members, including publication of Glimpses. At the beginning of that year Mark was engaged for the position. Because some aspects of the work were new, Council did not have a complete picture of what the role entailed. The main aspects were clear. It soon became evident that part of the work was also to come to clarity and definition, together with council members, in the greyer areas of the task. This was not always easy, and we are very grateful Mark persisted in his courageous efforts to penetrate the forest, as it sometimes must have looked! An important part of what grew was our working together; and we very warmly thank Mark for helping to keep that process moving.

He has performed a huge task for the Society and Council. Some aspects of the broad scope of work that Mark carried out with dedication, are: reaching out and connecting and caring for members with good will and good humour, drumming up the Society with enthusiasm for new and existing members, completing the chores of the administrative work with professional diligence and warmth, initiating and producing the wonderful and essential e-news, including the more recent geographical enews, paying attention to, and ensuring compliance with government charitable regulations, holding a modern vision of the Society and standing up and voicing the things he felt he needed to change, and dedicated service and support for Society and Council members.

Very best wishes to Mark for his future projects!

For two weeks (mid-March to end of March 2015) the work will be in transition between Mark and his successor in the role of Membership and Communications Administrator, Jef Saunders. We ask you to join us in giving Mark a big THANK YOU, and giving Jef a big WELCOME!

From the Council of the Anthroposophical Society in Canada:
Arie van Ameringen (General Secretary), John Bach, Jean Balekian, Judith King, Dorothy LeBaron, Douglas Wylie.