Duncan and Maggie
Keppie, Jennifer Greene and Jonathan Swan
This unique
conference brought water and rocks together as subjects of Goethean observation
of the processes common to water and the earth as a step towards a deepening
understanding of the “Living Water and Earth or Gaia”. The stage was set by
presentation of a beautiful puppet production of Goethe’s The Fairy Tale of
the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily by a group of South Shore Waldorf
parents under the direction of Monike Wildemann. Goethe regarded the Fairy Tale
as his way of presenting his most profound observations of nature in the
transformation of the soul. The Fairy Tale is set in a landscape divided by a
river that depicts the boundary between two lands: the land of our normal
‘daytime’ consciousness and the land of the super-sensible, which is not
accessible to our normal sense perception. By the end of the Fairy Tale, there
is a permanent bridge spanning this river, joining these two Lands together. In
this context, we “read the water and rocks” using experiments, and excursions
around Bear River. Workshop themes centered around the ring vortex and
archetypes.
Successive days
followed a rhythmic pattern of welcoming the day with water- and earth- related
songs led by Maggie Keppie, followed by a morning field trip, an afternoon
experiment, a shared dinner on the banks of Bear River, an evening lecture,
ending with a dance depicting the water/earth movements with Maggie and a
Scottish slow air on the piano accordion played by Duncan Keppie. These
activities were supplemented by molding clay from a sphere to a ring, an
excercise that Rudolf Steiner used in embryology, and drawing vortex patterns
on paper. Our last day together involved a walk to view the patterns in the
river and in the rocks along its' banks followed by a meal in the park and concluding
offerings.
Following the
workshop, some of us visited Blue Beach to see the Carboniferous sedimentary
rocks deposited by estuarine currents, raindrop imprints, and fossil plants and
animals. On the return trip Jennifer and Jonathan stopped at Joggins UNESCO
site to see the fossil trees. Full Report
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