eNews - March 2016

Anthroposophical Society in Canada

(♦ ♦ ♦ aussi disponible en francais♦ ♦ ♦)

2016 Conference

Money For A Better World

An ongoing study group exploring innovative ideas around money and economics. The focus will be mostly on ideas arising from the work of Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy. Ongoing at Hesperus in Thornhill.

Poster

Network Updates

Montr�al

Institute Rudolf Steiner Quebec

Website

Vancouver

Toronto Branch

See right column
Technology's role in human evolution Events & Programs - Canada, April

Nova Scotia

Membership Update

Susanne Smook crossed the threshold December 17, 2015: see Obituary

Astrid Lackner has joined the Society (Vancouver)

Livia Fogadaoan has joined the Society (Toronto)

Editorial Notes

The eNews is published 10 times per year for members of the Anthroposophical Society In Canada. Please send correspondence to the editor.

BACK ISSUES are available in our eNews Archive. Or explore our new
Members' website.

Contact Info

Anthroposophical Society in Canada

# 130A - 1 Hesperus Rd.

Thornhill, ON

L4J 0G9

Administrator

416-892-3656

877-892-3656
info@anthroposophy.ca

Website

Council

Dorothy LeBaron (ON)

President

Judith King (NS)

Secretary

Douglas Wylie (ON)

Treasurer

John Bach (BC)

Arie van Ameringen (QC)

General Secretary

School For Spiritual Science

For list of Class Holders,
click here.

For a list of Collegium members, click here.

General Secretary's Letter

In preparation for our Encountering our Humanity conference, I have been meeting with the various artists and performers who will be taking part in the event. While en route for the North American Collegium meeting in Kimberton, I made a stop in Spring Valley to finalise the plans for the eurythmy troupe's performance at the conference in August. Sea-Anna Vasilas, who is in charge of planning the group's tours, had just returned from China, where the troupe had performed with great success in several cities as well as in Taiwan.

For the Ottawa conference, the troupe's main piece will be an excerpt from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, planned to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the great poet's death in 1616. Shakespeare's exploration of all the facets of the human soul has a direct connection with the overall conference theme of the universal human.

Youth Section conference

This event is beginning to take form. Ariel Paul Saunders and Nathaniel Williams, together with the head of the Youth Section, Constanza Kaliks, have planned a meeting for the weekend of August 6-7, just prior to the beginning of the main conference. They will take up questions relating to our modern era, and particularly issues pertaining to spiritual matters. They will then take part in the full week of conference activities.Letter continues

We are excited to announce.......

The Anthroposophical Society in Canada Website

At last! You can now visit the Society website in English or in French. We have built on the vision of the members' website that was started by Mark McAlister and have carried forward the content from the old site to the new one. As you explore the Menu heading for Members, you will see "Members' Area" and you need to use the password ASC to log in and access this area. You will also see under Public Resources, a link to the Anthroposophical Society in Canada library in Thornhill.Many thanks to Bevan Ballah for cataloguing the books, and to Grant Davis for facilitating the process of getting it on line. This is still a work in progress.

Besides a resource for Members, the website is an entry to the Society for the public. The idea we have worked with is to make the work of anthroposophy across Canada visible. As you will see, not all sections are complete; there is still content to come. And, we will have missed things; contacts that need to be there, photos from other areas. We welcome suggestions, feedback, more ideas, more photos.....

We would like to thank the many members who have contributed to the ideas, the design, and the content for this site. We would particularly like to thank Michel Bourassa for his amazing contribution in translating the website into French.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Dorothy LeBaron, on behalf of the Council

A VISIT FROM THE COUNCIL TO ONTARIO'S HURONIA BRANCH February 6 2016

Janine Sade

This February - the 6th - was a day the Branch had planned for over a year and a half. The Council of the Anthroposophical Society in Canada, which had gathered from across the country in Toronto, came up to spend a Saturday in Barrie. We are so lucky to have access to welcoming spaces here, and this day we made good use of them:

While the Council met in Camphill's Janus House for their own morning meeting, Branch members were able to gather for their Class meeting at Natura, a few doors up the street. Then pots of soup, homemade rolls and butter, cheeses, salads, fruit, flowers, and a yummy dessert made their way down the street to the Janus kitchen, where tables were being set up for lunch. This created a convivial atmosphere for getting to know new people. Most of us had met our two Toronto Councillors, Dorothy LeBaron and Doug Wylie, but many of us had had little contact with Arie van Ameringen from Montreal and Judy King from Halifax. John Glanzer from Calgary and Karen Liedl from southern Qu�bec, who may join the Council this spring, also joined us. We were twenty-one people altogether when we formed a ring to sing a blessing on our meal.

The convivial atmosphere reigned also during the meeting in the afternoon - although it contained a surprise for us members from Barrie: We had believed we were going to be discussing the relationship Continues

Can we see each other as colleagues?

Council meeting Huronia Branch in Barrie, Feb. 6, 2016

Council members are asking: How are we connecting with members and initiatives in Canada, is it the best way to serve the Society and Anthroposophy? We are aware that some members feel a separation between themselves and the council, also between themselves and the Society, and the Goetheanum. We are trying to find ways to make connections which will help us feel that we are all colleagues working together for anthroposophy - locally, across Canada and in the US, and in the world. We are trying to find new ways to work together when we meet as members.

On February 6th, we had the opportunity to visit Barrie and meet members and friends. We felt so warmly and kindly received! As you can read in Janine's report from the Huronia Branch, we had the most wonderful pot luck lunch before our afternoon meeting.

A question came from the Barrie members to Council prior to the meeting: 'We are especially interested in the integrity and survival of anthroposophy in Central Ontario, and it would be Continues

An Attempt to Convince the Scientists of Spirituality

by Trinh Huynh

A scientist says to a so-called spiritualist: "Someday science will explain everything in the world." The spiritualist may then ask: "What about human feeling, human thinking? What about life?" "Those too!" is the scientist's response. The spiritualist walks away in disagreement.

This brief conversation hopefully characterizes countless ongoing debates among thinkers over the last few centuries, as well as the debate between the scientist and the spiritualist inside every thinker. On the one side, we have scientists who firmly believe that the progress of science will someday solve all the riddles in the world. On the other side, we have spiritualists who believe no less strongly that there are sacred regions in the world and the human soul that science will never, or should never reach.

In this article, I attempt to completely settle these debates. I will do so by giving convincing arguments that are products of logical thinking. I hope the thinker who reads my arguments will follow them with logical thinking free of any preconception. I also modestly request that the reader patiently follow through my arguments. On my part, I will be as condensed and direct as possible while capturing all the important points I want to make. The arguments I will give here are not new -- they are simply based on my reading of literature and my contemplation of the world. In this article, I attempt to collect the most important arguments in one place and re-word them based on my understanding so that the product is hopefully a sufficiently condensed and convincing article.

I will show that, if one thinks thoroughly enough, then one will be unable to deny the real, significant existence of spirituality (the precise meaning of which will also become clear later in this article). So here it goes...Full article

In Memory of Bernhardt Hack
By Rosemary Tayler

Uli Hack remembers how his father, Bernhardt, switched from conventional farming in 1967 on his farm near Stuttgart in Southern Germany to biodynamic farming. After going on a farm tour with a friend, and seeing for himself how biodynamic farming was carried out, he made the decision to switch overnight. Uli's father had had some health problems at that time and part of the reason for making this shift was based on these health troubles.

That same year, Bernhardt Hack had convinced five of his neighbors to switch to biodynamic farming. "When my father was enthusiastic about something, he let everyone else know about it!" said Uli.

In 1982, the Hack family moved to Canada, bringing with them this new system of agriculture. That first year was one of settling into their farm near Kincardine in Western Ontario. The next spring, Bernhardt organized a conference in the Hamlet of Armow at the Community Hall. People came from as far away as Manitoulin Island. These conferences continued for many years; the first day focused on organic farming principles and the second day on biodynamic practices including the preparations.

From the early to mid-1980s, Bernhardt Hack supplied many of his fellow farmers with the biodynamic preparations.Full article.

Importance of Birth-to-Three

The Rudolf Steiner Centre Toronto is launching a new program this summer Professional Development for Early Childhood Educators Birth-to-Three.

Birth-to-three is a sacred time when the child is of two worlds: they are still held within the spiritual world from whence they came AND they bring with them into this earthly realm goodness, devotion, and trust.

This is the most critical period of life!

they are at their most impressionable, surrendering to their senses
all that they experience profoundly influences their physical and psychological well-being for the rest of their life
they acquire the three fundamental human gifts of uprightness, speaking, and thinking
they are devoted to what they receive as they place their complete trust into the hands of their parents and caregivers
they need warmth and support so that the 'I' can take hold of the physical body in an unhindered way

At no other time is there such a need to be protected, understood and have an advocate. Those working in this realm learn to respect and accept the value of this phase for each individual child's potential and for that of humanity as a whole.

Parent-and-Child work in particular needs more recognition within Waldorf school communities by seeing the teacher as a "real teacher," through equal pay, involvement in faculty work, and professional development.

For the parents it means having an early experience of Waldorf education which will inform their ongoing understanding of the pedagogy. For the schools it means having informed parents and healthy children.

Rudolf Steiner gave an indication that our very best teachers should be with the youngest children.

Karen Weyler co-director

Visit www.rsct for details

Invitation from the Visual Arts Section

Digital (JPG only) images of paintings, sculpture, mixed media, multi-media and architectural work created in the last two years (architecture in the past 15 years) may be submitted by June 1, 2016 to the email addresses below. Final selection will be made by June 15,2016 for works to be included in a virtual slideshow that will run during the "Encountering Our Humanity" conference venue, La Cit� Coll�giale in Ottawa, Canada, August 7;14, 2016. From these works,a further, smaller selection of pieces will be made for actual exhibition in a gallery space (to be announced) for the same period of time. (It is hoped that this selection may provide the basis for possible future shows.)

For the Selection Committee,
Van James:e-mail
Sylvie Richard:e-mail

Obituary

Susanne Smook n�e Pichler, widowed Gregory 1924 - 2015

Susie's deeply religious nature found greater satisfaction in The Christian Community than in the Anthroposophical Society. Hers was not so much the desire to understand the world as simply to acknowledge it in trustfulness and gratitude and devotion. I saw this fundamental attitude in the way she responded to my caregiving during her final illness. I cared for her as best I could in my often ineffectual way. But almost invariably before falling asleep she would say to me: Roger, you take marvelous care of me and I appreciate it very much. It was a kind of indomitable sweetness. Of course I also remember Susie when she was in top form- energetic, well organized and welcoming a challenge. But underlying these praiseworthy traits was this same sweetness which, in the appropriate context, is the same, I think, as religion in the best sense.

Susie's life story is fascinating. Born and raised in beautiful Prague, her childhood was happy and harmonious.Continued

EVENTS & PROGRAMS - CANADA

Nova Scotia March, April, May 2016

Eurythmy classes with the Osmonds

Easter Saturday, March 26, 2 - 4pm Christ Church Hall, Dartmouth

followed by Hot Cross Buns at the Osmond's,

and (optional), reading an Easter lecture by Rudolf Steiner.

Saturday, April 30, 2 - 4pm at the Christ Church Hall, Dartmouth

Saturday, May 28, 2 - 4pm at the Christ Church Hall, Dartmouth

All are welcome

contribution to expenses appreciated

RSVP appreciated by email or tel: 902-466-7735

Margaret & Arthur

Ontario

April, 2016

Camphill Nottawasaga - Camphill outreach events:

modest examples of how a small enterprise learns to connect in fruitful ways with streams of activity in the broader community.

Tribute Dinner,
7 April at the MacLaren Art Centre. Reception at 6pm. 2016 Community action award to Donald Stuart.

Flyer

World Wide Weave,

7-22 April at Collier St. United Church. Reception on 9 April, 2-5pm.Information
Paint The Town Pink, 15-21 April, at Camphill's The Store, Barrie - High School students anti-bullying campaign.

Spring Art Tour, 22-25 April, Camphill's The Store is a Barrie destination.

Gateways Conference: Raising Healthy, Creative and Resilient Children - April 15-17, 2016
Toronto Waldorf School

Led by Sharifa Oppenheimer, author of Heaven on Earth: A Handbook of Parents of Young Children, with wonderful choices of afternoon workshops led by local expects.

How do we raise healthy, creative and resilient children in today's complex and rapidly changing world? During this weekend we will explore how to support the growing child and how families and communities contribute to the healthy development of all children. This weekend is particularly valuable for parents, caregivers and educators of young children ages birth to nine.

Schedule:

Fri, Apr 15, 7:00pm - 9:00pm: Healthy Foundations

Sat, Apr 16, 9:00am - 2:30pm: Development of Creativity

Sun, Apr 17, 8:30am - 5:00pm: Resilience & The Importance of Play

Fees: $30 - $160

Limited free childcare on Saturday

Conference details and registration link

Technology's Role in Human Evolution

The Western Esoteric Path - Thursday April 28 with
Andrew Linnell

Will machines merge with Mankind? Kurzweil's Singularity: is this our human future? Why must we deal with machines for our evolution? The Western Path.

Thursday 7:30 - 9 pm April 28

Friends House
60 Lowther Ave. Toronto

Themes: Evolution & devolution, the Incarnation of Ahriman, electricity and evil, the path to Jupiter.