Calendar of the Soul
[January 03, 2010 - January 09, 2010]
Thirty-ninth Week
Surrendering to spirit revelation
I gain the light of cosmic being;
The power of thinking, growing clearer,
Gains strength to give myself to me,
And quickening there frees itself
From thinker’s energy my sense of self.
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English translation by Ruth and Hans Pusch
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An Geistesoffenbarung hingegeben
Gewinne ich des Weltenwesens Licht.
Gedankenkraft, sie wächst
Sich klärend mir mich selbst zu geben,
Und weckend löst sich mir
Aus Denkermacht das Selbstgefühl.
____________________________________________________________
Created for: The Rudolf Steiner Archive by:
The e.Lib, Inc. (c) 1990-2010
Calendar of the Soul
[December 27, 2009 - January 02, 2010]
Thirty-eighth Week
The spirit child within my soul
I feel freed of enchantment.
In heart-high gladness has
The holy cosmic Word engendered
The heavenly fruit of hope,
Which grows rejoicing into worlds afar
Out of my being’s godly roots.
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English translation by Ruth and Hans Pusch
___________________________________
Ich fühle wie entzaubert
Das Geisteskind im Seelenschoss;
Es hat in Herzenshelligkeit
Gezeugt das Heilige Weltenwort
Der Hoffnung Himmelsfrucht,
Die jubelnd wächst in Weltenfernen
Aus meines Wesens Gottesgrund.>b>
____________________________________________________________
Created for: The Rudolf Steiner Archive by:
The e.Lib, Inc. (c) 1990-2009
Calendar of the Soul
Thirty-seventh Week
WINTER
To carry spirit light into world-winter-night
My heart is ardently impelled,
That shining seeds of soul
Take root in grounds of worlds
And Word Divine through senses' darkness
Resounds, transfiguring all life.
English translation by Ruth and Hans Pusch
Zu tragen Geisteslicht in Weltenwinternacht
Erstrebet selig meines Herzens Trieb,
Dass leuchtend Seelenkeime
In Weltengründen wurzeln,
Und Gotteswort im Sinnesdunkel
Verklärend alles Sein durchtönt.
The Year Participated translation
by Owen Barfield
To be a torch to bear the Spirit's light
into the dark night of a wintry world
blessing and blest my eager heart aspires;
bright shoots of soul
sunk in the ground-bed of the world shall be
and shining from the sensual dark
the Word resound through all Reality.
(provided with the kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Press)
Celebration of the Holy Nights
The planning group for Midcoast Anthroposophical Society Group is happy to announce four evenings of reading, discussion, lead pouring, a dramatic reading of the Three Kings play along with a social time with light refreshments.
The short text that we will read and share conversation around will be: The Mystery of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist at the Turning Point of Time, an esoteric study, by Sergei O. Prokofieff. We will share and pass the texts available. From the back cover: from Rudolf Steiner’s ‘Last Address’, “We have shown how in the course of time the being who was present in Elijah appeared again at the most important moments of human evolution on Earth - appeared again so that Christ Jesus Himself could give him the initiation he was to receive for the evolution of mankind. For the being of Elijah reappeared in Lazarus-John - who are in truth one and the same figure…”
All gatherings will take place at 7 pm at these hosts’ homes:
Sunday, Dec. 27, Susan Junge and Richard Ailes, 42 Cobb Rd. Camden, (SAGE studio sign at the driveway entrance) 236-0505 susanjunge00@gmail.com
Tuesday, Dec. 29, Bridget Qualey and Richard Stetson, 22 Belmont Ave. Camden, (Green and red lighted Christmas tree along the street) We will also do lead pouring once again this year- by popular demand! 236-2019 bridget@qualey.net
Thursday, Dec. 31, Cheryl Martine and Seth Lester, 75 Proctor Rd. Lincolnville, 763 4388 cmartine@tidewater.net
Sunday, Jan. 3, Susan and Jack Silverio, 105 Proctor Rd. Lincolnville, Reading of the Three Kings Play, 763 4652 silverio@tidewater.net
We warmly invite you to come together at this special time of year. Call or email any host if you need more detail on their location
New Study Group: Philosophy of Freedom hosted by Bill Laurita
Midcoast Anthroposophical Society Group has received an announcement of the formation of a new study group! Bill Laurita will host a Monday evening Study at his home on 35 Harden Ave. in Camden.
The group will meet weekly from 7:15 to 8:45 pm. The book that will be taken up is Rudolf Steiner’s “The Philosophy of Freedom” which is currently listed as “Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path”. Here is a link to it at Steiner Books. http://www.steinerbooks.org/p.php?id=10 Some Anthroposophical books are also availible at Richard Ailes and Susan Junge’s store: S.A.G.E on Bayview St. in Camden and you can also contact them to order specific books. They also give a discount for study group books.
The study will begin Monday Dec. 14 and then take a break until Monday, January 4th. Anyone is warmly welcome. Don’t hesitate to approach the study of one Steiner’s earliest and most important (and challenging!) books. Contact Bill at: blankets@prexar.com with any questions.
Calendar of the Soul
[December 06, 2009 - December 12, 2009]
Thirty-fifth Week
Can I know life’s reality
So that it’s found again
Within my soul’s creative urge?
I feel that I am granted power
To make my self, as humble part,
At home within the cosmic self.
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English translation by Ruth and Hans Pusch
___________________________________
Kann ich das Sein erkennen,
Dass es sich wiederfindet
Im Seelenschaffensdrange?
Ich fühle, dass mir Macht verlieh’n,
Das eigne Selbst dem Weltenselbst
Als Glied bescheiden einzuleben.
____________________________________________________________
Created for: The Rudolf Steiner Archive by:
The e.Lib, Inc. (c) 1990-2009
In secret inwardly to feel
How all that I’ve preserved of old
Is quickened by new-risen sense of self:
This shall, awakening, pour forth cosmic forces
Into the outer actions of my life
And growing, mould me into true existence.
“
| — |
Calendar of the Soul English translation by Ruth and Hans Pusch |
Possibilities for Anthroposophical Group Work
By Susan Junge
The uncertainties of our particular time in history seem magnified by the enhanced technologies of communication and information. We hear news and see images faster and in greater quantities than we can process with our thinking. This can create questions which come in the absence of trustworthy guidance. Should we prioritize our worries about the rising oceans predicted from global warming, the imminent collapse of our top-heavy financial system or the heartlessness of a for-profit healthcare industry? To be processing all these woes at the same time feels overwhelming.
But what if - like “Alice through the looking glass” - there is another perspective that can relieve the gridlock of thoughts and calm our fears? We might expect such a perspective to be celebrated and sought after by everyone. Instead, people seem to have habits of thinking and feeling that fight against change, especially one that involves looking at our individual soul life as part of the vast cosmic process. Suddenly, all talk of soul life and the cosmos is not ‘scientific’. It is not founded in the solid, practical realm of what these critics define as human life. But, it is becoming increasingly clear to many hopeful people that only by enlarging our view of who we are as moral human beings can we find the tools to work fruitfully in our particular times.
We can see, by studying recorded history and the evolution of art and language, that human beings have held vastly different perspectives on our relationship to the cosmos, and the moral grounding that comes when we feel aligned with it. Only in our modern times has this discussion been relegated to religious life and the ‘God conversation’. Rudolf Steiner, and his work of describing anthroposophy, provides the opportunity to return our thinking, feeling and willing (or acting) to a new harmony with the cosmos.
He was not laying down a dogma to be learned and upheld rigidly. Rudolf Steiner spoke as a human being who fully acknowledged that the cosmos was both the spiritual world and the world of matter we perceive with our senses. He researched how our human capacities to experience this truth could be enhanced, and then become a scientific inquiry that will reinvent our life in the world. Waldorf education is one of the many initiatives that were born from his research.
While many people are influenced by them, the primary focus of Rudolf Steiner’s work is often obscured by these initiatives - caught up as they often become with the materialistic thinking of our time. His focus was (and still is) on the growth of human capacities woven together in conversation and community throughout the world. He founded the Anthroposophical Society as both a manifestation and a support for this new reality on the earth. Any time people gather and are able to open the door to this larger thinking, feeling and willing in harmony with each other, it creates the possibility to be in harmony with the cosmos, and individual souls can experience this new connection.
When these meetings occur under the auspices of the Anthroposophical Society, strength from the spiritual world can pour in to both the participating individuals and to their interactions. This is not something that depends on belief. It is more about openness to observing other types of experience, which can include an inner knowing that something is true. Often we can remember having this type of experience when we were children, before we acquired the intellectual trappings of facts that blend into opinions without our being sure of that distinction.
Studying and working with anthroposophy is available to everyone, no matter what their circumstances. Some people seem to be part of this work from the moment they first meet Rudolf Steiner. Others spend years as Waldorf parents, and slowly take up an interest in the ‘philosophy’ behind their children’s education. The universally accessible path is the one that he laid down in his books, lectures, and the momentous action that he took in founding the Anthroposophical Society. It is easy to take the Society work for granted today. It can seem like any special interest group, but on close inspection, it has a much deeper taproot.
Those of us who have come together for Anthroposophical Society group work are looking for ways of stepping outside of rigid forms, and creating opportunities for lively conversation informed by each of our inner explorations in the context of our current world. By sharing thoughts and enthusiasm as a group of seeking individuals, we know that an enlarged perspective for each of us can be discovered and maintained. Whether our gathering involves a festival celebration, a book study or a guest presentation, our common feeling for the truth that flows from spiritual sources will enhance our capacity to address the questions of our times without worry and fear.
November 16, 2009
Midcoast Anthroposophical Society Group
Camden, Maine
