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Impressions from Faust Opportunities
Updates & Reports
Reviews & Commentary
Dear
Reader, Fall has arrived and the activity pace has slowed a bit since the summer. We are now focusing on wrapping up this year, completing the many small projects we did not have time to finish during the summer, and preparing for next year. The fall began with the annual September Initiative Meeting. Unlike previous years, we incorporated a seminar in the mornings. Thanks to Benji from the Philippines, we had a very successful seminar on facilitation. We had observed that many of the initiatives we were involved with, as well as the Youth Section itself, would benefit from such a seminar. In the afternoons there was then time for the initiatives to present and share information. What was missing this year was a space for the various youth section groups in different countries to look towards the future together. The Youth Section Team is preparing some ideas on how to better manage this new development and need. The other large event was the first student conference in Basel in over 20 years. Organized by a 12th grade student for his year project, the theme of the conference was "I and the World". There were just over 100 participants (25 from France, 25 from Germany and the rest from Switzerland) at the Basel Waldorf School. It was the first student conference at the Basel Waldorf school to be completely organized by students (the first time the school opened itself to allow students to organize an event there!). It was a big success. Most of the workshops were done by younger folk in their 20's and early 30's. It was a long (late nights), but great weekend. It has really inspired the Basel class to become even more involved in planning Connect. The seeds were also planted for many new initiatives and because it was completely student run and everything went smoothly, it should lead to more events in the future. It was interesting to observe the difference between the students from Europe and those from South Africa or Israel or Brazil. In this issue, rather than an article, you will find a short personal reflection on the Faust Conference from Christopher Mankowski, where he gives his impressions of visiting the Goetheanum and Switzerland for the first time. There are two opportunities coming up at the end of December and into January. The first is the annual Youth Section Open House over New Years. The second is a weekend for students called January Days. It is an opportunity for students to take seminars in all the sections at the Goetheanum. In Updates & Reports you will find a review of the "Red Earth" youth conference that took place in Australia this past summer. You will also find a report on the September Initiative Meeting. So read on and stay connected. Enjoy,
The
outside of the building is slowly coming together. It has been
a bit of a struggle to have our wishes implemented in terms
of design, but regardless, there is a much more open space
now. Planting of small rose bushes and other small plants has
begun. So by spring, we should have more green to balance out
the brown and gray color. There are still several details to
finish like railings, painting the front, and putting up tables
with umbrellas. You can view more photos of the progress at: www.youthsection.org
Youth
Section Receives a New Fax Machine Youth
Section Received a DVD Player 
YouthSection Office
Youth
Section eNews |
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August 6th 2004. My oh my. I just finished a week-long course studying Faust by Goethe at the Goetheanum, a huge building made completely out of concrete that looks somewhat like a giant turtle exhibiting strange slanted curves and windows. It is odd looking, but spectacular nevertheless. At first I was somewhat shocked by it's presence, but it's character grew on me, almost in the same way as getting to know a new person. It was a challenging but very interesting experience. The course attracted 700 youths from all over the world, but for some reason, unlike myself, most of the people decided it would be a good idea to have German down before they saw a 22-hour play by the Shakespeare of Germany. I, of course, found myself drowning in an ocean of German language. Fortunately there were other aspects to the conference like singing, workshops and lectures in which I found a noble few to translate most of it for me. But besides studying the back of my eye lids... I mean watching the play, there was lots of time to mingle with the masses. I spent most of my evenings working at the night cafe to help out, which was actually one of the most enjoyable experiences. By the end I could understand most of the orders in German, and if not, people were glad to give me a hint in English. It was quite an overwhelming week, but after everyone vanished within a couple hours, I've found myself missing the vibrancy of the swarming activity. Although I only got to know a small portion of the people, I feel a humbling joy from the experience. It makes me realize that the world in which I come from is so small and I really have to stretch my skin ever wider to embrace the full and diverse culture of the world. What really grabbed me was the night in which there were more than 200 hundred people dancing through the night. Spinning, laughing, skipping, stumbling.. We must have danced all the way until three in the morning. Although the dances were from all over the world it reminded me of all the great contra dancing days back in California. As far as reminders of home, the other day was the Swiss day of Independence. Although, as in America the celebration consists primarily of fireworks, it had quite a different feel here. For the first time I got it's relationship to war in a way I haven't before. Normally I've experienced fireworks as a show, looking off in one direction and watching the pretty colors in the sky. But here it was a more all-encompassing experience. From every direction there were booms and flashes. From every street and walkway of the city rockets flew and colors erupted. Over the hills blasts colored red the overhanging clouds, and if I had been blind to the celebration I would have thought Switzerland invaded. But to top it off was the singing every morning. All seven hundred of us stood in the huge theatre with every pillar sculpted, the ceiling elaborately painted, and every window a liquid image forming the dawning rays of sun like a fresh watercolor. But these all fell away when the voices arose. The harmony welled like the sea as we separated into many waves of each it's own round and splashed back into each other in a heaving rhythm of the whole. It's funny. It seems like every time I travel instead of having one less
place to visit, I end up meeting people I have to go visit in five
other corners of the world. By the time I get to know every place
and the people I want to meet, my beard will be as long as the equator.
The question of and desire for a new understanding of humanity and society is alive everywhere – in art, politics, cultural life, science or at the ‘World Social Forum’. The step to combine science and spirituality in order to present a spiritual image of the human being and actively contribute to future cultural life is a real challenge. Anthroposophy can make valuable contributions to this. What a re there laws that govern a spiritual path of inner development? How can I make this happen in life? Seminars
The Red Earth Youth Conference took place in Mutawintji National Park, in the Australian Outback, from 8th to 23rd of July 2004. During the two weeks our human relationship with the earth was explored, the goal being Gandhi's words: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” A lonely recorder plays the tones of the new day. Some people hurry to wake up, and scramble out of their tents, forming a little group, walking with others to ‘the greeting of the day’. Others, less inclined to leave their sleeping bags, follow during the next sixty minutes, and join for breakfast. Bread or porridge. “Hey, why porridge?” said one of the Germans the first day. “In Germany porridge is something you eat when you’re ill!” Now almost everyone eats porridge. It heats the body after a cold night. A drum sounds, and everyone slowly gathers for the ‘morning circle’. We sing a bit together, and then leave the word to one of the conference organizers: Important notices, a look at yesterday, and special events in the program for the day are announced. After lunch the tour of the Historic Site Area will continue. Yesterday so many questions were asked that there was not enough time for the Aboriginal ranger to answer them all. You always need an official ranger in the group to access the Historic Site Area, a smaller part of the national park. It contains cave paintings and initiation sites used by the Aboriginals for as long as anyone can remember; all the way back to the ‘dreamtime’. After this, Kala, a Buddhist nun, does a talk about the cosmos. “Isn't it beautiful?” she says, and sends photos of swirling galaxies, the earth and the sun around the circle. “Look how the humans also radiate out like stars!” she says, showing a picture of the earth composed of satellite photos. In the black night, light from human settlements shine like stars. The talk is energetic, and tells about the human in relation to nature and the cosmos. One hour before noon, the circle dissolves, and I go to my workshop. It takes place in the dried-out riverbed, close to our camping ground. Since the conference goes over two weeks, you can change workshop at will. My workshop is also slowly changing theme from “the spirits of the land” to “forgiveness and reconciliation”. (Later, it would change again, this time to “dousing and divining.”) Today we spend the first hour discussing what it really means to forgive. Is forgiveness just something you say, or does it require something more? Yesterday everyone in the group chose a tree, and spent some time trying to perceive its spirit. Now we discuss our experiences, and we try to find ways of knowing whether what we perceive is a product of our mind or if it is a spiritual experience. A stone's throw further up the riverbed, the drama group is working. Sometimes we hear laughter or clapping; other times poems being recited. Their theme is the biography and thoughts of Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nation’s second secretary general. There is a number of workshop groups spread out in the landscape. The art group has found their space quite a way away, where they can work in peace, creating artworks out of stones, leaves and wood. Around the fireplace, in the middle of the camp, a group talks about mysteries of different spiritualities. After two hours in the workshop it's lunchtime. Bread with lots of honey, peanut butter, cheese and tomatoes is passed around. A swarm of bees has been attracted by the honey, but they are vastly outnumbered by the possom-birds. The birds are fearless, almost tame, and do hit-and-run missions to the food table. The land of the Historic Site Area has never been owned by any particular Aboriginal tribe. It is a sacred place, used by all the Aboriginal tribes in the area. “I can't make any mark myself,” says the Aboriginal ranger, holding his hand like his forefathers must have done when creating the hand outlines on the rock face behind him. The hands symbolize a person's relationship to the land. “There isn't any more space; covering an existing mark will deny that person his relationship.” The cave paintings look out over the red earth and the gum trees. When I walk amongst them I wonder how many people have been here before me. The aboriginal culture has existed in Australia for some sixty thousand years! Some days later an aboriginal woman visited the conference. She was one of the so-called “missing generation”. For many years aboriginal children were taken away from their families, and put into orphanages. It was said to be for their own good, assimilating them into the western culture. “You're not supposed to apologize,” the woman said, “it's the government, but they don't want to.” Australia's prime minister has long refused to apologize for what was done. At sunset we all gather again. In the ‘evening circle’ we do games, sing, and then end the day, mostly by reading from the Bible. Although the conference was supposed to be multi religious, most of the 80 participants were from Christian Community youth groups. Although it had a christian overweight the conference managed to stay a spiritual youth conference, open to all beliefs. After a while the cooking groups gather to make dinner. As a rule, there's vegetables “with something;” rice, potatoes, and twice even meat. Soon everyone is sitting around the campfires, enjoying their food, whilst the cold of the night creeps in again, and the Milky Way lights up the path to the tent. Some sing songs until midnight, and some, maybe more tired than the others, leave for bed around nine. Listening to the song I let my thoughts fly, and ponder on what finally became a red thread through the conference: What do I leave behind?
There were again many new faces, as well as familiar ones from the past meetings, I would say about half and half From the very beginning, however, the mood was one of work in progress- little need for introductions as to the nature and purpose of the meeting, but a feeling of being part of an ongoing process in a growing project. What was new and gave the meeting its distinctive quality was the daily morning workshop with Benji from Manila. His course on facilitation was unlike any other I had attended, concentrating not on processes of facilitation such as chairing, timekeeping and so on, but rather on numerous games and exercises that helped us to understand ourselves and our fellow participants in any group process and so create a space where people feel comfortable and free to express their deeper concerns and questions. One exercise may give you an idea of how the process functioned. We were asked to draw a vertical line down our page and then to write the word “formal” at the top and the word “informal” at the bottom. Next, we drew a horizontal line across the page, crossing the first and wrote the word “dominant" on one side and the words “flows with” (meaning adaptable or easy-going) on the other. When you now combined these two, you got four fields: Dominant-formal, dominant-informal,formal-flows-with,informal-flows with. This gave us four distinct groups of people, who now met in the four corners of the room We were given a list of questions or tasks: Elect a scribe who is also to report the answers to the larger group afterwards.
I had recognized myself, according to the description he gave, as being informal and dominant, and now worked through the questions with the others. We finished the list just on time, feeling slightly rushed at the end, only to realize that we were the only group who had actually completed all the questions. This, Benji informed us, was typical behavior of the four types, as was practically every other answer and mannerism of the various types in their reports. I can recommend that any group try an exercise like this both for the value of its insights into how your friends and colleagues function, as well as for its pure entertainment value. We also played numerous party games, all with the aim of facilitating unstilted conversation rather than trying to manage the group as a facilitator because, as Benji told us, you have to be the message! The reports in the afternoons dealt with the various initiatives both past and present, of the participants, and the evening talks and events gave some insight into their thoughts and insights. The whole process left me with one main impression, namely, that the whole work of the youth section has reached a new level. No longer is the main issue to discover what each other’s questions are, or what we want to do together. Far rather, there are now youth sections in several countries- Rumania, the Ukraine, Sweden, South Africa and England to name a few that were actually present. They are organizing conferences and running other activities. In Germany, a group is preparing educational conferences for Teachers, parents, and students And the Youth Section in Dornach plays both the main coordinating role as well as having a number of projects on the go: The renovation of the building and internet cafe, The initiative in associative economics, The development of the social initiative IDEM, and the ongoing arranging of conferences and meetings. In view of this, a workshop such as Benji’s is relevant not so much in trying to find our way, but rather to help us develop the people skills needed to present and carry out all the work we have undertaken. I felt really inspired by this new situation and ready to take up
the work of IDEM to which I am particularly committed. It is the 11th of September 2001, a plane crashes into one of the World Trade Center towers. At the same time small machines, called "eggs" by the scientists, suddenly start diverting from their normal random pattern of ones and zeroes. As the news spreads, the symptom becomes stronger, and then everything slowly returns back to normal. There are currently over fifty “eggs”, producing rows of random numbers, placed around the world. It is not only 11th September that gave strange anomalies in the results. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the Pope's visit to Israel, major earthquakes and a number of international meditations are other examples. “Research on human consciousness suggests that we may have direct communication links with each other, and that our intentions can have effects in the world despite physical barriers and separations,” says a text on the project's website http://noosphere.princeton.edu. So, next time the ticket machine breaks down just as it's your turn: Try to give it a helping word – it might help! |
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