HB Branch News -- Sunday 26 November -- Week 47, 2023

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Calendar of Coming Events 

(in the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings
unless stated otherwise)

 Saturday 2 December 9:30 to noon. School of Spiritual Science 10

• Friday 22 December 7pm.  Summer Festival
• Tuesday 9 to Thursday 11 January 2024. 3 day Eurythmy Workshop at Taruna**
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Eurythmy Workshop**

New Member

We warmly welcome Tasha Taylor of Hohepa.

Branch Committee Report

On the Open Day of the Steiner Centre on Sunday 19 November, we had families taking part in the Art Classes offered by our wonderful art teachers; Saskia Stein, Sonja Lethbridge and Rebecca McKenize, Eva Steiner-Urieli and Amanda Sowersby. Thank you for the vibrancy you brought to your classes. Maybe next year the sun will shine, and families will stay longer. 

The gates to the Steiner Centre are open between 1pm and 4.30pm Monday to Thursday, and the new signboard on the Whitehead Road veranda will show people that we are open. Please call in for a cup of tea, use the conveniences, have a look at the new Art in the foyer that Eva and Angela change each month. We welcome your favourite Advent Art for December.  Please bring it along for display until January.

The Branch committee are pleased to have completed new concrete strips for parking beside the Centre and have rehung the Lilac curtain in the Main Room.  Thanks to Jonathon Jordan for his skill and hard work getting maintenance at the Centre done.  If there are things you would like to happen at the Centre, please be in contact with a member of the Committee, and we will look at your ideas. 

The insurance quotes will be coming through in the New Year and we hope to have a more suitable insurance policy for the Centre. 

Warm regards from the Branch Committee,

Angela Hair (Secretary), 0274 436737

(Robyn Hewetson, 021 2178688; Robin Bacchus, 022 3982805; 
John Jackson, 022 1228002)

Note from the Treasurer

We have about 5 weeks until the end of the year and just over half of our listed membership has responded to 4 emails from the Treasurer requesting the annual financial contribution as agreed at the Branch’s AGM.  

We also realise that many of us forget whether we have responded or not, so a letter of thanks has been sent to all those who have responded with details of what we have received and when.  We realise that is not always feasible for some people to make any financial contribution -- so the Committee simply asks that every member of the Branch responds by either contributing or by communicating with the Treasurer. 

If no response is received by the end of the year then we will clarify the list by transferring non-responders to an Inactive List.  They can always be reactivated by contacting the Treasurer.

Robin Bacchus, Treasurer.  info@anthrohb.nz 

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Christmas Foundation Meeting centenary

Michael Burton in Auckland has sent the Branch this article about the Christmas Foundation Meeting centenary. The article can be found also in the latest New View. Many people around the world are at this time seeking to commemorate this in ways that will allow it to fulfil its untapped potential and bring spiritual and cultural renewal to this suffering world. Michael hopes the article can help people comprehend the great significance of what is taking place.   Link

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3+day Conference in the Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School from the evening of 26 December

A year after the calamity of the burning of the wooden Goetheanum, Rudolf Steiner re-founded the Anthroposophical Society to unite all the previously regional societies in a Christmas Foundation Meeting in Dornach during the last week of 1923.  During this event many seeds were laid that we can draw strength from in these times.

In this three-day event we will explore the meaning of the Christmas Foundation Meeting, how it is important to us today and how it can become a part of our lives.

Details

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Threefold Social Order

(Some further musings by Robin Bacchus, who is preparing some talks on this theme)

Entrenched Attitudes

Rudolf Steiner wrote about Threefolding first in 1919 after WW1 in a book called Basic Issues of the Social Question.  The centennial edition is called Toward a Threefold Society. ISBN9781948302166

One point that caught my attention was that he acknowledges it will be difficult to heal the issues that trouble society - then around WW1 (and now a century later) - because of the entrenched attitudes of those who hold [economic] power.

For instance, within the Economic sector a key question is: “Why do people [viz. the proletariat] work?”  

Entrenched answer: ‘to earn money > to buy food > to survive.’ 

Result: Wage Slavery -- when you sell your labour rather than the product of your labour, Rudolf Steiner asserts that you become a 'slave'..  The Entrenched Attitude within this is that: ‘if people are not forced to work then they will do nothing, and the economy will fall apart.’  No trust, no hope!  Is a living income a 'right' or a product of work?

Now, ask yourself the same question “Why do you or I work?”  You may have the same answer, but for some it may be:

• “I enjoy putting my talents to work in a useful way.”
• “I get satisfaction helping others and seeing the joy in their faces.”
• “I enjoy the social element of being part of a creative team solving problems.”

Note that those answers are not based on money or income.

We see that Rudolf Steiner posits the appropriate operating principle for the Economic sector as: ‘Teamwork’, Cooperation, Collaboration, Fraternity, the social element of working with others in a team (RS calls the process ‘association’) to meet the needs of others, not of oneself.

Quote:

“In a community of human beings working together, the well-being of the community will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of the work he has himself done; i.e., the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow workers, and the more his own requirements are satisfied, not out of his own work done, but out of work done by the others."

~ Rudolf Steiner in “The Temple Legend” p371 (20 lectures given in Berlin from May 1904 to January 1906.   ISBN 978-1855844100

Altruism  -- (not Egotism or self-centredness) for the Economic sector.

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Rudolf Steiner’s Motto of Social Ethic

It is only healthy:
When, In the mirror of the Human soul,
The whole society is formed.                                                               (Social Three-folding)

And when, In each community,
The virtue of the individual soul is living.                                            (Recognition, love

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REIKI COURSE

Shu Shimaoka  021 0549035, shushimawalker@gmail.com is offering a Reiki Course at the Centre. First Attunement is on Sat 2 December, Second and Third Levels in 2024. Please get in touch with Shu if you are keen to develop your ability to work through the Universal Energetic Field.