Anthroposophy in Hawkes Bay

Newsletter 21-24                     

Calendar of Coming Events-- Diary Dates

In the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings
unless stated otherwise.

(** see below for more details.)

• Saturday 1 June 9:30 to noon, School of Spiritual Science, mantra 15.
• Friday 7 June 7 pm. Start of a series of fortnightly public evenings on "The Essence of Steiner Education - an introduction to the Anthroposophy of Dr. Rudolf Steiner." led by Robin Bacchus
• Friday 14 June. 7 pm.  Leading Thoughts 91 to 93.
• Saturday 29 June 7 pm. MidWinter Festival. David Urieli will speak
• Wednesdays 3, 10, 17, 24 July.  7pm. Conversations on the Foundation Stone Meditation 

  ---

  The Essence of Steiner Education

  We present a series of seven evenings for the public of Hawke's Bay.

   Each evening will have a talk, and opportunity for questions, discussion and sharing dedicated to discovering Rudolf Steiner’s ANTHROPOSOPHY, the way of thinking and perceiving the world that lies behind the Steiner/Waldorf education of Taikura School, the Inclusive Social Development of Hohepa, Biodynamic farming and gardening, the adult education courses of Taruna College, Anthroposophical Nursing and Healthcare and Weleda medicines.

  A smorgasbord of possible topics includes:

  • The full nature of the human being: body, soul, and spirit;
  • Matter and spirit;
  • The human soul;
  • How do the Kingdoms of Nature relate to us?
  • Human development from conception to death and beyond;
  • What is Truth?
  • Anthroposophical spiritual science;
  • Modes of life:
    • Freedom and Necessity in spiritual life;
    • Rights and Responsibility in social life;
    • Use of resources and Consumption in economic life;
    • Some thoughts regarding curriculum:
      • Stage of child development as the key to topic and treatment;
      • History: How human deeds of the past shape our modern life;
      • Geography: How where we live affects how we live;
      • Science as a method of exploring the natural world we live in;
      • The spirit of Mathematics involving pure thinking.

  Robin Bacchus will be the facilitator.  Robin is an experienced Steiner/Waldorf teacher.  He was one of the founding teachers of the Taikura High School and later taught a lower class for 8 years.  At Taruna College he led the Steiner Teacher Preparatory Course for 17 years before traveling regularly to Asia as a Waldorf Education Consultant for 10 years.

  The first evening will be on Friday 7 June from 7 to 9pm at the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings (over the road from Taikura School entrance).

  Further evenings will be held on Fridays fortnightly:  21 June, 5, 19 July, 2, 16, 30 August.

  A L L   W E L C O M E

From Astrid Pook

To the Members and Friends receiving this newsletter –

In the National Conference of our Society on 4th and 5th May, we have had a wonderful opportunity to renew our inner belonging to the impulse of anthroposophy. It was a feast of new aspects and truths to be learnt... and esp. also of meeting so many of our friends from all over the country, and above all, to dedicate our focus to the Foundation Stone Meditation.

When opening our hearts to this deeply nourishing and sutaining verse Rudolf Steiner has given us all for now and the future, it is important to remember also the context in which it was given: it was for laying the Foundation of the Refounding of our Society... and the sole reason for this refounding – and why we have received this gift is given in the inspiring series of letters to the members: ‘The Life, Nature and Cultivation of Anthroposopy’*. There Rudolf Steiner states that the Society needed to be renewed to give the members a forum for meeting together.

This need for meeting together and the content of these meetings in branches of the Society, its responsibility towards anthroposophy itself and the attitude to be cultivated in the branch life was the theme of these letters.

There is no Foundation Stone without something to be founded, and that something, namely the Society as a whole in its branches – not just the leadership and the Sections of the Society – needs to be strenthened and wants our commitment for this life to be able to be sustained into the future.

 Here is a verse which Rudolf Steiner wrote into the guest book of the Rietmann Family in St. Gallen on the 12^th April 1923:

 Es bedarf der Mensch der innern Treue,
Der Treue zu der Fuehrung der geistigen Wesen.
Er kann auf dieser Treue aufbauen
Sein eignes Wesen,
Und das Sinnensein dadurch
Mit ewigem Licht
Durchstroemen und durchkraften.

The human being has need of inner faithfulness,
Faithfulness to the guidance of spiritual beings.
Upon this faithfulness he can build
His eternal life and being,
And with eternal light
The sense-existance thus
Imbue and strengthen.

            Transl.: Julian Pook.

Wouldn’t it we wonderful to do this verse and others in eurythmy together, to open our weekly Branch Meetings at the Rudolf Steiner Centre in Hastings.?

 With warm regards,,

                                     Astrid.

QUOTE  "Living Concepts"

"Spiritual science cannot hand people something which, once assimilated, is enough for the rest of life. I have often pointed out that there exists no short summary of a world view which can be kept at hand in one’s pocket. In place of ready formulas, science of the spirit provides something with which the human soul must repeatedly unite itself, which must be repeatedly inwardly assimilated and digested. 

External truths such as those provided by natural science we can, if we have a good memory, take in and then possess them once and for all. That is not possible with spiritual-scientific truths, the reason being that the truths of natural science are lifeless concepts. The laws of nature are dead once they have been formulated into concepts, whereas spiritual-scientific truths are living concepts; if we condemn them to lifelessness because we accept them as if they were external truths, then they provide no nourishment; then they are stones the soul cannot digest."

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 176 – Aspects of Human Evolution – Lecture VIII – 24 July 1917, Berlin

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA176/English/AP1987/19170724p01.html

Editor: Robin Bacchus 
If you have somrthing to share or announce, please contact me: info@anthrohb.nz