So many forces interweaving in the imagination of St. John’s Eve, but I think I’d like to center on the idea that, in the new mysteries we strive at St. John’s Tide toward an enhanced awareness of our will forces – Rudolf Steiner speaks about how we are dreamy in our feeling & asleep in our willing, so we really have to make an effort to follow John the Baptist & ‘make straight the path’, an effort to enable the higher ego to come to expression ever more fully in the mysterious recesses of our personal priorities with respect to our will.
The summertime union between the sun & earth is actually a re-union between the spiritual beings of the sun & their human offspring. In the Summer-Tide, through ‘the great window of heaven’ we experience this interaction between humanity & the sun forces, which helps us develop an awareness of our ego. We can contemplate this dynamic & bring it to life in our soul most strongly at this time of year.
Rudolf Steiner tells us that at midsummer the Trinity reveals itself out of the heart of this cosmic activity. A sounding, like the music of the spheres, that calls us to explore our own inner harmony with the cosmos. To answer the echo that unites us to the eternity of the Trinity.
Also important: Can we learn, to be still & small enough to hear the voice of conscience?
At the fullness of Summer, the light is so bright that it leaves no room for the shadow to hide. High Noon is the hour of judgment – a good time to remember what John said “Then you will know the truth, & the truth will set you free.”
So as we lift up our hearts to meet ‘the heights & depths of the universe’, where we feel ‘Not I, but Christ in me’ – To say as John the Baptist said “He must increase, but I must decrease” we respond to the summertime call for a yearly Metanoia, reviewing of our deeds, looking with courage to the errors of the past, enduring all the pain self-knowledge brings, so that someday, with hearts lifted, we may say: Yes, I am, and Christ in me!
For the true power of our Ego will increase like Christ increases. And when our false ego decreases, we grow in Christ. Just as John the Baptist, after he was beheaded, concentrated his spirit self into the apostles, especially Lazarus John.
Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg
***
23 June 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The central stars of the constellation Lyra, forming a small triangle & parallelogram, dangle to the lower right from bright Vega high in the east. The two brightest stars of the pattern, after Vega, are the two forming the bottom of the parallelogram: Beta & Gamma Lyrae, or Sheliak & Sulafat. They’re currently lined up vertically. Beta is the one on top.
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1456 – Birthday of Columbus
1868 –Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention he called the “Type-Writer.”
1887 – The Rocky Mountains Park Act becomes law in Canada creating the nation’s first national park, Banff National Park
1894 – The International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne in Paris
1910- Birthday of Jean Anouilh. One of France’s most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh’s work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for Becket or Honour of God & his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles’ classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain’s Vichy government.
1942 –The first time the gas chamber at Auschwitz is used on a train full of Jews from Paris
1947 – The United States Senate overrides Harry Truman’s veto of the Taft–Hartley Act
1960 – The Food & Drug Administration declares Enovid to be the first oral contraceptive pill in the world – recalled in the U.S. in 1988, along with other first-generation high-estrogen COCPs
1985 – A terrorist bomb aboard Air India Flight 182 brings the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 aboard
2001 – The 8.4 Mw earthquake shakes coastal Peru. A tsunami followed, leaving at least 74 people dead, & 2,687 injured
2006 – Rene Querido, General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America. Teacher, writer (The Golden Age of Chartres) pupil of W.J. Stein.
***
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~The Spirits of Will flash code in the lightning
Love speaks
Truth in the deep rolling thunder
The Gnomes know its Midsummer
Fat Undines splash against the warm fecund earth
& steam up in a vital whiff
Of ozone wafting in the moist air
Filling my breath with purple sky
I walk home
~hag
***
Friday 26 June & Sunday 28 June, 2020 Goethe’s Primordial Plant Workshop with Victoria Martin
Friday 26 June & Sunday 28 June, 2020 – Goethe’s Primordial Plant: Urpflanze Magic Art Workshop with Victoria Martin – Create your own Totem Plant Portrait on 8 x 32 Archival Canvas.
$15 – $25 (or pay what you will) includes Tuition & All Materials. Space is limited to 10, so please reserve your spot.
Friday 26 – Doors open 4:30pm, Lecture, Demo & Art Making: 5 pm – 6:30 pm, Critique & Soiree 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Sunday 28 – Doors open: 2:30pm, Lecture, Demo & Art Making: 3 pm – 4:30 pm, Critique & Soiree: 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Please bring Paleo Snacks to share. RSVP by Thursday June 25 Contact viccimartin@gmail.com or call 312-961-3380.
~Rudolf Steiner Branch of Chicago Festivals & Programs Coordinator Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
***
Sat. 27 June 2020 Werbeck Singing workshop 9 am – 5 pm
9 am – 3:30 pm Sat. 27 June 2020 with Alicia Burns at Elderberries 3-Fold Bio-dynamic Outpost & Cultural Hub 4251 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL. 60618
$25-$65 or pay it forward
…the human voice needs no training, it is already there, finished and perfect as an entity. What the voice is waiting for is liberation. We should speak of freeing the voice, or better yet uncovering the voice, and not voice-training. ~ Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström, creator of the Werbeck Singing Method
Details TBA. for more info. contact Frank Agrama
***
August 8-18 ‘Classroom Alive’ Youth Open-Source Learning in Chicago
We’re starting up with Culture in our community – join young people here in Chicago for a 10 day walking journey – Classroom Alive Chicago!
Exploration & experiencial learning all over Chicagoland, starting at at Elderberries 3-Fold Bio-dynamic Outpost & Cultrual Hub 4251 N. Lincolon Ave. Chicago, IL. 60618
for more info. contact Ultra-Violet Archer, or Frank Agrama
Details TBA #ClassroomAliveChicago2020
Thank you for forwarding this flier for any interested young people –
Co-sponsored in part by The Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Festival & Program Coordinator
August 20-23, 2020 Questions of Courage Youth Conference at Elderberries
Questions of Courage 2020 in Chicago – August 20-23 Elderberries Biodynamic Outpost and 3Fold Cultural Hub 4251 N. Lincolon Ave. Chicago, IL. 60618
August 20: Check-in, share conversation, build the ground for the journey together.
August 21-22: Travel to Wisconsin Move together towards the land, link up with Farmer John and Haidy Angelic Organics Biodynamic Farm, and also with Dana and Phil Burns at Healing Traditions and Alizur farm. Connect with the land, plants, animals, and one another, through creative explorations and “roughin’ it” type amendments. Sleep under the stars or indoors.
August 23: Return to Chicago Enter back into the metropolitan context, into the social questions of urban life, and close the gathering together at Elderberries, setting the ground for future work out of questions of courage that are present.
Other locations and collaborators are currently in dialogue, and will be updated here.
The gathering is essentially about stepping into the living natural element, step by step, making an integral connection, with one another, ourselves, and the elements that support us here on the Earth…”
registration: https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSdY7KXHkjUPV2h9UD…/viewform
Thank you Elderberries for giving us an anchor to build our heartland gathering around!
***
August 27-30, HOW WE WILL 2020
At Elderberries 3-fold Bio-Dynamic Outpost
for more info. contact Frank Agrama or Dottie Zold
Details TBA Co-sponsored in part by The Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago -Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Festival & Program Coordinator
***
