The modern English word “weird” is derived from the Old English term *wyrd,* meaning “destiny.” By the late Middle Ages, *wyrd* had evolved into a concept similar to the Eastern notion of karma. It implied that the momentum of past events plays a strong role in shaping the future, but that human willpower can nevertheless also have a hand in creating upcoming events. In some uses, *wyrd* could even mean “the power to control destiny,” as exemplified by the three Weird Sisters of Shakespeare’s *MacBeth.*
I bring this up, because of day’s look at history, & also because my Wyrd Factor is pretty high lately. While the consequences of the past are certainly impacting my present, I’ve rarely had a greater ability to co-create with these forces thru the strength of my intentions.
On a not unrelated note, here’s Caroline Myss’ explanation of faith: “Faith is the power to stand up to the madness and chaos of the physical world while holding the position that nothing external has any authority over what heaven has in mind for you.”
If you don’t like the word “heaven” substitute a term that works for you, like “higher self” or ”destiny” or “my soul’s code.”
We are always called on to modify what’s not quite right for our needs. Let’s keep tinkering…
XOX
Blessings & Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg
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POD (Poem Of the Day)
~I am an oar made ready…
Like water – adaptable
I follow my-Self
Flowing on…
~hag
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19 August 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Tonight asteroid Iris makes a hairpin turn against the background stars, smack dab in the middle of our dusty Milky Way. Two hours after sunset, Iris is high in the south.
Sunrise: 6:16 A.M.
Sunset: 7:50 P.M.
Moonrise: 6:38 A.M.
Moonset: 8:41 P.M.
Moon Phase: Waxing crescent (1%)
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Quote from the entrance to the College of Priests, Temple of Horus at
Edfu, Egypt:
“Knowledge is the Way to Life;
The Way to Life leads to the Way to God.
The Way to God leads to Inner Knowledge.
Inner Knowledge leads to Wisdom.
Wisdom becomes Life.”
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” ~H.G. Wells
World Humanitarian Day
295 BC – The first temple to Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty & fertility, is dedicated by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges during the Third Samnite War
43 BC –Caesar Augustus, compels the Roman Senate to elect him Consul
14 AD – Deathday of Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus
1612 – The “Samlesbury witches“, three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury, England, are put on trial, accused of practicing witchcraft, one of the most famous witch trials in British history
1662 – Deathday of Blaise Pascal a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer &Christian philosopher. He was a child prodigy, while still a teenager he started some pioneering work on calculating machines. Following a religious experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy & theology. His two most famous works set in the conflict between Jansenists & Jesuits. Rudolf Steiner wrote about him in GA 131, From Jesus to Christ: Lecture I: Jesuit and Rosicrucian Training
1692 – Salem witch trials: In Salem, Province of Massachusetts Bay, five women, & a clergyman, are executed after being convicted of witchcraft
1839 – The French government announces that Louis Daguerre’s photographic process is a gift “free to the world”. Viewing a daguerreotype is unlike looking at any other type of photograph. The image does not sit on the surface of the metal, but appears to be floating in space, & the illusion of reality.
1854 – The First Sioux War begins when United States Army soldiers kill Lakota chief Conquering Bear & in return are massacred
1868 – Jules Janssen discovered Helium during a solar eclipse
1919 – Afghanistan gains full independence from the United Kingdom
1934 – The German referendum of 1934 approves Hitler’s appointment as head of state with the title of Führer.
1936 – Deathday of Federico García Lorca, Spanish poet, playwright, & director He was executed by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War
1944 – World War II: Liberation of Paris: against German occupation with the help of Allied troops
1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Ukraine
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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: COMMUNITY POTLUCK GATHERING to Welcome the Youth. Please bring a dish & beverages to share – Time TBA
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 WELCOME HOME POTLUCK COMMUNITY GATHERING – Please support the youth with dinner, beverages & desert!
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!
Elderberries Biodynamic Outpost + Threefold Cultural Hub, 4251 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618
Co-sponsored in part by The Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago, Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Festival & Program Coordinator
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August 27-30 How We Will 2020: 3-Folding our Cultural Revolution is continuing its journey of transforming our ideals into action. The theme this year is Forming Curative Communities: actively uniting with one another in the emerging economic, political/rights and social/cultural/spiritual forms seeking to reshape the ills plaguing humanity into a healthy social organism for our time. Please join us if you’d like to hear from, and collaborate with those on the front lines inspired out of the fruits of Rudolf Steiner’s work: can your own hopes for the world find a way to connect with others striving to do the good as our friend Bernard Lievegoed was wont to say? Our own hero Ella Baker shares: ‘we must not stop until we can get people to recognize that they themselves have to make the struggle for freedom and human dignity everyday, in the year, every year, until they win it.’
Invitation and Registration are now open:How We Will 2020
Michaela Gloeckler of the Medical Section in Dornach and cofounder of Allianz ELIANT brings the Archetypal Picture of Ita Wegman and the Young Doctors and their courageous movement for a Michaelic renewal of civilization as a World War II raged all around them. 
Bart Eddy of Brightmoor Makers and Sunbridge will speak to what it takes to initiate our ideals into action that are inspired by the our higher natures and our wish to serve others in our time. His ‘brought down to earth visioning’, is serving the youth in one of the poorest parts in Detroit where entrepreneurs for the good are in training, not only learning to support their own livelihoods but also empowering change in their communities where devastating health and environmental issues abound: his inspired ideas for our time keep unfolding new forms for these youth! 
Kait Ziegler of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and Repairers of the Breach, working with Reverends William Barber and Liz Theoharis, and a small beyond dedicated team, will share on this ‘turning inside out’ and what it takes to organize for social change along side of four pillars: Racism, Poverty, Ecological Devastation and the War/Prison Economy which requires a new narrative above all and a capacity to work with those who have very divergent views in the activist community. John Bloom of Rudolf Steiner Finance and General Secretary of the Anthropsophical Society will offer a conversation Toward Justice and Freedom and Capital, Money, Spirit and Matter.
Nicanor Perlas, a long time advocate for social change in the Philippines and youth mentor, will shape a conversation around ‘The Future will be what we Fight For’. His country continues to be on lockdown where they are not allowed to go outside their houses even for food and whose president recently said that he ‘would work with the military to distribute the vaccine’.
Laura Summer of Free Columbia, an art and education initiative in Philmont New York, will present on New Forms Around Art – Art Dispersal and Local Grants to increase diversity in diverse communities. Art Accessible to 100% of the People!
Naim Edwards, Seneca Gonzalez, Melody Brink, Kristin Buckbee, Akil Bell, Monika Pudelko, Joan Jaeckel, Patrice Maynard, Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, 
Dottie Zold and Frank Agrama of the Elderberries community and newly formed Circles for a Renewal of Culture non profit, will invite an open conversation as to how it is that the Steiner students here in our country and around the world can be good advocates for emergent healing forms, where the essence of what is human is at the center of our concerns. This threefold social form has yet to be realized and yet we see all around us new forms coming into being. What do the Steiner students have to contribute to the conversation of human rights in these three realms and do we have the will to unite together for the common good of humanity? Can we organize for the future needs out of the fruits of Rudolf Steiner’s work in the world? Do we have the will for this? If so can we make a beginning at organizing and shaping our actions now?
Invitation and Registration are now open:How We Will 2020
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This years theme for Michaelmas with be an exploration of Joan d’Arc…
Including a performance of ‘The Passage” by Lucian Dante Lazar
Stay tuned for details!
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