May 20, 2016

325 – The First Council of Nicaea is formally opened, starting the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church

526 – An earthquake kills about 250,000 people in what is now Syria and Antiochia

1444 – Feast Day of St. Bernardine of Siena. Most of the saints suffer great personal opposition, even persecution. Bernardine, by contrast, seems more like a human dynamo who simply took on the needs of the world.

He was the greatest preacher of his time, journeying across Italy, calming strife-torn cities attracting crowds of 30,000.

When he was 20, the plague was at its height in his hometown, Siena. Sometimes as many as 20 people died in one day at the hospital. Bernardine offered to run the hospital &, with the help of other young men, nursed patients there for four months.

At 22, he entered the Franciscan Order. For almost a dozen years he lived in solitude & prayer, but his gifts ultimately caused him to be sent to preach. He always traveled on foot, sometimes speaking for hours in one place, & then doing the same in another town.

Bernardine devised a symbol—IHS, the first three letters of the name of Jesus in Greek, in Gothic letters on a blazing sun. Opposition arose from those who thought it a dangerous innovation. Three attempts were made to have the pope take action against him.

General of a branch of the Franciscan Order, the Friars of the Strict Observance, he strongly emphasized scholarship. When he started there were 300 friars in the community; when he died there were 4,000. He returned to preaching the last two years of his life, dying while traveling.

Madonna of the Magnificat by Botticell, shows Lucrezia de’ Medici as the Madonna, surrounded by her children with Lorenzo holding a pot of ink

1503 – Death-day of Lorenzo de’ Medici

1609 – Shakespeare’s sonnets are first published in London

1806 – Birth-day of John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, political economist &civil servant. He has been called “the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century.” Mill’s conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.

1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day

1956 – In Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean

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~Look, I have light

In my eyes

And on my skin…

The warmth of a star…

And everything alive is turning

Into something else

In the alchemical Heart

Of some annihilating

Yet creative fire

That is burning unnoticed

Waiting to touch

Me & You…

~hag

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Dear Friends – Can you feel the excitement building? Twenty actors, including Glen Williamson & Kim Synder-Vine, with director  Henry-Cameron Allen from Gloucester, Massachusetts, & writer Michael Hedley Burton, with producer Marke Levene & eurythmist Barbara Richadson…Are all here, ensouling our branch with their graceful presence, striving in rehearsal, bonded together for the Readers Theater production this weekend.We hope you will join us.

“In giving speech artistic shape and form the healthy co-operation and harmonization of body, soul and spirit becomes manifest. The body shows whether it is able to incorporate the Spirit correctly; the soul reveals whether the spirit lives in it truly; and the Spirit is vividly present working directly into the physical. Those taking part in speech courses have a direct personal experience of the revelation of Anthroposophy in the activity of Man. Here it may be regarded as a testing of Anthroposophy that it is in a position to enable the art of speech to come to life again, in its full significance.” ~Rudolf Steiner

Lemniscate Arts Presents: Opening the Realm of New Mystery Drama –

“The Working of the Spirit” –  

TWO Readers Theater performances: Saturday May 21 and Sunday May 22, 2016. 

10:30am to 6:30pm – Each day is a staged reading in full, with breaks, of the new drama.

The journey of the play is well worth the long ride, with its rich language – very deep & beautiful – depicting the lives & relationships of earthly humans as well as spiritual beings.

Folks are invited to come & go as they like, but if you plan to enter sometime in the middle, please buy your tickets on-line ahead of time. 

Contribution $15.00 – $45.00 per presentation – 

Get your tickets now at www.workingofthespirit.org  

Can’t make it? Make a donation to show your support

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Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society,

4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)

Check out our Web site!

Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)