Enhance

E Taylor

“When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before, and the first of what is still to come”. ~Leonardo da Vinci.

I stand with the swirling wind, a witness to the trees. Their dancing leaves a bright metamorphosis gifting the earth – enriching the soil. Can my thoughts join with their selfless giving? What can I do to make my life a gift to the future?

I will my thought to penetrate to the essence of spirit behind the fiery face of Nature’s dying. I am met by the souls of the dead. They too are working to enliven the earth – sending forces from the vast spiritual worlds.

As I walk, I am wrapped in the fertile scent of Autumn’s moldering. And my thoughts turn to the souls waiting to come down the rainbow bridge into a new life.

How can we cultivate our relationship to these unborn?  What will we create to enhance the destinies of our descendants? How can we live so that we preserve & augment the wonders of the world?

As we ponder our possible contributions – & take practical action to deepen our commitment to them – perhaps we can keep in mind this thought from Lewis Carroll: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.”

~hag

12 November 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: This evening Bella Luna shines left of Jupiter and Saturn, forming a gentle curving arc with them.

Kendra Miller

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1793 – Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor of Paris, is guillotined during the Reign of Terror. Bailly was a French astronomer, mathematician, freemason, & political leader of the early part of the French Revolution.

1840 – Birthday of Auguste Rodin, French sculptor & illustrator, created The Thinker

1927 – Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

1956 – In the midst of the Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli War, Palestinian refugees are shot dead in Rafah by Israeli soldiers following the invasion of the Gaza Strip. The canal continued to be strategically important after the Second World War as a conduit for the shipment of oil. As a result of the conflict, the United Nations created the UNEF Peacekeepers to police the Egyptian–Israeli border, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize, & the USSR may have been emboldened to invade Hungary.

1979 – Iran hostage crisis: One of the leading national issues during that year was the release of 52 Americans being held hostage in Iran since November 4, 1979.  In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran. The Iran hostage crisis continued into 1980, & as the November 1980 presidential election approached, there were concerns in the Republican Party camp that a resolution of the crisis would give incumbent Jimmy Carter enough of an electoral boost to be re-elected.

Reagan won the election, because the hostages were not released before the election, but on the day of Reagan’s inauguration—in fact, 20 minutes after he concluded his inaugural address—the Islamic Republic of Iran announced the release of the hostages. The timing gave rise to an allegation that representatives of Reagan’s presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the election to thwart President Carter from pulling off an “October surprise”.

According to the allegation, the Reagan Administration rewarded Iran for its participation in the plot by supplying Iran with weapons via Israel & by unblocking Iranian government monetary assets in US banks.

The House October Surprise Task Force outlined as “principal allegations” three supposed meetings between representatives of Reagan’s campaign & Iranian government officials in the summer & fall of 1980 to delay the release of the hostages: 1) a meeting in Madrid during the summer, 2) a meeting at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C that autumn, & 3) a meeting in Paris in October.

The Task Force characterized three other meetings or contacts as “ancillary allegations”: 1) a meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. in early spring 1980, 2) a meeting at the Churchill Hotel in London in the summer of 1980, and 3) a meeting at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel in New York in January 1981.

  • March 1980: Jamshid Hashimi, international arms dealer, is visited by William Casey at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, who asks that a meeting be arranged with “someone in Iran who had authority to deal on the hostages”.
  • March 21, 1980: Jamshid Hashimi & his brother Cyrus Hashimi meet at the latter’s home.
  • April 1980: Donald Gregg, a U.S. National Security Council aide with connections to George Bush, meets Cyrus Hashimi in New York’s Shazam restaurant, near Hashimi’s bank.  Former Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr said in his 1991 book My Turn to Speak that he had “proof of contacts between Khomeini & the supporters of Ronald Reagan as early as the spring of 1980…. Rafsanjani, Beheshti, & Ahmed Khomeini [the Ayatollah’s son] played key roles.”
  • Last week of July 1980: At a meeting in Madrid arranged by the Hashimi brothers that includes Robert Gray, a man identified as Donald Gregg, & Mahdi Karrubi, William Casey says that if Iran could assure that American hostages were well treated until their release & were released as a “gift” to the new administration, “the Republicans would be most grateful & ‘would give Iran its strength back.’” Karrubi says he has “no authority to make such a commitment.”
  • About August 12, 1980: Karrubi meets again with Casey, saying Khomeini has agreed to the proposal. Casey agrees the next day, naming Cyrus Hashimi as middleman to handle the arms transactions. More meetings are set for October. Cyrus Hashimi purchases a Greek ship & commences arms deliveries valued at $150 million from the Israeli port of Eilat to Bandar Abbas. According to CIA sources, Hashimi receives a $7 million commission. Casey is said to use an aide named Tom Carter in the negotiations.
  • September 22, 1980: Iraq invades Iran.
  • Late September 1980: An expatriate Iranian arms dealer named Hushang Lavi claims he met with Richard V. Allen, the Reagan campaign’s national security expert, Robert “Bud” McFarlane, & Lawrence Silberman, & discussed the possible exchange of F-4 parts for American hostages, but Lavi says they asserted they “were already in touch with the Iranians themselves”.
  • October 15–20: Meetings are held in Paris between emissaries of the Reagan/Bush campaign, with Mr. William Casey as “key participant”, & “high-level Iranian & Israeli representatives”.
  • October 21: Iran, for reasons not explained, abruptly shifts its position in secret negotiations with the Carter administration & disclaims “further interest in receiving military equipment”.
  • October 21–23: Israel secretly ships F-4 fighter-aircraft tires to Iran, in violation of the U.S. arms embargo, & Iran disperses the hostages to different locations.
  • January 20, 1981: Hostages are formally released into United States custody after spending 444 days in captivity. The release takes place just minutes after Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president.

Several individuals—most notably former Iranian President Abulhassan Banisadr, former naval intelligence officer and U.S. National Security Council member Gary Sick, & former Reagan/Bush campaign staffer & White House analyst Barbara Honegger—have continued to speak out about this truth, to no avail. ~Infogalactic

1996 – A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 & a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collide in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349. The deadliest mid-air collision to date.

1997 – Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

1999 –Düzce earthquake shakes northwestern Turkey. At least 1845 people were killed & almost 5,000 were injured.

2001 – In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 en route to the Dominican Republic, crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board & five on the ground.

2017 – The Kermanshah earthquake shakes the northern Iran–Iraq border. At least 2410 people were killed & over 7,000 were injured.

~Sharpening my pointy chin…
I go
Questing in the shadowland.
From my hands the horn of plenty flows freely
The ghosts are fed, the unborn, ready…
I remind them
The Earth is an apple
Ripening in space.
Blue starlight filters thru
The outstretched wings of a bird, like wind in the fire,
As our walk-about leads ever onward
In the unending rhythm of the light
Glowing in the dark…
~hag

‘Tuning to the Stars’: Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck* –
Sacred Geometry, the Planets and the Zodiac
LIVE IN-PERSON 26-30 Dec. 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4 pm – 5 pm
And at 8pm on 31 Dec. as part of our annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering (details TBA)
 
$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.
Make your payment using PayPal
or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org  
(please indicate in the notes that it is for the Holy Nights Eurythmy)
Cash at the door, or send a check to:
Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618-2953
USA
 
For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg hag@RSchicago.org
 
* Jan Ranck – Born in the USA, Jan Ranck studied music and comparative arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. She accompanied the London Stage Group on their 1976 USA tour and went on to study eurythmy at the Eurythmeum in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, where she subsequently taught. In 1984 she joined the faculty of The London School of Eurythmy. She left there to complete her eurythmy therapy training in Stuttgart in 1989, moving afterward to Israel, where she founded and directed the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992) and was an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College from 1999. Jan has held Master Classes at various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held at Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Eurythmy Therapy Forum.

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