‘Kabbalistic Day of Love’

Today is the anniversary of Hazel Archer & Chuck Ginsberg, married in Berkley Springs, West Virginia in 2001. Long story short: We decided to elope, so I began to research a place where we could go with our girl Ultra-Violet who was 1 & a half & still nursing. I had a long list of requisites: Hot Springs, natural child care, & a the perfect minister, chief among them. I wrote our ceremony & found an amazing non-denominational minister in the area to officiate.  I won’t go into the details now of all the karmic magic that came together to create the best Wedding & Honeymoon ever, basking in the spa pools & enjoying the historic town, cause I want to give a macrocosmic picture of this date. (Abby Porter who lives there said we need to come back for our 20th & I hope we will, then perhaps I will tell that amazing story!)

We chose August 4th for our Wedding date because it’s the ‘Kabbalistic Day of Love’. Known as the ‘Jewish Valentine’s Day’, Tu B’Av is celebrated for 3 days around the Lammas Full Moon.

It is written, “There is no better time than Tu b’Av, a time when nations are meant to mingle with each other and where each and every person bestowed their goodness upon their fellow human beings” (Tiferet Shlomo). The kind of love Tu b’Av represents is an unconditional love that has to spread thru out the whole of humanity. (And it is no coincidence that it comes right after Tisha B’Av, which represents the polar opposite—unfounded hatred)

The recognition of an unfounded hatred that dwells in our hearts is the precondition for the attainment of unconditional love between us, as is written, “Tu b’Av is the correction and mitigation of Tisha b’Av” (Likutey Halachot).

It may not be intuitive to us humans at every moment, but the whole of nature works in this way. Evolution displays a dynamic interplay of two opposite forces, to create a transcendent third. Whether the poles manifest as plus & minus, hot & cold, ebb & flow, male & female, these often adversarial swings create levels of conflict & self-interest which can then open us to greater levels of reciprocity & connection. This is how ancient bacteria evolved from hostile competition, to shared responsibility, thus forming the nucleated cell. Our bodies also exemplify this perfectly, with up to 100 trillion individual cells, integrated to create a unified level of life. This way of seeing science is helpful during this corona-crisis.

About 4,000 years ago, Abraham, understood that this natural dynamic also applies to human society. When the Babylonians around him sank into self-interest & separation, he recognized that state as a precursor for the possibility of a new degree of human connection. Abraham “seeded love for all people” with the vision of a higher human state & “went from city to city, kingdom to kingdom, until thousands joined him…& they became a unified people” Which as Anthroposophy tells us gave us the vessel for the Christ – a Universal Impulse of Love.

The Hebrew calendar says it is time for the ‘Festival of Love’, but our current reality shows that people are more divided than ever. Yet, just as Abraham saw thousands of years ago, the hatred & separation that persist today are not coincidental. It’s an evolutionary stage, a precursor to the next degree of unity. And in our time, there is even more that’s brewing under the surface.

How can we hold altruistic connections above the growing self-interest?

The method of attaining true love among human beings must become a priority.

We are called to upgrade our human nature from the annihilation of selfish-love which leads us to crises, & leaves us with a very limited perception of reality; to a transformation – a force of unconditional love that permeates all of nature – a spiritual harvest waiting to be sown.

During these 3 Full Moon days of Tu B’Av, the spiritual powers are strong & available to us so that we can bring these polarized energies into balance. This harmony creates the perfect environment for love.

May we seize every opportunity, awakening to the cosmic clues in every milestone!

~hag

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There are many ways to help us hold this form! You could help by connecting us to Midwestern friends or initiatives, lending or gifting food/supplies, contributing financially, spreading the word, or lacing up your hiking boots and walking with us!

To make a financial donation thru paypal go to urbanfirstaidla@gmail.com

Greetings! My name is Ultra-Violet Archer, a 2018 graduate of the Chicago Waldorf School.I am inviting you to be co-creators of a walking-learning journey taking place in the heartland this coming August.

For ten days, myself, a group of fellow journeyers, and maybe even you, will walk out our living questions across the Midwestern landscape, forging connection with each other, those we meet along the way, and the land itself. Our journey begins in Madison, Wisconsin on August 8th and ends at Elderberries Bio-dynamic Outpost and Threefold Cultural Hub in Chicago Illinois on the 18th.

Along the way we will share food, song, and story, while meeting and holding conversation with local food, farm, and community initiatives. Classroom Alive is the name of the game, and we’d love for you to become a fellow player.

For more information or to register, find Classroom Alive Chicago on Facebook or email circlesforarenewalofculture@gmail.com

Ready to walk? sign up here: https://form.jotform.com/202047534622145…

With love and light,
Ultra, Stefan, Robbie, Frank, Dottie, and the rest of the Classroom Alive sole-power team

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!

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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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.’

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 EdwardsSeneca GonzalezMelody BrinkKristin BuckbeeAkil BellMonika PudelkoJoan JaeckelPatrice MaynardHazel 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

2 thoughts on “‘Kabbalistic Day of Love’

  1. Hi Hazel,

    Yes, these three days of Lammas, August 1st to 5th, will give us the parameter, and even the moral compass of our lives. You give an astounding depiction of it with Chuck and the little one. Chuck, he’s the one that is big into male bonding for the sake of true representation for the cause, isn’t that right? He butchered a live chicken in order to make food for your precious dog, and I found that really intriguing to hear about. I love the fact that you had the acumen to take pictures of the ceremony. My wife and I also eloped in 1973, but without all the hoopla. Just a marriage certificate signed by the civil judge, Bud Ruff, and our two witnesses, Jim and Linda. I had occasion to look at this document just the other day.

    Now, here is the thing that flows throughout this discourse. Abraham, who beget the Hebrew cultural stream. Steiner’s lectures on the “True Nature of the Second Coming” tells of a renewed Abraham epoch, which began around 2001. This is when the faculty that Steiner originated, i.e., modern exact clairvoyance, begins to become our own attainment. But, first we have to find our way to spiritual science. We initiates are the harbingers of this quest in the post-modern era. Here are the two lectures:

    https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA118/English/APC1961/TruNat_index.html

    Now, recently I told you about Carl Unger, who was Steiner’s ‘right-hand man’, and he was. He was a German Jew, and very much of that distinction. Yet, he found his way to Steiner through Adolf Arenson, who was a musician, and this is how the notes of music can make an impression on a boy of fourteen. Thus, Unger made his way to Steiner as early as 1902. By 1907, he was giving lectures at the Munich Congress, where the Rosicrucian symbols of the seven occult seal pictures were first given. Isn’t that awesome, and he never deviated one iota of what his cause had become.

    To have a cause is an awesome deal, and yet also an onerous burden. Why it is can be easily seen and shown in how far behind our brethren are in this quest for truth and knowledge. Hazel, you have a star in this regard. I would wrap you up in a minute if it had been my fortune. So, luck be to Chuck Ginsberg for meeting you.

    Moving right along, I hope. Hope is also an awesome possibility. Just today we heard of the decimation of Beirut, and yet who can one believe? Hope stands for the truth.

    1. Thank s dear Steve, i agree that Unger gave us & RS so much. it is difficult to see the karma involved in all the twists & turns of personal & world events!

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