Marian Leon, the Anthroposophical Society in America's Administrative Director, is featured along with the society and its work on the cover of the Crazy Wisdom Community Journal, a substantial and long-running publication based in Ann Arbor and serving Southeastern Michigan. Inside a six-page article pictures the society's beautiful national office at Rudolf Steiner House.

The journal is one of the services of the Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tearoom, the center in this lively university city for spirituality, alternative health, progressive living and social consciousness. The bookstore hosted a series of talks in 2011, Rudolf Steiner's 150th year, on related initiatives, and Ann Arbor features a strong Waldorf School, the Rudolf Steiner Health Center, a biodynamic Community Farm, and the Great Lakes Branch of the society. Each issue of the CW journal presents a cover story on an influential local leader. [Read the article here...]

In his latest E-News, Mark McAlister, administrator for the Anthroposophical Society of Canada, writes about learning anthroposophy from non-anthroposophists. As some ironic types like to say, "What a concept!" But seriously, Mark writes:

"It’s been said that Alcoholics Anonymous makes it a principle to venerate newcomers. Their questions are sharp and immediate, and they prevent the organization from becoming complacent and irrelevant. Is there a lesson here for the Anthroposophical Society? What would happen if we paid more attention to the questions and concerns of newcomers?

"With this in mind, I decided to participate in the Cambridge Music Conference in Vancouver last November. Elizabeth Carmack (an anthroposophist) was the driving force behind the conference, but the vast majority of the presenters and participants had no direct connection with Anthroposophy. What brought them together was a deep concern for the plight and trauma of people in the justice system (including both perpetrators and survivors of violent crime), and a quest for real and sustainable healing. Nigel Osbourne (a composer from UK) was a particularly inspiring example. Working with children in war zones, he has shown how the elements of music can reach to the deepest levels of the human being and bring hope where otherwise there would only be despair. I did not feel that he was lacking anthroposophy; he was revealing it to me.

"One can have similar experiences in meetings of the biodynamic movement.  I have met a number of young farmers in recent years..." [Keep reading...]

Among the Renewal Course offerings next month at the Center for Anthroposophy in Wilton, NH, is a week co-sponsored by the Anthroposophical Society in America with Rudiger Janisch and Penelope Baring, representatives of the general section of the School for Spiritual Science.

The course is for members of the Anthroposophical Society who inspire their daily lives and work through anthroposophical meditative practice and who might see their inner work leading to join the School for Spiritual Science.

It is also for members of the School for Spiritual Science who wish to deepen their understanding of the task and mission of the General Anthroposophical Section as given by Rudolf Steiner. The guidance for this course is taken from the path of meditative practice in the First Class. [Read more...]

April 22, 1970 was the first "Earth Day." John Beck pulls together a few of the connections, notably between eurythmist and biodynamic farmer (and translator and teacher and mentor) Marjorie Spock (1904-2008) and Rachel Carson (1907-1964), the author of Silent Spring. That book, like Uncle Tom's Cabin over a century before, created a revolution in attitudes about our relationship with and responsibility toward our planet. Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy enlarges and deepens the background of environmentalism while providing tools like Goethean science and biodynamic agriculture to understand the Earth and heal it. [Read more...]

A bonus comes in the form of a poem by Daisy Aldan, "Earth is a Being Who Deserves to Be Loved." If this was not written with Earth Day in mind, it should have been. It was published in The Threefold Review and later in Threshold from Anthroposophy NYC. Its central lines present an unforgettable global image of Earth that joins with Rachel Carson's vision of a spring without birdsong:

Multiple is she in anger and reverence,
passion and prayer. Even in catastrophe

and tempest, confounding harmonies enlighten.
She is haloed with many balancing haloes,

each day crowned with a corona of caroling
as bird-note meets bird-note at dawn moving westward.

[Read the whole poem...]