John Bloom
From the General Secretary
On the Matter of Matter and Spirit Our Annual Conference in Washington, DC, had a special mood. It was intimate in contrast to the political ethos of our nation’s capital, and reflective in the way of the pool stretching along the Capitol Mall. One end of the pool sits at the foot of the Lincoln…
Read MoreFrom the General Secretary
It was very moving to hear first-hand reports from Country Representative colleagues from Slovenia and the Czech Republic at our spring gathering and Annual General Meeting at the Goetheanum.
Read MoreFrom the General Secretary: “the beat of daily news”
June 3, 2020 — Present events and the beat of daily news have kept me in a state of rawness. No one I have spoken with is immune from suffering.
Read MoreFrom the General Secretary: “between self and community interest”
From the General Secretary April 12, 2020 Dear Members and Friends, I never imagined writing something to you in the midst of a global pandemic in which sheltering in place, spatial distancing, and fear of being infected or infecting others are a constant and oppressive presence. In a framework of safety, we live in a…
Read MoreFrom the General Secretary: “a cultural sea change afoot”
January 2020 Dear Members and Friends, Welcome to the new year, new decade, and what the future will certainly ask of us—awakening and deepening community. It is highly significant and worth celebrating that nearly 900 people participated in the Society’s Holy Nights online program in closing out 2019 and ushering in 2020. Whether you participated…
Read MoreFrom the General Secretary: “working out of a Michaelic attitude”
December 2019 Dear Members and Friends, The fall has been a very full, a time of harvest and harmony, a time of protest and celebration, and a time of reconsidering our history. The Society’s October gathering in Atlanta, Georgia, Facing Each Other, opened by bringing together the images of Rudolf Steiner, Marjorie Spock, and Martin Luther King,…
Read MoreFrom the General Secretary: “where has the sacred gone?”
August, 2019 Dear Members and Friends, The truth is that when any notion of the sacred is banished, it is impossible for humans to establish a hierarchy of values. Thus we can try to impose a few rules externally, but in vain: the soul will not embrace them on a fundamental level because they do…
Read MoreFrom the General Secretary: from Goetheanum spring meetings
May 3, 2019A Brief Report from the Spring Meetings at the Goetheanum Dear Members and Friends,Spring greetings. As I did last year, I am writing this brief report following the spring meetings at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. Most public of those meetings is the Annual General Meeting at which business of the General Anthroposophical…
Read MoreFrom the General Secretary: “the spirit world – a true commons”
From the General Secretary February 2019 Walls, great and small, are a sensitive topic these days, and even more meaningful are the boundaries that walls make visible. Physical boundaries separate us: rivers, mountains, or coastlines, and each one of us is apart from the others. Boundaries may also be negotiated delineations, in essence territorial, recorded…
Read MoreFrom the General Secretary: “what is happening to language & speaking”
From the General Secretary December 2018 We shape the world by how we speak; the world shapes us by what we say. These days I find myself wondering what is happening to language and speaking. Reductivist twittering, hacked thoughts, words are everywhere present in our lives: written, spoken, printed, sung, and even shouted. They guide…
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