Southeastern Branch Retreat: Creating the Future Together

A RETREAT HOSTED BY THE SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA BRANCH

Friday, October 13, 2023, 7:15 pm – 9 pm
Saturday, October 14, 2023, 9 am – 12:30 pm

ARTICLE BY SHERRY WILDFEUER

As you may recall, Rudiger and I went to a four-day meeting last May in Spring Valley.  The purpose of the meeting was to turn to the fact that the Anthroposophical Society in America has inadvertently recreated the fragmented state that had led to Rudolf Steiner’s re-founding of the Society at Christmas in 1923.  Now, as we approach the centenary of the re-founding, we need to address the problem we have created.  We found it especially hopeful to turn to the simple drawing Rudolf Steiner made on the blackboard during the Christmas Conference as an imagination of how a Society which is active in diverse fields of life can work together out of the spirit.  This form was never able to become filled with life because of the break-up of the first leadership group of the Society after Rudolf Steiner’s death, and because of WW II.  Can we give it a chance now?  This will be the theme of our first evening.

Someone asked in May, what’s the emergency?  And the answer was that the Human Soul is under attack in our time from so many directions, and Anthroposophia is available to help, but are we as the Anthroposophical Society, with its plethora of councils, organizations and institutions, each focusing mostly on their own tasks and not closely communicating and working with the others, able to be effective in bringing her forward to assist where she is needed most?

All of the 43 people from all over North America who attended the May meeting were committed to carrying this impulse forward, and Rudiger and I would like to do so by hosting a Branch Retreat in Rose Hall on the evening of Friday, October 13 from 7:15 to 9:00, and the morning of Saturday, October 14, from 9:00 to 12:30.

We would like to invite all those in our area who are actively striving to serve their fellow human beings and the Earth out of knowledge of the spirit to participate.  Following something of the same form as the May meeting, we will do some artistic activities and get to meet each other more deeply at the hand of questions in small groups as well as in the larger circle. 

Ultimately, we would like to gather in two such retreats per year to turn to the questions, how can we support one another better, and how can the Anthroposophical Society in our area become more helpful and effective?