What’s the feeling you awake with each morning? Is it with a great sense of possibility and excitement, or with fear and dread? Are you rearing to get started or are you finding yourself slowly dragging across the floor? As I look out on to the landscape of North America, and all around the world, I find my skin tingling, it’s how I awake often in the morning with a great sense of my entire being saying Yes!. And, in my mind, it’s a physical affirmation that really exciting things are happening all around that are critical and timely.

 

We have always acknowledged that in North America, the Youth Section is faced with a unique challenge: to connect the initiatives, the efforts, the questions and activities of many different people in vastly different locations together somehow. And for some time, we’ve done just that through talking, sharing, questioning, and researching. Conversation is important, it’s how new ideas emerge, and so now that Fall has returned, we also resume our Initiative Team calls, the quarterly calls that take place amongst those young people who want to jointly hold the intentions of the North American Youth Section.

 

It is no coincidence that in 2011, a year that is markedly important for students of Anthroposophy, that so much is happening, particularly as we head into that much-awaited 2012. How so? The future is beckoning us and encouraging us to take action, to engage, to concretely dig into work together, or individually, and to start to actually make the shift. And the myriad of activities that are being prepared for us to engage in point to this reality: it is time to connect, to engage, to share what we are doing in order to digest and improve so that we are in some ways prepared for what comes next.

 

For me, the past week has been a question of balancing these two experiences—the conversation and the action, and it has become a clear emerging theme for the NAYS 2011 Happening that’s taking place in Portland in mid-October.

 

I am so personally pleased to be able to provide you with our first North American Youth Section (NAYS) eNews in quite a while. It has been so long, in fact, that as Jesse and I were making adjustments to the NAYS, I stumbled upon Conversations (click to see a great photo of Luc Schloss from a few years back), NAYS’ former e-newsletter.

 

So, here you are: a sprinkling of this and that to show how we’re in conversation with one another but even more, how we’re actively striving to shift things in the world. I hope you enjoy our eNews, and that you consider sharing what you, or other young and youthful individuals, are up to in the world.

 

In Service,

 

Leslie Loy

leslie@youthsection.org

 

 

INITIATIVE WORK

In the heart of New York’s Hudson Valley, you can find yourself on the lush fields of the Commons Hands Project, a CSA-initiative that is meant to inspire young and old to think differently about their food, and how they relate to nourishment of their body and the soil.  [[Read more]]

 

 

CURRENT CONVERSATIONS

Just four days ago, the world paused to reflect on how the past decade has shifted since 9/11/01. Gisela Wielki, the Director of the Christian Community Seminary in Spring Valley, NY, wrote a thought-provoking article that examined the impact of what took place physically and psychically. No doubt by now, we’ve all read upteen articles and blogs about 9/11, but Gisela’s perspective looks at the events, the context of the towers themselves, and the shift that occurred in human beings, and her approach is refreshing. Thank you to Think OutWord (www.thinkoutword.org) for posting this; it is worthy of sharing. [[Read more]]

 

INTERIOR SPACES by Kathleen Morse

 

For more poetry by Kathleen Morse, visit http://artistsoflife12.wordpress.com/poetry.

 

I am protecting my heart
Locking it far away in an iron cage.

 

No one to reach it,
no one to touch it,
no one to teach it of the pain and beauty of the world.

 

Lock my heart far away from the world, prevention of pain.
But my heart aches to be free.
to be in the world
to be loved
to break.

 

There are those who have tried to liberate my heart,
come with armor and passion,
laughter and gifts.
Only a seeker of truth holds the key to my heart.
I am not interested in your gifts, your cunning smile, your sly body.
It’s the purity of your soul, the purity of your seeking, the purity of self-hood.

 

Will I recognize you when you come?
Will you hide or will I run?

 

My presence is my present
Receive it with love.
For the world and you,
Pure seeker of truth.

PARTICIPATE IN CONVERSATION GROUPS

Do you have a study, discussion or research group that would welcome other young people? If so, let us know so we can include that in our listings.

 

Portland, Oregon: At the moment the group is taking a break. Please contact Chrystal Godleske if you are interested in meeting again. Email socialsculptorgmailcom to find out more about what’s going on.

 

Philmont, New York: A weekly meeting known as the Think Outword Threefold Group, beginning with a potluck (in two weeks the eating starts) at 5 pm, singing from 6:15 to 7:30, study from 7:30- 9 and then community action projects from 9-10.  We have between 12-20 people regularly and most of them are between 22 and 35 years old.  Anyone interested can contact by Nathaniel at nafanyel79gmailcom or at 518-672-4090.

 

 

ENGAGE WITH EVENTS

If you have events that are for youth, youth-oriented, or organized by youth, please email nayouthsectionorg.

 

NAYS Initiative Team Call, Fall 2011, 9/18/2011

The Initiative Team, those core individuals who embrace the practical and spiritual responsibilities of the North American Youth Section, gets together via phone conference once-a-season. These calls are open to all young people who are interested in engaging in the carrying of NAYS and its work—to support young people in their work, in their questions and in their tasks. The Fall 2011 call will happen on Sunday, September 18 at 11:00A PST/12:00P MST/2:00P EST. Please join us by calling: 1-605-475-6350, code 697120.

 

Living Questions: Exploring the Role of Individual and Community in Spiritual Scientific Research, 9/30-10/2/2011

The Threefold Educational Center will host a weekend of collegial exploration of the role of individual and community in addressing these most pressing questions of our time. Frank Chester, Robert Karp, John Beck, and our lovely colleagues Seth Jordan and Jordan Walker are among the many presenters and contributors of this event. You are invited to join in creating a living laboratory for spiritual scientific inquiry as participants gather in intergenerational colleagueship to support and foster the cultivation and articulation of living questions. [[Read more]] 

 

Heartbeet Fall Conference: Know Yourself, 10/8-9/2011

Heartbeet is hosting its Fall Conference on the theme of self-knowledge though the cultivation of paths of self-development. This conference will lay a foundation, introduce themes, articulate conditions for inner development – all through the lens of the Mystery Dramas! [[Read more]] 

 

NAYS 2011 Happening, 10/13-14/2011

The North American Youth Section invites you to join us for a two-day intensive at shaping, playing, sharing, conversing and being together to see what happens as we collectively design our own event and sense the North American landscape through a futuring experience. Join us for the North American Youth Section’s 2011 Happening—an experience where every contribution is a vital element to creating something wholly new. [[Read more]]

 

 

A MIND-POPPING MOMENT

A new film focusing on Joseph Campbell’s work with the Hero’s Journey s will be released in small pockets across the continent later this month. If you haven’t watched the trailer yet for “Finding Joe,” do so! And if you can, catch the movie at a theater near you. [[Enjoy!]]

 

 

FIVE CONDITIONS SUPPORTIVE FOR THE ANTHROPOSOPHICAL YOUTH MOVEMENT

Rudolf Steiner’s Five Conditions Supportive for the youth movement inspires all of North American Youth Section work: 

 

• Find other young people who want to be together and speak from a commitment to openness, tolerance, and spiritual striving in their endeavors to serve humanity, and who agree to meet regularly;  

• The mood of these gatherings should be open and tolerant so that people feel free to speak agreements and disagreements fully;

• Together, develop an enduring loyalty to remain in relationships throughout life (stick together);

• Do not listen for precision, thought technique and clarity, rather try to listen into a feeling experience of others;

• Pour will into your thinking that it can become felt even into your body (Experiential Thinking).