Youth Section Initiative in The Hague
by Dr. Constanza Kaliks
There are moments – we have all known them – when a deep joy arises out of what we have experienced. It is of these that I wish to speak.
40 people from 20 different countries came to our Initiative meeting in the Youth Section this past July in The Hague. Janna, Ioana, and Johannes had been preparing for the meeting for a long time. We were able to come together in the house of the Anthroposophical Society, close to the International Court of Justice.
Conversation, community, and joy at the enormous variety of life experiences that come about when people from such totally different parts of the earth meet and discuss.! From Israel, India, Nepal, Spain, and the Czech Republic, from which Klára had traveled by bus as our youngest participant at 16 years of age. And despite all of these different languages, the will to express in words that we feel can give us direction, even then when it is actually inexpressible.
„What is love?“ asked Nanna Woo, and went on to show how it can be discovered in beauty, in pleasure and suffering, and in love itself through music, Eurythmy, theatre, and dance.
We were all able to take part in the founding of a Youth Section in the Netherlands, carefully prepared by seven people who wished to see this impulse realised. In the dodecahedron that had been forged by the group together with Rik den Cate, some soil from each of the regions of Holland was placed while we heard, in each of the languages represented, the words of the last part of the Foundation Stone Meditation with its heartfelt wish, for each and every person involved, that good may become that which is to be founded.
Members of the Executive Committee of the Anthroposophical Society, the Dutch General Secretary, Jaap Sijmons, and many friends from different generations were able to witness the space that can be created when people want to be together. There followed a lavish celebration with Dutch herring, various conversations in the Garden, and a sumptuous evening meal followed by dancing and a campfire.
The next day we discussed questions on the School of Spiritual Science. Clearly and openly we confronted questions such as how a community is to be formed that seeks inwardness, and introspection but should nevertheless remain open and permeable. How does one deal with an esoteric work that seeks at once to protect itself and to remain accessible.
We introduced the research project the Youth Section at the Goetheanum is undertaking, together with our project co-worker, Melanie Hoessel, who traveled to meet with us. It enabled us to hear how far the questions that have been proposed are relevant and provide an adequate approach to the question of how one’s own identity relates to the world, as Ioana and Andrea described it. Which are the questions we wish to put to ourselves, with which ones do we wish to live so that, out of living with and out of these questions, possible transformations, movement, and knowledge arise. The project is in the process of being outlined and will soon be available for everyone to participate.
We decided to organise the Youth Conference at the Goetheanum in July 2018 in a common effort. A number of suggestions as to the theme were made and soon an invitation will be sent out on the basis of the conversations that have taken place. We are very happy to see it take on such an international character.
Commonality: is it, not this which needs to be learned, practiced, and lived today? What is mutual in allowing us to live our humanity, and without which this humanity would be seriously threatened on each day anew. It is a reciprocity that lives amongst people – which, over and above this, also needs to include Nature in its relationship to the human being. From one human being to another, from the human being to Nature; beyond this, from the human being to God? „Knowledge within the human being is his participation in that which the beings and events of the spiritual and the physical world have to say to one another.“ (Rudolf Steiner) This being true, it makes the person, in his act of knowing, part of a dialogue, that is, it becomes relationship, connection. A connection that permits the new to happen, which is creative. Again and again this can become the space within the Youth Section. This is the way I experienced it in The Hague, as I did a week later in Oriago, Venice, where over 100 young people from Italy met to the theme ‚Alla ricerca di noi – la Scienza dello Spirito comme impulso per i giovanni di oggi’ - a beautiful report by Bárbara Valentín is included in this edition – as also in Buenos Aires in the Neolaia - a meeting around the question of Identity and the pluralist nature of reality and at the Youth Section meeting in Ecuador, which hosted a meeting in August to the issue of crisis education and the opportunities for social engagement. The attention to the human in the many and complex dimensions could be experienced and discussed during the conference on Faust "Faust.Macht.Geld" – you can read more about this in these eNews!
The relevance of our own action for what is concretely required today; our engagement with the challenges of human society; the relationship of our inner search to life itself; our lives as they are affected by our inner search – these themes were all present at the meeting, in the accounts of the work done in the different countries, in the context of the School for Spiritual Science as well as the organization of our impending events.
Our team has also changed. We extend a warm thank you and feel much joy for all the children and young people that are to have Paul Zebhauser as teacher, as we say farewell to his initiative and his responsible co-work in the Youth Section team. His activities remain a lasting enrichment everywhere: in the house of the Youth Section, with and for the many schoolgoing students, in the many working and study groups he formed, and in the work of the School for Spiritual Science.
Sophie Teske ended her year with us this summer. Our time together was a great pleasure. The conference organised together with Maxine Fowé still receives, long after it has ended, a most wonderful echo. Also for the contacts to persons from Central and South America and for your presentation out of your own experiences in the preparation group, Sophie, we are extremely grateful to you.
In the team remain Ioana Viscrianu and, since joining us in September, Guadalupe Oiozola, Juan Bottero, and Andrea de la Cruz – team in which there is much Spanish spoken. Nos alegra mucho!
Heartfelt greetings to everyone
Constanza Kaliks
2.10.2017