What is the point of anthroposophy?

It was interesting going to the Anthroposophical AGM today. First off, I have to say that I hate AGMs. They are very very VERY boring. Also I am not a member. I was there to give a short presentation of the school and what it had done over the year.

However, I was asked if I would join and I did wonder to myself, what is the point of membership?

What WAS the Anthroposophical society?

I still don't know if I am or want to be a Anthroposophist. I know that I work out of it very strongly. There are many insights which Steiner had into the human being which I deeply value and which teaching has borne out. His ideas about agriculture, medicine and spirituality, especially Christianity, are invaluable. He has given us a lens which I believe will be very useful if we are able to use it, to create a world which is beautiful and caring and kind. HOWEVER, I almost certainly don't sign up to everything which he says. I am in profound disagreement with what he says about the races. This is mostly because it comes straight out of the times he lived in. His insights into root races and dying races and ascendant cultures is so at odds with what he says about other aspects of the cosmos.

Also, sometimes I do wonder about his understandings of karma, etc. which is tied up with the whole issue of race. I also think his clairvoyance is a wee bit hit and miss. However, I do find it invaluable what he says about human development, which comes from his clairvoyance, and also agriculture.

So, I don't know what it means to be an Anthroposophist.

I am part of the Christian Community, which is the esoteric expression of Christianity, which I quite like.

I don't know what it means when I get to attend the Class Lesson. It sounds like a study group. I think it is just where I am right now, but study groups aren't my thing. I would much rather be gardening or running or even cleaning the house. I get my spiritual sustenance from other activities, being with friends. It would have to be a very special study group - one which would perhaps be looking into research - which I probably don't have the time for right now.

So, while I really understand WHY we need anthroposophy, I have yet to be convinced why I should join the society.

It was interesting listening to some of the initiatives which are taking place. Although they aren't really initiatives as such. There didn't seem to be much going on, and into this context, the school in Holywood is like a beacon on the hill. It appears to be slowly reviving itself, and I hope its revival doesn't come too late. I hope that we have bought ourselves some time and that we will be able to get enough of students over the next few years while we make a transition to be funded by integrated education. I was speaking to the head of Kindergartens in Ireland and she was giving me a heads up on things we must watch out for. Argue with confidence she said, about what is required. Make your demands, do not cave in. Be careful on what compromise on.

Until Anthroposophy is able to make itself relevant to the conversations society is now having about healing the environment, it will be relegated to the fringes. And the really frustrating thing is that it CAN. The age of the Anthropocene is upon us now and this is EXACTLY what Steiner had predicted. And he actually provided the solution for it - spiritual science, with rather, frustratingly is being discovered by quantum physics, even now. That the spirit has a reality and that it needs to be addressed. And there is so much in the science and the practical application of Anthroposophy which is there for the using.

So, how come Anthroposophy is not having a conversation with the world around it? Apart from the schools and biodynamic wine, it is not really speaking to the broadest possible audience, which it can so easily do?

I think this is the problem which the RSPB also suffered from. I could see this because I was not a bird person. In the RSPB this was because the identity of the people who worked there was intrinsically tied up with birds. Now this is FINE, until you discover that they are using birds the same way in which some people use race or class or culture - it is not to welcome people in, but to define themselves as a tribe and therefore, but definition, keep people out. They would often wring their hands and wonder, why is it that people don't want to join the RSPB? Well have you ever seen how you all appear to the world beyond the RSPB?

It is the same trap which Steiner schools fall into as well. There is partly this wanting to keep at some distance to society - and this is wrong. Walls need to be broken down, not put up.

And I think the anthroposophical society does this too. There is this snobbery about the 'other'. And this was also true of the RSPB. Eco warriors, vegans, the left, feminists - there is a sense that we are slightly better, more educated, more intelligent than you. And this is WRONG. This is wrong because the entire human project needs to be addressed and it is not going to be addressed in this manner. It needs to come off the hill and renew itself. It needs to speak to what is necessary, not insist that the world adapt to it - but the other way around.

The other thing is that there is a clubbiness about it as well. We only let people who look like US in. Other people who look a little different, well, they are kind of our subjecrs, rather than our peers. It was the same in the RSPB. We will speak to the masses from on high.

This sounds very negative. I don't know what the solution for it is going to be. I know I want Steiner education to become the main way in which students are taught. Because it is only through enabling a free human being that we allow solutions for the future to come forth. We cannot address the future with past solutions and in order to do this, we must be willing to trust our children. We must be willing to say to them, here you go, you are ready for this.

Up to now education has belatedly been like looking into a rear view mirror while trying to drive forward. This is why we need a good grounding in history, ironically, so we can look forward. Statistics, targets, goals, all of these are only helpful up to a point. At some stage we need to be able to respond to the conversation the present is having with us now.

I know anthroposophy has a lot to offer the world today - but somehow I think there isn't the confidence. Why I do not know. It is a saving grace that I discovered it through teaching and teaching in what I would think of as a really progressive Steiner school. Where the teachers don't simply hold onto form. What was good for one time may not be good for another. Also with students, you are always responding to their truth. You cannot do anything less than that. It is like working with a tuning fork.

Today I am going for a run and then having a coffee. I am also going to start eating sensibly over the next four weeks. And of course doing loads of gardening and housework. Really looking forward to a beautiful sunny day again.