You are invited to come to the Winnipeg area in August - a place in the middle of the continent one hour north of Winnipeg near Gimli - to help celebrate 100 years of the Anthroposophical Society. Anthroposophy is a movement for cultural renewal based on a spiritual world-view. The meeting is open to everyone.
See the conference website for program details and to register: https://thatgoodmaybecome.ca/
Here is a quote from the conference website:
Initiative is the fire through which transformation and renewal come into the world. That Good May Become is a festival of initiative in a rural setting an hour north of Winnipeg, near Gimli, Manitoba, Canada.
Near the centre of our North American continent is a place that has been sacred for those who have dwelt here for millennia. Here, under the sky’s great expanse, at the heart of the continent, at “the Forks” in Winnipeg, the north-flowing Red River merges with the Assiniboine River from the West. Indigenous peoples have gathered here for thousands of years, trading and holding ceremonies.
One person who had the impulse for this gathering is Monika Pudelko. The conference will be held on land that she has invested in and where she hopes that a creative community, based on Threefolding ideas, will take shape. She is inspired by the community of SEKEM outside Cairo, Egypt. See below for interesting videos on SEKEM.
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“That Good May Become” – Manitoba 2023
An Interview with Monika Pudelko
by Corinna Sons
(from the September, 2022 Enews)
https://thatgoodmaybecome.ca/festival-details/
Monika Pudelko is a eurythmist and Waldorf teacher who came to Canada in 2012 from Germany. After traveling and teaching eurythmy throughout Canada, she decided to make Winnipeg her new home. She started a Waldorf daycare and homeschooling initiative at her house and co-founded an eco-village group in 2015. For this project, she invested in 320 acres of property where some off-grid homes have been built – and it is on this land that the 2023 North-American anthroposophical conference is going to take place. I talked with Monika about her vision for the eco-village and how this connects to the upcoming event. “I have been carrying the vision of a land-based community for over 20 years,” says Monika. An encounter with Ibrahim Abouleish, the founder of the SEKEM community, encouraged her to start her own initiative.
Monika sees a threefold education centre at the heart of the emerging community in Manitoba: “I am envisioning a school where young people can acquire skills and capacities to bring the community forward, such as gardening, building, self-sufficiency, community-building, arts, and homesteading. This education centre should be integrated with trades and businesses like carpentry, mechanics, and biodynamic farming to ensure the economical sustainability of the eco-village. As with the Sekem initiative, business surpluses would flow into education.” Monika stresses the importance of a shared spiritual foundation for this work – which has been a struggle in the past: “There are quite a few people around who like the idea of land-based communal living, but hardly any of them are willing to wrestle with the ideals of brotherliness and social threefolding. Manitoba is at the centre of the continent. It needs a Christ-centered spiritual hub, to heal and work with the strong ancestral grounds.”
As for the 2023 conference, Monika is very excited to provide the space for this event: “I hope that during this festival a new foundation for our initiative can be created. We need more people to make this project work – people with business experience, and people who are passionate about building a community out of the spirit of anthroposophy. The conference should help to bring these people together.”
Monika will also contribute to the festival as a eurythmist. She has been working with the Foundation Stone meditation for many years and is planning to share her experience in a workshop.
In this video, you can see Monika talking about the land where the conference will be held:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gu5ulueru9on5s0/Videoleap-FF6D90E1-7838-4887-869B-F8DEBF9D6DBB.MOV?dl=0
In this video, you can see an 8-minute account of the history of SEKEM, the community in Egypt that has inspired Monika.
In this video, you can see Helmy Abouleish, the current CEO of SEKEM, speaking with Dr. Cassandra Quave who visited SEKEM this spring, 2023: