Our Course with Nicanor Perlas July 2008 Dear friends of Think OutWord,
It's been two weeks since Nicanor's course at the Rudolf Steiner Institute. The experience has begun to settle a bit and I'd love to share just a few reflections. First of all, working with Nicanor is awesome. He's a genius for facilitating group work. His method is called "generative dialogue" and consists of drawing out the collective intelligence, the higher creativity, that lives within a group. It's a lively, exuberant, and at the same time, extremely focused affair, and when it's happening well (which was most of the time) Nicanor becomes just another link in the circle. The conversations created through this process are powerful. For those present I think it was a truly rare experience of the "living word." Also, being at RSI was great. Think OutWord brought 13 people (Nicanor's course drew 35!). We were nestled into a larger community of really enthusiastic folk. There were super-dynamic teachers like Herbert Dreiseitl from Germany (one of the premiere landscape architects internationaly - http://www.dreiseitl.de/) and Axel Ewald from Israel (an environmental sculptor a la Andy Goldsworthy - http://axelewald.com/) as well as a bunch of others. Think OutWord was able to meet outside the class a couple times to look towards the future and think about the concrete ways we want to work together. Over the course of the week we tried to see as clearly as possible what's taking place in the world, and strove to muster up the courage and strength to play our parts in it. We also just kicked it at the swimming hole and on the volleyball court a good deal. It was awesome. All of it was made possible by donations from many of you. I really want to thank you. We wouldn't have been able to go otherwise. If you want more information on the course check out our website sometime in the not-too-distant future. We're in the process of recreating it, but once it's done we'll have an article on Nicanor's course that one of the participants, Peter Alexanian, wrote. I'll let you know when it comes up. Also, we hope that as many of you as possible will be able to attend the upcoming Michaelmas conference down in Spring Valley. The title is "Honoring the past - Recognizing the way forward." It will be focused on taking stock of where Anthroposophy is at as well as looking towards deeper forms of collaboration, especially inter-institutional, and inter-generational work. You can find out more at - http://threefold.org/events/index.aspx. O.K. Hope to see all of you there. Thanks again, Seth - The last word is from one of our participants, Jordan Walker (who is also in charge of organizing the Michaelmas conference). "I had a pretty amazing time, was inspired by what seems to be living (and growing) at RSI and was both invigorated at how anthroposophy can and must give birth to innovative social forms and also honored to be finding myself taking part in such a fragile and young emerging culture. So, both grand visions of immense strength and also an appreciation for the subtle quality of cultivating little seedlings. I'm excited to be a part of Think OutWord and it occurs to me to use it like a verb - "to be Thinking OutWord". And then it's a state of being as much as it's an organized noun."
