July 2010 Letter to the Community

Dear WeStrive Community,

This morning, at 12:00A exactly, a community-wide research opportunity came to a close: it was an effort in co-creating the materials for this weekend’s Meet-up around the theme of social media’s effects in and on our lives. We invited our network to share their answers to three questions in any way that they wanted—email, text, Tweet, a message, a videoblog—and we received some wonderful answers! Tomorrow we will release the co-created video that Meet-ups around the world will be able work with during their gatherings. The three questions we posed were meant to inspire us all to begin to really understand just how effective social media is:

• What is social media?
• How does social media impact my life?
• How can I use it to benefit and do good in the world?

Social media—which ranges from social networking sites like Facebook, or civic networking sites like WeStrive.org to sources such as Wikipedia, Flickr, and even online games—are, as Mathias Bolt Lesniak of LiliO Design and a member of the WeStrive Advisory Council wrote in his answers, really “a medium where all are potential content creators.”

This idea of all participants being content creators ties in nicely with our theme for this month’s eNews and the Chronicle (which, if you don’t already, you should check out daily for updates—or make recommendations on great articles elsewhere online and in print that you think would tie in with our monthly content themes). This month’s content will focus on Listening and Speaking: How we communicate, and why sometimes we are heard and sometimes we aren’t.

Listening is, as the cliché goes, an art form, but so is speaking. Speaking is not just what we say, but also the ways in which we say things and the intention behind them. There are countless listening exercises that we can explore to help us better understanding listening and speaking and the importance of renewing this lost art form. In a time when we’re hurriedly sending emails back and forth, zipping text messages, distractedly chatting with someone online and have instant access to a myriad of phoning tools (land lines, cell phones, Skype, Google Voice), we are in danger of losing something in the process. Increasingly, young people who are born into this world of distractions struggle with being able to have conversations with their peers in person—it seems so much easier to be behind a screen, hidden from view for them; in contrast, this very same activity is so much more difficult for older people. Why is that? We hope to explore that with you.

So, how can we learn to listen and to speak? How can we share our thoughts and experiences and how can we help younger generations do so? Listening isn’t just about verbal conversations—but about body language and about paying attention and being wholly present. It’s an activity, and possibly an elemental one, at that; speaking, in turn, is about not only speaking words, but also about speaking the truth, and inspiring conversation or reactions through our words.

Join us as we explore for the next month the arts of listening and speaking and share with us your own thoughts—we’re listening.

In Striving,

Leslie Loy
On Behalf of the WeStrive Leadership Council

New Content
Consciousness of Freedom through Listening and Speaking by Luigi Morelli
Luigi Morelli, who is trained in non-violent communication techniques, seeks to understanding how our words impact the world around us and how we can raise our consciousness on a daily basis to empower us to take new steps and actions in this article on the art of speaking. Read more…

Maitreya by Michael Heldey Burton

Michael Hedley Burton shares with us a poem from the Slow Poetry Zone on the importance of listening, and waiting for something new to emerge. "Maitreya" speaks to the prophecy of a future Buddha who will come when the world has forgotten Dharma. Read more…

Dialogue by Tom Atlee
Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute examines the importance of dialogue and offers up some helpful suggestions on how we can further facilitate conversations that are meaningful, fulfilling and engaging. Read more...

WeStrive Summer 2010 Meet-up: Social Media and its Effects on Our Lives by Leslie Loy
We are thrilled to announce our summer 2010 Meet-up, a collaborative effort with a number of our community members participating to share their thoughts on social media's effects on their lives, and on our collective lives. The Meet-up will take place this Saturday; for more information, please contact meetup@westrive.org. Read more…

WeStrive is Seeking Volunteers
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Upcoming Events

• Steiner Artistic Retrospective (Wolfsburg, Germany)
  May 13-October 3
  There is a retrospective exhibition in Germany on Steiner's art works and contributions to the development of modern art. It is being organized and hosted by a few museums in Wolfsburg and in Stuttgart. The titles of the exhibitions are: Die Alchemie des Alltags (The Alchemy of the Everyday) and Rudolf Steiner und die Kunst der Gegenwart (Rudolf Steiner and Contemporary Art). For more information, visit the site.
  
• Summer at Sunbridge Institute (Spring Valley, New York, USA)
  June 28-July 24
  The Sunbridge Institute campus offers its summer visitors the opportunity to become part of an unusual learning and living community. The campus is located 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, on 200 acres of land surrounded by beautiful gardens, orchards, and woodlands. The campus is part of the Threefold Educational Center, a community of institutions based on the work of Rudolf Steiner: a K-12 Waldorf school, a school for artistic and therapeutic movement, a center for biodynamic gardening and environmental education, a health food co-op and the Threefold Foundation, which acts as trustee of the land and provides affordable housing for community members. For more information, visit www.steinerinstitute.org.
• WeStrive Summer Meet-up: Social Media and its Effects on Our Lives (All Around the World)
  July 17
  WeStrive and Sense Festival are partnering to invite you to join us in exploring a universal question for WeStrive's Summer Meet-up: in these rapidly changing times, how are technology and social media impacting our lives, our relationships, our knowledge and our experiences of the world? Host or join a Meet-up, contact Mary Hanna, the WeStrive Meet-up Intern, at meetup@westrive.org for more information.
  
• Sang Forum (Ali-Seppälä Farm, Finland)
  July 19-July 27
  We invite you to set in motion an intensive week of singing, moving, thinking, creating and being together. All singers invited.

  "Singers" means for us also actors, film-makers, movers and shakers, painters, cooks, thinkers, and yes social artists too, that are interested in concentrating for one week on singing. We envision a collaborative Art-piece, whose centre would be the human improvised voice. We ask what is the connection between thinking and improvising? How can Images help create a space into which one can sing? How could I completely serve the greater aspect of a group and maintain my own independence? How could we awaken to the reality of the ever-flowing unheard melodies, to the sweetness and fullness of sound, to the continuity of movement? For more information, visit www.sangforum.com.
  

• Changing Times--Changing Music (ANAWME Music Conference) (California)
  June 19-July 23
  The “New Music” and its natural place in Waldorf pedagogy with Manfred Bleffert & Andrea Lyman

  A summer workshop for Waldorf class, early childhood, & specialty music teachers. Join us for a week that will echo in your classroom for years to come! Check out www.WaldorfMusic.org.

• Mystery Drama is You! International YouthSection Workshop (Dornach, Switzerland)
  July 24-August 1 New awareness of karma arises out of mysteries in daily life.

  The Youth section's summer conference on the Mystery Dramas is coming soon and there is still space for you. We have reserved tickets to the Dramas, so even though they are sold out, you can still come with us! Please visit the website at the link below as it has been updated with descriptions of the workshops. For more information, visit www.mysterydrama.org/en/introduction.html.

• The Storyteller at Play (Forest Row, United Kingdom)
  July 25-July 31
  You’ve been working hard all year, the bell for summer has rung and it’s time to play! Social games can be great teachers for us; like good stories, games speak to us on many levels. In the playground there is an alternative world with its own rules and consequences which allows us to meet ourselves and others in new ways. Social games exist all over the world and are currently pushed away by digital communication. It is a part of the vocation of the storyteller to keep the wisdom of such games alive and pass it to future generations. How can we bring the freedom and spirit of play into our daily lives? As storytellers how can being playful affect our relationship with our audience, our characters and ultimately ourselves? This is a week for experienced storytellers who would like to develop a more joyful and playful approach to their craft, as well as for teachers, facilitators, public speakers and parents. For more information, visit www.schoolofstorytelling.com.
• International Youth Camp
  August 2-August 16
  This year the international youth camp (16-24 years of age) will take place in the beautiful mountains of Italy. Individuals, with different cultural identities and nationalities come together to form a unique group full of energy, ideas and adventure.

  Located in a remote area, surrounded by nature, the IYCamp provides time and opportunity to share ideas, feelings and experiences. For more information, visit www.iycamp.com.

• UndJetz?! 2010 (Witten, Germany)
  August 8-August 14
  The success of this conference for returned long-term volunteers has led to a new group coming together to prepare it once again for 2010. Dates are to be 8 – 14 August and it will take place in Witten, Germany. Those of you who are able to read the German reports and program for 2010 can visit their site here…
• The Search for Humanity in Contemporary Art: Exploring postmodernism from the perspective of spiritual science through exhibits, performances, talks and discussions. (Hudson, New York)
  August 13–August 17
  Over the last century the idea of what art is has grown to huge and elusive dimensions. It is so large that it seems to encompass everything. It’s all encompassing impression leaves us with no distinct sense for what it is. It is certain that there is no simple way to come to terms with contemporary art. There is a way to approach this towering and elusive entity which reveals it in a new light, with a face of humanity and a heart. We see in this face aspirations, struggles, discoveries and defeats and it effects us in a singular fashion. It places us with solidity and gravity into the life of our specific moment, and ourselves. We wrestle our way to this face through the creative roots of things, through Spiritual Science, a way of knowing which enters the foundations of the world and humanity.
  For more information, contact Laura Summer at laurasummer@taconic.net.
• Think OutWord: Doing Social Researching | Creating a 9-day Community Lab (Hudson, New York, USA)
  August 22-August 30
  From August 22nd to August 30th, Think OutWord will host 25 people for an intensive social research project in Hudson, NY. The focus of the gathering will be to look more deeply into our questions around community. How do we come to understand and transform social phenomena? How do we prototype new social forms? This will happen naturally by forming our own community over the 9 days - through living together, sharing meals and questions. It will also take place through immersion in life at Triform (itself a social experiment, part of the larger spiritual/social impulse of Karl Konig - the Camphill Movement) as well as though meeting and working with members of the greater Hawthorne Valley community. For more information, visit Think OutWord's Community Lab listing.
• Frank Chester Research Residency (Spring Valley, New York, USA)
  September 19-October 31
  The Threefold Educational Center announces a unique opportunity to collaborate with artist, sculptor and spiritual researcher Frank Chester. From Sept. 19 - Oct. 31st a research team will come together to conduct a brand new research project with the alchemical process as research methodology. For more information and to apply, go to www.threefold.org/research.

Have an event you want to share? Please add it to the WeStrive calendar and we'll include it in the next eNews!

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