Inspired by the Work of Rudolf Steiner

by John Bloom

Remarks as new General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America at its Annual General Meeting, October 7-10, Threefold Auditorium, Chestnut Ridge, NY.

Greetings to you all, and thank you for staying through Sunday morning after a very wisdom and art-filled several days. Thank you Torin [Finser] for your kind introduction and for the metaphoric hand-off of the ferryman’s oar. Thank you also to Virginia [Sease] and Joan [Sleigh] for your warm welcome into the international community of General Secretaries and work of the Society worldwide.

Before I dive directly into my comments this morning, I first want to honor Torin for his nine plus years of service and leadership. I am just beginning my four-year stint, but already have a sense of the energetic forces that will be needed to meet the future as a vital Society. I also want to appreciate all our prior General Secretaries for the gifts that they contributed and continue to contribute to our work.

At the opening of this gathering, we spoke the names of those who have crossed the threshold. I am mentioning this again, toward the close, because those who have gone before have much to offer us. I have benefited from such guidance. Those who have recently crossed and others returning are counting on us for nourishment and an appropriate preparation for them. I assure you we need them as they need us.

I never once imagined, when I first walked into this [Threefold] auditorium for the first time 36 years ago for a conference, that I would be the one standing up here on the stage speaking as General Secretary for the Anthroposophical Society. At that time, the Society was a great mystery to me. As a young founding parent of San Francisco Waldorf School, I joined the Society because it felt as right to do as enrolling our child in a school that didn’t yet exist. The founding board members of that school, including Rene Querido and Lexie Ahrens, who was my sponsor, made it clear that joining the Society was part of the expectation as I joined the board. Connecting to the wellspring of Waldorf education was essential to the school’s mission. I knew that membership meant having a connection to Rudolf Steiner and his work. What I did not know at the time was that I would be on such an intensive and extensive journey into the world of Rudolf Steiner and the manifestations of his work. And, I had no inkling that I would later become the administrator of the San Francisco Waldorf School after having been on the board for twenty-three years—until I put term limits in place. Then 18 years ago, I left the school to join what was the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, now RSF Social Finance, which as a leader in the emerging field of social finance publicly declares that we are “inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner.” We take that very seriously in our day-to-day activities, and it is the key to our growth and the trust that we hold. And I must add that RSF has committed to supporting my time to serve as General Secretary, even as I continue my work there as vice president for organizational culture. I can already see that being General Secretary could be full time work, but that is not yet possible.

My path to and into anthroposophy has been through relationships, though I have read and studied. I have had the privilege to meet many extraordinary people who have transformed, and continue to transform, themselves in service to spirit and to serving the aspirations of others as they serve the world. These individuals are my inspiration, and I hope I too can live up to this high expectation. I have learned much from Rudolf Steiner’s words and from those who carry a mastery of Rudolf Steiner’s insights. And I have grown most, and engage deeply, with those who hold the mysteries as a place of invitation to be in them together, for the sake of the radiant, the arduous, and the abundant.

This is my expectation of you as members of the Society, regardless of where you are on your path or journey: be and live that invitation. This fundamental expectation is also a key part of the Society’s path for growth.

While the Society does not currently have a financial endowment, it does have a spiritual endowment the riches of which we have barely tapped. It is comprised of the ever-bearing gift of Rudolf Steiner’s work, the Goetheanum and what it represents, and the collective wisdom developed by those inspired by Rudolf Steiner, some of which we experienced here at the AGM. That expanding community I will say is much larger than the numbers of the membership would indicate. In aggregate, they constitute a kind of inverse endowment that does not accrue interest, but rather radiates interest—interest in each other, in biographies, destinies, transformation, regenerative and healing impulses, and a social world that actually practices threefold principles. Hopefully, our endowment generates consciousness, lifts souls, and supports initiative. That makes us collectively the endowment managers. That is our shared responsibility and commitment, each according to her or his willingness as a member of the Society, and it is not a task without risks and uncertainty. If we are successful, the world will be a better place—and we cannot afford to fail. Too much is at stake.

One thing I have learned is that you cannot work against the spirit of geographic place. That means we need to know what is the particular task of the United States as Virginia spoke about in “Why Anthroposophy Needs America” [see page 20]. What gifts and transformative opportunities belong to the US that can then add to the evolution of world consciousness? How do we connect with the wisdom of people from First Nations who understood this land long before Europeans arrived? What can we learn from the insights of the transcendentalists, the visionary industrialists, abstract expressionists, and social entrepreneurs all of whom were seeking to understand human nature and serve society?

And in turn, what gifts do we, working out of anthroposophy, have to offer those in the US who are immersed in, maybe oppressed by the power of, commercial consumer culture which sees the human ego as the last best frontier? Yes, the US is the leader in technology—I know, I live in the heart of it. But modern technology embodies light and shadow, the human and the inhuman. What from our cultural history, and the insights of Rudolf Steiner and others working out of his impulses in the practical fields of medicine, education, agriculture, the arts, finance, and others, can we offer of a healing regenerative nature? Can we be the invitation for those seeking a way back to themselves and to their communities? Not because we have the prescriptions, but rather because we are committed to supporting others on their journeys.

We live in crazy over-mediated times. Our capacities for inner quiet, and right thought and action, are challenged every day, it seems. We can take a lead in making life more human. But, we must lead by example and with humility, because it is the best way to leave people spiritually free and still move forward. We must understand that as we create our agreements or governance, our “social contracts,” we must do so as equals. And finally, as we serve in the economic realm, we must do so out of a sense of compassionate interdependence. This is the practice of threefold; as we inhabit this world together, no one is exempt from any of the three. Thinking so, acting so, confusing or distorting them, is the foundation of a lot of discord. And really, who wins in such conflict, and who loses? We must find the way to have power with rather than over others. We have a lot of work to do. In many ways making threefold conscious and practiced is the central work of the Society. How can we embody and practice threefold principles for ourselves and in community? How might this imagination reach and inspire an ever-widening circle? One reality that I have discovered is that the more widely we want to work transformatively in the world, the more deeply we need to transform ourselves. There is an inescapable correlation. How do we live the dance between I and world with integrity?

My experience tells me that all of this transformation unfolds through relationships patiently cultivated, through shared inquiry, through open hearts and minds. All of this is reliant upon communicating in and through our being, that is to say who we are, grounded in selfknowledge and tuned to awareness of others and the world—this is no simple task. But it is the task we call “communicating anthroposophy” and it is what is being asked of us.

I ask you to join in working toward this future actively in your community as it is, and to seek others who are also striving regardless of whether they are members of the Society or simply have a sense that the world is out of balance and are seeking company in figuring out a better way to be.

We know that uncertainty is more real every day. We also know that throughout history when uncertain events have occurred, such as hurricanes, tsunamis, 9/11, community emerges in response. If this is the case, why wouldn’t we build community in advance, not to prevent uncertainty, but rather to be prepared to ameliorate suffering, to make the consequences more bearable and human. Part of this work is recognizing the strength in our own vulnerability. Such trust will serve us well.

From interest to engagement

Rudolf Steiner’s name and work have touched many beyond our Society. Our work is to move from this visibility to real presence in those wider circles, in order to add our voices and to listen deeply. We must also move from interest in others to real engagement with others, even if it is uncomfortable. And we must live the legacy of Rudolf Steiner’s insights in order to be of service to others. This is already happening in the organizations and activities across our decentralized network of shared connection; they are meeting the challenge of being sustainable in a competitive world. But person-to-person, never underestimate the power of asking someone (with their permission): What do you really care about? What really matters to you? What are you longing for, for yourself and your community? There is a quality of the healing Parsifal question in this. And lastly—and probably most important—to live with the ideals of what the Society and each of us stands for, in order to become a real invitation to the next generation to know, interpret, and make Rudolf Steiner’s work and the Society their own, even if it does not look the way we might expect it to.

This is the work I am committed to doing and supporting, and I ask each of you to take it up in your own way, for the sake of the future that is coming toward us and calling us forward. I look forward to serving us as a bridge to the international community, in giving voice to the Society and as one who cares deeply about the profound value of relationships.

So I ask, what is the story we want to be able to tell about what we have done three, seven, or fifty years from now? How will we have managed the “endowment” on behalf of Rudolf Steiner, each other, and the world? I hope we can live these questions together as a Society.

Thank you.

John Bloom is General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America and vice president for corporate culture of RSF Social Finance in San Francisco.