Reflections on Spring 2010 Meet-up with Jane Lorand by Leslie Loy and John Beck

On March 20, WeStrive had its first 2010 Meet-up, featuring the research and knowledge of Jane Lorand, a social entrepreneur out of California who has had made extraordinary ripples at YIP (www.yip.se). The Meet-up challenged participants to consider their own ways of thinking and educational paths; how well, Jane asked, do we know ourselves and how are we actualizing our potential to better serve the world?

There were Meet-ups in over four countries, including: Philadelphia-area (USA), Dornach (Swizterland), Toronto (Canada), Jarna (Sweden); more will continue in Germany and Lebanon. In the meantime, there is also a group coming together to collaboratively re-imagine the WeStrive Meet-up; if you are interested in being part of that conversation, please contact leslie@westrive.org.

John Beck wrote a reflection on his Meet-up in Glenmoore, Pennsylvania:

I decided to go the Philadelphia area Meet-up led by Leslie Loy. As communications people we'd already had some good interactions, and I wanted to meet some more people, and I wanted to see Camphill Soltane. (This Meet-up was in the Philadelphia area only in a global sense, being well away from anything urban, though the suburbs or exurbs come very near. 

But my Google map thingie on my Droid phone (anthroposophist with "(an)Droid" cellphone, right) gave me a wrong turn on the final road, and to a bridge that was out (from our recent heavy snows and rains)). Bridge outs are not urban at all. And then my detour around the out bridge was on a very real country road right through two farms, with serious ruts and potholes taken in my borrowed city car at about 7 mph.

Our Meet-up was happening later in the day, and I was late, so it was the last hour of sun. Camphill Soltane was on spring break, which I didn't know about, so Leslie was alone in this huge beautiful Emerson House in fine light. Joe arrived prior to me. He’s a British-born teacher at neighboring Camphill Beaver Run, and we talked and ate as the sun set. Sarah came a bit later, born in Germany, married to a Christian Community priest. Two skinny country cats came and went, looking for attention.

We'd started the video by Jane Lorand by then, in the basement of the house. This was great for me as she shares a lot of concerns that have been part of my writing work for many years, and she seems to live comfortably both within the anthroposophical community and in the contemporary culture of self-development and creative business management. The video's online, so I won't recap. What was next was to bring out the pieces that we connected to. A large group would have been fun in its own way, but our quartet -- mostly Joe, Sarah and myself, since Leslie has know Jane for a long time and was mostly scribing our observations -- this quartet size allowed each of us to become more personally exposed in our thinking and reactions. A quiet enthusiasm built until finally we went to eat the strawberries Sarah had come with. As an elder I took the chance to quiz the others about what the youth experience was meaning for them, how it might transition, whether anything was needed. And we bounced back to thoughts from the video, and questions of our lives.

How was this better than just watching the video on YouTube? Well, I still give live people a lot higher priority than mediated persons, however wonderful those are. So along with some good notes and plans to follow up on Jane's genuine wisdom, I got this funny triangulation of 3-4 people meeting the same twenty minutes or so of image, voice, words. And each shared, slowly, what eurythmists and Chekhov actors call our "backspace," something invisibly substantial out of our own lives and destinies. And these backspaces were delicately joined as we reached out to take and recap what Jane had offered. It's why people, if one actually permits a meeting to happen, are truly memorable. There is something real spiraling through the vast illusions of a rather desperate time and culture. And we tossed each other some threads, which disappeared out into the night with each of the others, to be woven into the other possible world we are trying, by recognition, to make present.