How We Will Forum

“WELCOME to

the city of Angels!” was Orland Bishop’s warm greeting to us all. “We ARE will,” he stated, “All the other stuff will be left behind. We will WILL a new world. Time is asking us to do so.” Thus our amazing gathering began with over one hundred participants from all over the world, rang

ing in age from eighteen to eighty six, and mostly young people under thirty, all together bringing a beautiful diversity of nations, races, and cultures. The forum was initiated by the Threefold Elderberries Cafe group. Social a

ctivist Dottie Zold founded a cafe in a depressed socio/economic area of Hollywood nine years ago with a mission to create an island of healing where youth can participate in the world and walk the path of self transformation. Each is to be recognized for bringing a gift for a more beautiful world in a very challenging age that calls for deep inner capacities, teamwork, compassion and the will to transform ideals into action. The Elderberries group proved a maxim of the conference, “Anything done with social three folding has immense power!” With few monetary resources, no conference facilities, little more DANIEL EVAEUS FRANK AGRAMA KATE ZIEGLER than faith, hope and great sacriﬁcing good will, their creation of the forum was a labor of love. With many meetings and social media they put together a conference featuring three world renowned threefold activists with impressive backgrounds in the subject. They used public park facility venues, moving the event twice and prevailing through a staggering heat wave to make it all work. The enduring participation was

testimony to the immediacy, relevancy, and urgency felt by those attending to take part in the inspiring ideas and ideals for our time in history. Nicanor Perlas, a world renowned activist, advisor to many at high level global politics, came from the Ph

ilipines with a lifetime of three fold social work and long experience in his country’s politics and supporting active participation by civil society. He states this must be vitalized if we are to create an equitable world (His book, one of many, Shaping Globalization, Cultural Power and Threefolding) has been translated into nine languages and is a primal resource on the subject). Gerald Hafner, Green party founder and member of German parliament, now heads the Social Science section for Anthroposophy and brought valuable exp

erience of successes in the political realm for par

ticipatory democracy. Orland Bishop, internationally known mediator and youth mentor brought unending inspiration. (His new book The Seventh Shrine is a the profound spiritual story of the Black African American experience in America.) Bart Eddy, long time dedicated activist doing wonderful inner city work in Detroit came with students and colleagues and Laura Summers whose art school Free Columbia has operated with three fold principals for over 10 years was part of it, too. John Bloom brought issues around money out of years at Rudolf Steiner Finance and there were many, many more inspiring contributors. I was able to give short keynotes, sharing the opening one with my dear fellow activist, Truus Gerauts, also in her eighties, as well as present a workshop on death and dying.

It was heartwarming to look back at the How I Will conference held here at White Feather Ranch over New Year’s (also initiated by the Elderberries group) had helped to seed this event on How We Will. It was great to have the conference end with the 450 foot silk banner grandly carried by all the partipants that we created here at White Feather Ranch for the 1997 International Youth Conference in Michigan. And it was moving to experience everyone spiralling on the large ﬁeld of grass with the colorful silk singing together the song of the conference “To the hills I will lift my eyes and I am not afraid, In Sun by day and the moon by night- my courage will not fade.” For me the event was living the dream of a dream. Having taught The Spiritual Mission of America for nearly forty years at Rudolf Steiner College, an institution originally inspired by Reverend Carl Stegmann and his work on The Other America, it was like walking into the most famous dream of the 20th century— Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a time when all representatives of humanity will join together, striving in brother and sisterhood and honor freedom and human rights for every single one. And there we were over a hundred representatives, a microcosm of the world, and so many striving earnest young individuals that can give us such hope for the world and the future. We tackled the hard stuff, global warming, artiﬁcial intelligence, crippling unsustainable wealth disparity, and looked

deeply at what it means to be human now and how to insure our humanity for the future. Sound inspirations from local democracy activism to alternative currencies were shared, along with much art, singing, music, awesome ‘cosmically inspired’ hip hop, elegant eurythmy and wholesome organic meals provided by Elderberries Cafe. The cafe has the following verse painted on its high blue walls.

Knighthood of our Times: “There is a knighthood of our time whose members do not ride through the darkness of physical forests as of old, but through the forests of darkened minds; They are armed with a spiritual armor and an inner sun makes them radiant;

Out of them shines healing, healing that ﬂows from the knowledge of mankind as a spiritual being They must create inner order, inner justice, peace and conviciton, in the darkenss of our time.” Karl Koenig. We who attended the How We Will Forum were inspired, changed, and charged with new shared energy for the work ahead in our challenging times!.