Remembering Marjorie Spock: LeadTogether Highlight #5, 9-15-14

Dear Colleagues,

In doing research for the September Newsletter, I reconnected with Marjorie Spock's important booklets, "Group Moral Artistry: The Art of Community Building I and II." They have been a source of inspiration since 1986 when a colleague first shared them with me. While these little gems are available in our resource section, this week's highlight is about Marjorie herself. Last week (September 8) she would have been 110 years old. In 1922, at 18, Marjorie went to Dornach to learn eurythmy and study with Rudolf Steiner, an experience that inspired her life as a eurythmy teacher (at 100 she produced and directed a film on eurythmy), a biodynamic farmer (she was part of the inspiration for Rachel Carson's Silent Spring), a writer, and a teacher.

She was a true Michaelic warrior whose life and writing continue to fan the sparks of courage and initiative in the hearts of us all.

Click here for three short biographies of her remarkable life.

Keep in touch,

Michael Soule

Here is a quote from her.

“In a universe where all life is in movement, where every fact seen in perspective is totally engaging, we impose stillness on lively young bodies, distort reality to dullness, and make action drudgery. Those who submit - as the majority does - are conditioned to a life lived without their human birthright: work done with the joy and creativity of love. But what are schools for if not to make children fall so deeply in love with the world that they really want to learn about it? That is the true business of schools. And if they succeed in it, all other desirable developments follow of themselves. In a proper school, no fact would ever be presented as a soulless one, for the simple reason that there is no such thing. Every facet of reality, discovered where it lives, startles with its wonder, beauty, and meaning.”