Dear Friends,

The Novalis Project emanates from members and friends of the Barrie Camphill community. Each season brings us closer to our goal of establishing an inclusive, therapeutic community in the downtown core where all may practice a hospitality that heals. Anxiety arises when the gap between our concerns and the sphere of our influence in bringing about change seems too great. Yet when we bring our conscious attention to bear on the issues of the day in the company of those whose practical example and lives of fruitful service can inspire and enlighten us, possibilities for new beginnings arise. Our Fall programme draws on a roster of such individuals and we welcome your participation in any and all of our events.

- Treasa O'Driscoll, project coordinator.

		Treasa has released her new book titled "Celtic Woman, a memoir of life's poetic journey" and is now available in bookstores across the country. For more information visit: www.bluebutterflybooks.ca

Friday-Saturday November 8 - 9, 2008
Location: Novalis Hall, Nottawasaga Village, 7481 4th line, Angus

Stairway of Surprise: 
A Two-Day Workshop with Michael Lipson, PhD

 "I shall mount to paradise
             By the stairway of surprise"
                        - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Where do thoughts come from? What lies at the basis of our world of sights and sounds?  Can we learn to feel fresh feelings, or must our feelings grow stale and dead?  What is life's meaning, what is it for?  What are we to do? How can our planet be saved?
 These fundamental questions cannot be answered, or even adequately posed from out of  normal consciousness.  To move more deeply into such questions, we need to pursue a path of spiritual development

This weekend workshop will offer exercises in consciousness that are suitable both for beginning and advanced students of meditation.  These six exercises were initially formulated by Rudolf Steiner.  They prompt us to move beyond our habitual world of separation and to enter a more unobstructed level of consciousness that is our true source of meaning, purpose and love.

Saturday, November 8 from 1:00pm - 8:30 pm
Sunday, November 9 from 9:30am - 3:00pm

Michael Lipson, PhD, is the author of The Stairway of Surprise, a re-working of Rudolf Steiner's six 'supplementary' exercises, and the translator of many works by R. Steiner and by Georg Kuehlewind.  A Clinical Psychologist in independent practice in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, he teaches meditation internationally.

Cost: Complete Event $150
(including Saturday dinner, Sunday lunch and snacks)

Sunday, November 23, 3:00pm
Novalis Hall, Nottawasaga Village, 7481 4th line, Angus

Experience the Russian Soul

Galina Victorova-Fin, playing piano & accordion, presents Folk Songs, Classical Music, Dance and Story

“She relives the passion and warmth of her childhood on the Volga River and brings them to life for all of us. With songs and stories, some of them biographical in nature and varying from folklore to classical, ranging from gypsy dances to the great Rachmaninov, you will leave this performance transformed in the heart and warmed in the soul. The beauty and depth of the eternal Russian soul and the joy of life lived in the search for Love will continue to resonate long after this performance.”
- Regine Kurek, Arscura School for Living Art

“Galina charmed the audience in Vancouver with her Russian songs and music. Folk songs, piano and accordion music, woven together with anecdotes from her experience brought us into the atmosphere of the simple Russian village where she grew up. With great joy the audience became participants, moving the steps Galina taught us for folk dances.”
- Susan Locey, Christian Community Priest

Cost: $20

To reserve: call 1-705-722-5408 or email rsvp@novalisproject.com

Sunday, October 19, 3:00pm
Novalis Hall, Nottawasaga Village, 7481 4th line, Angus

Music for an Autumn Afternoon

Harpist Rita Costanzi returns to Novalis Hall by popular demand to perform a programme of beautiful music for flute and harp with her long time friend and colleague Kathleen Rudolph. Rita now resides in New York and this concert celebrates the reunion of these two remarkable artists who enjoyed many years of success as a popular Vancouver duo.

Harpist, Rita Costanzi Heralded as an "artist of immense gifts", harpist, teacher, actress, composer, Rita Costanzi, continues to captivate audiences with the warmth, conviction and exquisite virtuosity of her playing. She maintains an international performing career as a soloist and chamber music recitalist.

“Rita Costanzi’s playing is full of lyricism. She explores the full range and colour of her instrument. Her playing has life and passion and never loses the ‘long line."
- Yo-Yo Ma

“If you were not completely bowled over by Rita Costanzi’s playing with the Calgary Philharmonic, then you weren’t paying attention or you weren’t there.”
- The Calgary Herald.

Flutist, Kathleen Rudolph Principal Flute of the CBC Radio Orchestra, Kathleen Rudolph is much in demand as a recitalist, chamber musician, and teacher. After 17 years with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Rudolph was appointed coordinator of the wind division of the Glenn Gould Professional School at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Often featured as a soloist with the CBC Orchestra, Ms. Rudolph has recorded for the Skylark, CBC and Waterlily labels.

Cost: $25
Includes refreshments and conversation with the artists.

To reserve: call 1-705-722-5408 or email rsvp@novalisproject.com

Other Upcoming Events:

Sunday November 23 at 3pm:
A Russian Salon with accomplished pianist,
accordianist, singer and folk dancer Galina Fin

Sunday, September 28, 3:00pm
Novalis Hall, Nottawasaga Village, 7481 4th line, Angus

Emmanuel Vukovich
Solo Violin
in a programme of Quebecois and Celtic Traditionals, an original composition inspired by the legend of Parzifal and selections from the solo Sonatas and Partitas by JS Bach

Of Croation and German descent and a native of Calgary, Alberta, Emmanuel left home at sixteen to pursue music studies at the Juilliard School in New York City. It was during his four years in New York that Emmanuel was introduced to bio-dynamic agriculture. After a year’s leave of absence, travelling and working on farms in West Africa and central Europe, Emmanuel moved to live and work on a biodynamic farm in Durham, Ontario. It was here, as farm apprentice and co-director of Symphony in the Barn—an international summer music festival held on the farm—that Emmanuel first envisioned the possibility of uniting art and agriculture-his twin passions.

The following four years were spent pursuing his music and environmental
studies at McGill University in Montreal. During this time Emmanuel was a
member of the Lloyd Carr-Harris String Quartet which won several national
and international awards, including the 2005 grand prize at the Fischoff
International Chamber Music Competition, and which performed in Europe,
the United States, Australia and Canada. In 2005 Emmanuel was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Orford String Quartet Scholarship, and in 2006 he was the first recipient of McGill University's Schulich School of Music Golden Violin Award.

Emmanuel now lives on a biodynamic farm near Montreal, where he cultivates and shares his love for music and farming.

Cost: $20

Monday, October 2, 7:30pm
Novalis Hall, Nottawasaga Village, 7481 4th line, Angus

Invitation
presented by Northern Light Eurythmy
from Basle, Switzerland

Recitations from Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Goethe, Rudolf Steiner and a story for children, interwoven with music by Beethoven, Arvo Pärt and others.

Eurythmy is an art of movement and gestures that reveals to the eye what language and music bring to the ear. It is a highly disciplined, expressive and meaningful form that demands the exercise of the whole human organism. This presentation will appeal to all age groups and it will provide a pleasant and uplifting experience for the entire family.

Cost: Adults: $10 Children: $5

Friday-Saturday October 13 - 14
Location: Cornerstone, 78 Toronto St., Barrie

Peace
The Spiritual Challenge of our Time
with Dr. Michael Lipson, clinical psychologist

Lecture: Friday, 7:30-9:00pm, $20
Our world is breaking apart into deadly wars. Meaningful peace between nations or individuals (horizontal peace) depends on our first making peace with the heavens (vertical peace). The process demands an infinite strengthening of our feeling life. This evening lecture establishes the basis for the meditative process that the Saturday workshop will engage.

Workshop: Saturday, 9:30-4:30pm
We will practice exercises of spiritual peacemaking through group and dyadic meditations, working from inspired texts and with everyday problems and conflicts. Through group meditative practice and reporting, we will help one another to make peace with the heavens and to transform the heart into a perceptive organ.

Michael Lipson, PhD, is a Clinical Psychologist in independent practice in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The translator of Steiner's Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path and numerous books by G. Kuehlewind, he is the author of The Stairway of Surprise: Six Steps to a Creative Life. He teaches meditation and related themes internationally.

Cost:
Complete Event $100 (including snacks)

Lecture only:$20

Saturday, November 11, 1:30-4:30pm

Hospitality that Heals

A conversation with John and Carrie Schuchardt, who founded the House of Peace in Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1990, so that victims of war might live in therapeutic community with working adults who have disabilities. In the last 16 years, John and Carrie have welcomed over 400 refugees from approximately 30 countries into their home, offering a healing refuge from the despair of war and enabling each refugee to realize the sacred right to peace that is fundamental to every human life.

John and Carrie also participate in many activities that foster the conversion in consciousness and policies that will shift the collective focus from war to peace. They join many others in following the lead of individual conscience, which becomes a powerful redeeming force when it is exercised. Traveling to Japan in 2005 to conduct a prayer vigil and fast, they apologized as individual Americans for the atomic atrocities perpetrated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki sixty years earlier. They promised to devote themselves to building a strong spiritual base for a non-violent future.

Participants in this dialogue will learn how to create hospitality that heals in their own hearts and homes. People who care for the homeless, the sick, the disabled and the elderly will derive encouragement and inspiration from these two pioneering peacemakers. The extended Camphill family is in the process of forming an inclusive therapeutic community in the Barrie downtown area, for which Carrie and John Schuchardt will provide valuable mentorship in the course of their visit.

Location: Cornerstone, 78 Toronto St., Barrie

Suggested Donation: $30

Thursday, November 23, 2006 7:30 - 9:45pm

World Premiere of the
Stornoway Productions documentary film
The Dark Side of Power

Following the viewing of this film, Dr. Patrick Boyer, Q.C. will then speak about his new book Powershift and lead the audience in a lively discussion about citizen engagement in the forthcoming dramas of Ontario’s energy sector.

The Dark Side of Power is a feature documentary that examines how politicians and officers of Ontario Hydro, once one of the most powerful electricity utilities in the world, dug its own financial grave, and how Ontario’s entire electricity sector now faces unprecedented challenges. Ontario’s electricity production has become a costly monolith and Ontarians face hard choices over potential alternative energies of the future.

Society’s great dependence on electricity was dramatized on August 14, 2003 when a power blackout plunged 50 million people in northeastern North America into darkness for several days. From cell phone networks to gas pumps, traffic lights and transit systems, refrigerators and manufacturing plants – everything went down. The public came face to face with their total dependence on electricity. Ontario, in particular, took a bruising hit, underscoring the essential nature of a reliable energy supply.

The Dark Side of Power uncovers the reasons for today’s critical power crunch and delineates the daunting challenges and possible future solutions.

Author J. Patrick Boyer, Q.C. draws upon his varied experiences as lawyer, university professor, journalist, Member of Parliament, film-maker and television host in presenting this issue of Ontario’s power. November 23 will be the publication date of his new book Powershift in which he shows how ‘power’ – both as energy source and as ability to govern – has caused and will continue to cause the transformation of Canada’s richest and most populous province.

A tour de force of searching and scholarly synthesis, Powershift weaves three strands of energy supply, political accountability and Ontario’s geo-political shift into a single tale with consummate skill and to dramatic effect. Dr. Boyer brings fresh eyes, a long view of history and the fruits of his frontline experience in pertinent fields to bear on a topic of import to every Ontarian as both electricity consumer and citizen. The possibilities and limits of democratic self-governance emerge as a central theme of this timely book, alerting us to the need for greater engagement on the part of citizens, not only in identifying viable energy sources for our increasing energy demands, but in ensuring that a powershift in the patterns of governance in Ontario will actually enable this to happen. First copies of Powershift will be on sale this evening and Patrick Boyer will be available for signing.

Location: Southshore Community Centre, 205 Lakeshore Drive, Barrie

Cost: $10

Sunday, November 26, 3:00pm

Operatic Arias and Songs

Claudette Leblanc and Stephen Harlands in concert,
accompanied by Derek Bampton

Dramatic soprano Claudette Leblanc has enjoyed a varied international career.
Her voice was declared by Fanfare magazine one of the most fascinating of 20th century music. Canadian tenor Stephen Harlands is a rising star on the national and international scene and joins Claudette in this exciting collaboration along with the distinguished pianist and teacher of child prodigies, Derek Bampton.

Location: Novalis Hall, 7841 4th Line, Angus

Cost: $20