One day at the Connectivity

Jups, mum, you're right! The daily structure is pretty much the same as at previous conferences:

Breakfast in the morning sun -we'd have it outside on the Senac-Campus surrounded by palm-trees :) The breakfast itself was less exciting: bread with butter, cheese or jam... I would have prefered to go to town as we did before the conference started. During these days we tried new stuff every day and had the best fruit imaginable from the fruit-market...

After breakfast there is the Morning-Ceremony... There was for example "Uncle" this old man from Groenland who is known as one of the few "spiritual leaders" of the world... He would prey for us in his traditional clothes and bless the conference... He had already been there on the opening-day. Well, of course I think it is great that he came and the aura he is radiating is surely doing no harm. However, I think he was a little lost there in the middle of all the noise... But it was great to imagine him standing there in the middle of nowhere. Where there is nothing but ice right up to the horizon. This is where his call belongs...

The ceremony is followed by half an hour of Singing... Again the Choir was led by -err what was his name again... It took my quite a while to realise that we would not sing the songs I had fallen in love with so much during the last conferences as we were not going to sing any German songs here... As always, everyone loved the choir. It was funny however to observe, how the Brazilans in particular had great trouble to stick to the rhythms required (by clapping our hands and stamping our feed, we tried to fill the room with various rhythms). This part worked a lot better at the Goetheanum, however, everyone loved it!!!

After the singing there was the time for anouncements and Lectures. By the way: We had simultanious translation from Portugese in English avv. I have to admit that I did fall asleep during some of the lectures -I was shocked myself but I couldn't help it!!! Nights were simply too short!!! I was however, very impressed by Julia Butterfly Hill who spoke on one of the first days. I was less impressed by what she did (I already knew that she spent more than two years on one of those huge trees) than by the way she presented it... Oh man: "How to make a presentation" I think she is the one to learn from!!! By the way: Many of the speakers were very impressive in the way they spoke! All free -of course and somehow catching the whole audience... I don't know what it was about Julia Butterfly. Maybe it was her way of selling the whole thing as a story? Maybe she just made it very personal or something. What she told us appealed to everyone, I think.

Other lectures I remember are the ones made by Ute Kramer (?) -the one who founded the Monte Azul -an institution working in the Favelas. She would have half her community on stage and many of her grown up "kids" would have said something in English. I valued this in particular after having struggled do much to make conversation with the young Brazilan people that were so eager to talk to us at the Club (our accomodation) only the night before...

Once there was also a film (made and presented by some radio-company-something) which led us through Brazil.

The lecture that appealded to me the most was the one we had on the last day. There was some American philosopher who had in first place listened to the previous lectures very carefully and secondly presented his ideas in a very convincing way... I think, there are two things I am taking from this conference (well, I am only talking of two things here that I became aware of duing the conference and that I want to keep in mind now...). Well, the philosopher's idea was that we have to live every moment being aware of it to the max in order to not be disconected which is crucial to make communication and understanding possible; we have to free ourselves from our personal background and blablabla... well, little of all this was new to me but I did tell myself to remind myself more often to try and live every moment to the full.

The second thing was the idea of us being "guadians". Many have talked about "making this world a better place", turning it upside down and creating a new space of peaceful interaction etc. Well, these are the kind of approaches that have never really appealed to me. As I am, however, convinced that all those people that have come to the Connectivity for example do have the right values and the right ideas. Thus I think it is a nice idea to think of oneself as a guardian. Being a guardian involves responsibility and most important of all some good that needs protection. Now, that I am writing this it appears to me that this might involve too little action. What do you think?

Lunch

... to be continued...