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Contents Editorial Introduction, by Adeline Lyons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 I am Always Surprised, by James Kuhn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6nomenclature knocks, by Adeline Lyons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Imminent Truths, by Emily Fecsko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 10 Truth, by 953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Something Unsaid, by Berenika Lehrman . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .12 Hilma Image, by Eloise Avery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13Ruthless Epiphany, by Adeline Lyons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Materialization, by Bella Toso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Whispers, by Tehilla Muller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Stars reflected in symmetry, by Eloise Avery . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Freedom, by Tehilla Muller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .18Where Time Goes, by 953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 19Falling to Earth, by Eloise Avery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dream, by Bella Toso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Will-Be Spaces, by Adeline Lyons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21Venus Emerges from a Flower, by Eloise Avery . . . . . . . . . . . . Dream Chaser, by Emily Fecsko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22Sentinels of a New Spring, by Eloise Avery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Taiwan Mural During Time of Earthquake, by Eva Lee . . . . . 23Pottery, by Gabel Cramer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24Education is All About Interbecoming, by Gareth Dicker . . .25Heart Motions, by Emily Fecsko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .29 The Courtyard of the Soul, by Soren Dietzel . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . 30Human Qualities, by James Kuhn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 31 Of Gods and Men, by Eliaz Hassell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Saltrisen, by Adeline Lyons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Special Thanks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36Event Announcements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37Initiatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39Payment Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 1 Sunlit Trees by Eloise Avery

2 Introduction Welcome aboard the maiden voyage of Futuring Now! This triannual publication (February, June,October), aims to offer a non-digital glimpse into the imaginations and thought lives of young adultsacross the U.S. who engage with or are inspired by anthroposophy. Here, you’ll find original poetry,visual art, and essays. The impulse for Futuring Now was born at a young adult conference in Spring Valley, New York, inJuly 2024. Since then, it has gathered submissions, secured a little funding, and gone through roundsof editing and design. Whether you’re holding this publication in your hands (lucky you!) or readingit on a screen (for now, as I work toward an entirely print-based future), you are helping bring thisinitiative to life—a space free from screens where young people’s creative work can freely abound. This first edition is a vibrant collection of voices, tones, colors, and imaginations—shaped by thesubmissions that arrived. I’m deeply interested in how individual works can speak together whengiven the chance. I’ve done my best to weave these poems, paintings, and essays into a cohesive arc,hopefully giving some structure to this debut issue, which is still finding its own rhythm and pulse. We begin with explorations of “the word”—how we can imbue our words with truth and what truespeech might be. Then, we work through some grit and contemplate simple subjects like freedom andtime. From there, we enter a dream-world before grounding ourselves in a wakeful space of craft andclarity. The issue also features an essay on the quality of “interbecoming” in education today. Futureeditions will delve more deeply into themes such as this, offering young people’s thoughtfulexplorations of the world’s needs. We conclude with the human being—with pieces that delve into thesubstances of heart and soul. I hope this arc reveals some of what lives within the sphere of creativitythat Futuring Now seeks to tap into. At most, it offers a journey through warm spaces whereunknown (at least to many of you) voices have something important to say. As I learn the ropes of editing and curating this publication, I’ve come to understand just how muchresponsibility editing entails. It is not lost on me that asking people to engage with 40 pages of largelyabstract written and visual work is no small proposition. Editing requires both magnanimity anddiscernment, and I hope that you, the first readers, can lean into the former. As mentioned, thisedition is laden with introspective, often abstract works, with an emphasis on poetry and visual art. Inmany ways, it serves more to introduce and promote the initiative than to address specific themes orquestions. Moving forward, Futuring Now will center on clarity, specificity, and earthly connection,with a more curated approach. Future editions will ground themselves more consciously in currentevents and more directly engage young people’s experience of the world. Expect more essays,interviews, and articles, and a deeper look into the artists’ intentions.

3 Fully Fledged by Adeline Lyons Many of you are receiving this edition digitally. The truth is, I don’t yet have the funds for enoughprinted color copies. This introduction, therefore, also serves as a call to action. If you’re excited aboutseeing this initiative into the future, I invite you to email me and express your interest in becoming asubscriber. Subscribing means paying per issue based on a sliding scale and receiving future printcopies. You’ll also find PayPal and Venmo details at the end of this issue for one-time donations,helping ensure the future of print editions and saying goodbye to digital ones. I am truly enthusiastic about this project. My heart is deeply entwined with a sense of urgency tocreate a centered, screen-free space for original creative works—where they can be warmly received bythose who are actively interested. Print publications maintain the stipulation of conscious attention.Through the future, into now! —Adeline Lyons, Editor adelineroselyons@gmail.com

Contributors Eloise Avery Eloise Avery is an artist currently in residence at Free Columbia. Sheattended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts as well as Green MeadowWaldorf School. Her work explores themes of human beings and nature, andthe ways in which we perceive the physical and spiritual nature of life itself. Gabel Cramer Gabel is a ceramic artist working in Philmont, New York as a resident of theFree Columbia Artist Residency Program. Through his work with clay andwood-firing, he lets his creative impulses flow, and working with this projectof Enigmas of Form, explores questions of balance, masculinity andfemininity, and the relationship of the outer and inner selves. Along with hisart, Gabel is an active member of the North American Youth Section. 4 Emily FecskoEmily is a painter based in New York City. Her practice is intuitive, expressive,and is inspired by a recontextualization of spirituality and the immaterial in anage of nihilism, intense individualism, and overconsumption. She is currently exploring topics related to archetypal energies. Gareth DickerGareth has lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina the past seven years,teaching physics and math at the Emerson Waldorf High School. He isdeeply interested in the reciprocal influences of education, technology,music, culture, and human creativity. In his spare time, you can find himmaking music, rock climbing, playing capoeira, dancing, studying esoterictexts, or running through the forests.Soren DietzelSoren is a musician and biography social arts enthusiast living in New YorkState. He is currently working to develop the arts and music residencyprogram at Free Columbia. He spent his twenties learning to be a carpenterand playing saxophone in bands in Duluth, Minnesota. Two years ago hemet the Youth Section and started engaging as an organizer. Eliaz HassellEliaz is a biodynamic farmer in Philmont, New York.

5 Tehilla Muller is a Death Doula, Yoga Teacher, and coworker at Camphill Ghent inupstate NY. She has held the position as Poet in Residence for the Temple Israel ofCatskill for three years and enjoys writing and performing poetry. She is currentlypursuing a certification in Chaplaincy through Albany Medical Hospital and findsgreat meaning in helping others through such work. She is an active member of theNorth American Youth Section. Tehilla Muller Bella is an artist based in St. Paul, Minnesota, whose work explores the subconsciousthrough unplanned, intuitive creation. Inspired by organic forms and her Waldorfeducation, she sees art as a direct line to the soul, revealing meaning through chaos. Adeline Lyons is originally from Spring Valley, New York, and currently lives inMadison, Wisconsin where she writes poems. She is active in the North AmericanYouth Section. Berenika Lehrman teaches at the homeschool initiative Chrysalis, in Upstate NewYork. She is an aspiring performance artist, interested in and working with theChekhov acting technique, dance, and clowning. She is currently in the Foundationyear program for Goethean Science at the Nature Institute. She has been involved inorganizing Youth Section activities for the past two years.Eva is from Wisconsin and has been a lover of painting and drawing from ayoung age. Her featured work in this publication⏤a mural painted in Hualien,Taiwan⏤is significant to her because she started it during a major earthquakeand continued to paint it through the aftershocks. James Kuhn James is a poet and actor in his first year of study at the Steiner School of Speech Arts in SpringValley, NY. He has four years of experience as a tree surgeon. Bella TosoAdeline Lyons Berenika LehrmanEva Lee953Born and raised in Los Angeles, 953 is the product of two Salvadoran immigrants andthe environment of minority urban life. He began writing lyrics and poems in 2001, ahobby he continues in the present day.

I Am Always Surprised By James Kuhn I am always surprised To hear that the word came firstIn the stages of creation First there was nothing And then there was the WordA silent pulse in the void A spark at its end A drop of blood Welling from the wound Souls tip forth Pouring lives over Earth The soil drinking up what lingersTracks and pockets of wealth Run through the forests Round the mountains And reflect the Heavens in chorus There is something before the Word Pregnant with possibility, and unformed potential roiling in the depths The Mother and Child are vulnerable To distraction and interference, in the forming of a Living thought’s clear LifeOn its way to becoming a Living, breathing, fiery-meteor Word I feel vulnerable in none of the ways I am able to record There is never enough water In the wells of mercy To quell the fires Of my own harshest words How dare you speak 6

And reach to be worthwhile? How dare you presume Your words can stand before us?When others so mighty Have gone before youTo become their fullest SelvesAnd others still, so close to worthyHave gone too and failed How dare I imagine I can become Ruler of my SelfCreator of, with, and in The Word that shapes me?Did God have doubts? Wasn’t He going out on a limb To believe Adam and Eve were worthy Did He feel vulnerable?We are a crucible For things unknown Speak strange words Try to find A true syllable For things unknown to each other For the things not endowed with inalienable rights The raging battle of these warriors Fighting to be known The waves of color inside my soul Begging to pour forth Into the body of the forms Formed in the hands of the luthiers Sheep that sing at the touch of their shepherd 7

8 Are rippling in the song-notes Trickling through the chorus of this congregation Running, slipping, shivering over shoulders These warrior champions Light up the airs In the people’s eyes And around their arms These beings that have no voice in the courts Lift up and carry us In the rolling of waves back to shore And funnel into seashell hearts Of long faced folks And do what further Only they can say, and say And keep on saying What will be said In the hearts and minds Of they who herd them togetherEach one separate And all as one And yet I am always surprisedTo hear that the word came first In the stages of creation What of the void: The pregnant womb of worlds?

nomenclature knocks By Adeline Lyons All that remains unnamed visits her when she has used up all that stays named: wrung words til their letters fell clanging to her corridor floors. When the unnamed come knockingshe cracks her door to glimpse the wordless; sometimes slamming, often opening, she tells the peaceable from the unspeakable. She dusts her surfaces and lightsher lamps, ready to host the unreachable. 9

Imminent Truths by Emily Fecsko 10

We all come to Earth with a purpose But we forget after birth it’s on purpose To discover your true worth u must unearth this But most people shy from the truth they get nervous 11 Truth by 953

Something Unsaid By Berenika Lehrman Unsteady, flowing forms of fear,shaken, shaking, stakes in, check my breaks, unbreakable, she cracks, unravels, among the making of a speck of starlight. A glow, dimming, glimmers after a show, but no, I don’t know, if that’s the way, give way to a little bit of phony, but show me you care. Trust in tumbles and falls. Trust in fences and walls. As you find them they’ll crumble if you know them as your own. 12

Hilma Image by Eloise Avery 13

Ruthless Epiphany By Adeline Lyons i You enter my presenceas needle to steel wool, prodding the deadened prodigal daughter I’ve become. Your anger saves me. ii The upright oak is torn to purple shadowsby the sun. That light guardsnature’s morality. I prevail in the cast-iron clutch of frozen sap. iii The thorn bush glows in the slant of god’s light, stripped of beauty,sacred only to the deadened spiritthat knows no machination other than patience powerful enough to scathe deathinto resurrection. 14

Materialization by Bella Toso 15

Whispers By Tehilla Muller I want to leave you something better than words or sound I want to leave you my heartfull as the moon is round Look for me in changing seasons, in the fall of rain on earth Look for me in those I’ve loved as we wait upon rebirth Love me through your memories —what a holy thing is love! Let my Spirit move within you as in the heavens above Much of me can never die: even the sun descends and rises Remember me in the call to life —death is but surmises I am here beyond the veil and tucked within your heart As this eternal wheel keeps turning we shan't be kept apart 16

Stars reflected in symmetry by Eloise Avery 17

Freedom By Tehilla Muller I bet there is a rule book for the stars. Like, can you wish the same wish on every shooting star? And if you crane your neck just right, can you see behind the night? If a star wants a little break, can it shut off its light? I bet there is a song written for the way water sounds. Pattering on tree tops, babbling in brooks underground, the dropping of a waterfall, a tsunami’s crashing waves,the silent misty whispers of dew drops on summer days. I bet there’s a purpose behind the subtle sway of grass, and the darling little deer who carve themselves a path, and ladybugs, and small stones smoothed by the sea. I bet there’s a purpose behind you and me. I bet there’s a reason why the praying mantis prays, and why angel daisies look like they were made for their name. And why when I turn my head up to meet the starry skies all I feel is wonder and tears fall from my eyes. Welcome to the greatest show on earth, and get this, it’s completely free. And if god is not found in freedom then I don’t know where he’d be. So when I gaze up at the stars I see He staring back at me. 18

Where Time Goes By 953 Where does time go? I guess we’ll never know until it’s time to go Get gone n get ghost n if u unfulfilled get stuck in limbo It’s real up in da field get killed over nymphos or lack of info straight from your kinfolks Get ur head blown off w words of wisdom U your own kingdom 19 Falling to Earth by Eloise Avery

Dream by Bella Toso 20

21 Will-Be Spacesby Adeline LyonsPatience outlasts the minuteby undoing programmedthought. Its arrival unshods the ticking hooves:nakedness moves differently. Prone to lagging or speeding unexpectedly,rarely do our motions trackimpressions of after-thought. Where the saltof each substance is storedand measured, there, a window might appear. And from withoutfathoms of time surgein delightful falls. Venus Emerges from a Flower by Eloise Avery

Dream Chaser by Emily Fecsko 22

Sentinels of a New Spring by Eloise Avery

Taiwan mural in Hualien during time of earthquake by Eva Lee 23

Pottery by Gabel Cramer 24

Education is All About Interbecoming By Gareth Dicker “The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects” - Thomas Berry Even with the advent of AI, there still seems to be a lingering misconception that human education is about teaching people things. Instruction has its place, of course, in the context ofhuman learning as a whole. But instruction must be the barest tip of the educational iceberg, sincethe world we can describe factually is always a meager approximation of the fullness of reality. Reality is, in its wholeness, a vast ocean of mutually dependent, co-arising phenomena of every imaginable kind. Isn’t the goal of education to help human beings come into contactwith this multiplicity, balancing specificity with overarching unity? Waldorf education hascertainly aspired to this aim. And, like any movement, the vocabulary of its aims continuallyneeds to be reworded in order to meet the realities of the ever changing times we live in. What kinds of educational aims are adequately adaptive to the dynamisms that swirl around and within us, causing our language - symbolizing our collective imaginations, our ways ofbeing - to morph and shift as the decades flow on? Surely this question must find its answerfar below the rippling surface of standardized testing or numerics of any kind. The first dive down might be to affirm that qualitative aspects of learning are centrally important. But soon enough, we could be in danger of finding ourselves mired inhomogenizing these qualities into ambivalent tropes like ‘skill and capacity building’,‘intellectual and aesthetic development’, ‘executive functioning’, ‘moral and ethicaltraining’, and so on. These are all necessary, but not sufficiently profound. What aims of education will be powerful enough to keep us warm as humanity free dives far, far out into the oceanic horizons where AI and all the rest must be integrated into ourcollective human psyche? One idea that stands in the way is that we seem to imagine that learning happens solely beneath our skulls. In fact, learning takes place throughout the whole body, and beyondthe body. We first draw the world into ourselves through our senses, and we ‘make sense’of the world through processes we don’t consciously understand, like memory, dreaming,feeling, and so on. Learning that lives only ‘in our heads’ might be worth something, butthis is clearly in decline of value: encyclopedias, the internet, interactive agents - they havethis kind of ‘knowledge’ covered. They are supremely better than us at it. 25

The kind of learning that counts for human beings has to traverse all the way to our toes and fingertips and back up. Once we’ve really learned something, it becomes a new way ofbeing in the world. The avenues formed in us between perceiving and conceiving becomethe world for us, as far as we can cognize it. I have said what I think education is not really about. And I do eschew any reductive or dogmatic statements about what it must become. As Rudolf Steiner is supposed to have said,education is an art, not a science, and art should not be summarized. Yet, while aware of mypresumptiveness, I want to attempt to pose what I think is a helpful framing for evaluatingwhat is and what isn’t leading us toward an adequately profound idea of education. So I posit: education is, ultimately, the art of attending to relationships between every manner of subject. The word ‘subject’ I mean with all its manifold nuances: ●●●● subject as individual/student, subject as teacher/facilitatorsubject as specific topic/activity/craft, subject as other being(s) encountered, and subject as any aspect of the world taken as a temporarywhole.Education is for cultivating and strengthening relationships between manifold subjects. A subject is anyone, any topic, any being, any aspect of the world apparently isolated byan act of consciousness. This word ‘subject’ I find beautiful, because it pertains both to beings and to the places we put our attention and creativity. I am a subject, but so is math. Literature is a subject, butso is my cat. Creation is ultimately one whole, so no part of creation can arise without all the rest of it: no subject exists without all others co-existing. And in the same breath, no change to a subjectcomes about without a change occurring in another subject. As the subject of mathematicsexpands into new horizons, so do human beings who encounter it. As human beings have newfeelings and ideas, so does their literature morph and fold and grow. If I teach a class, theteaching of it changes me, while also changing the students. This is as true at the human level asit is at the cosmic, biological, or quantum level. This recognition of the reality’s interbecoming isan implicit truth we are only just beginning to reintegrate into our cultural and spiritualendeavors. We need to! Moreover, formulating education’s goal above implies that learning is never replicable. or automatable. Because where does our learning live? Can we store it in computers? No:learning lives in the cultivated spaces between subjects, not beneath the skull. Subjects areonly subjects insofar as they relate to other subjects. Therefore knowledge, too, lives beyondthe skin’s boundary, 26

in the communion between bodies, ideas, and circumstances. Whatever knowledge is, it is muchbetter described as the strength of a relation than any storable quantity of information. If wewant people to be really knowledgeable, we need to focus on nurturing their relationships to theevolving world around them. Steiner spokes of the essential goal of education as to teach peoplehow to breathe, in the broadest possible sense of the word ‘breathe’. What is breathing, at various levels of reality? It is the relationship between one state of being and another. Breathing is lemniscatic dynamism: a conversation is a kind of breathing, ataking in and a giving back out something new that depended on what was just received. If learningis all about breathing, it is all about attending to what we encounter, both within and without. The opposite of breathing is suffocation. A dead person does not breathe. A person is ‘dead tothe world’ when they are not capable of relating any longer to the world around them withfresh observations, feelings, insights and intentions that depend on what they have observed. Renowned brain scientist and philosopher Iain McGilchrest recently wrote a book entitled“The Matter with Things”. I highly recommend it. It contains brilliant philosophicalcommentary on the science of two essential ways we parse reality: on the one hand, bygoing from parts to systems, and on the other, by sifting ‘wholes’ into temporary relata. Ofthese two, it is the latter mode, the ‘right-brain’ approach, that is the primary aim, I think, ofan education that is adequate to the times we live in. The former approach is good only tothe extent that it bows to the latter; much of it needs disinheriting. McGilchrest argues thatit is unchecked ‘left-brain’ thinking which, if ignored like too much water or fire, out ofbalance for too long, will continue to wreak devastation for humanity and the earth. Going from parts to systems (left-brain) is what engineers have to do in order to get things done. When I was working in aerospace robotics, the job was to know and manipulate abunch of technical ideas and items, to be able to put them together like so many softwareand hardware lego blocks. These kinds of tasks are perfectly suited to machine learning: andindeed, much of software programming and design is already offloaded to binary analysis. How we go from wholes to relata, however, whose appearances depend on attentional choices, is a powerfully human question. This question scaffolds our educational impulsein the Waldorf movement. We are obliged to ask ourselves: how am I, as the (ever-changing) teacher, able to draw the student, as the (ever-changing) student, into arelationship with the (ever-changing) subject at hand? How can I introduce them tomathematics or literature in a way that forms a strong relationship with that ever-changing aspect of the world, as if, like a person, it had its own being? 27

What will we say in the future when we say that someone has had a ‘good’ education? Will we still measure it by the current norms of SAT scores, job success, and so on? I would saythat a good education leaves a person able to adapt and respond creatively and lovingly intheir unique life context. The educated person is flexible in their thinking, sensitive in theirfeelings, confident in their will, full of humor and seriousness, self reflective, and actively,compassionately interested in the world around them. These are the healthy symptoms of someone who has been in the habit of being asked by their teachers and peers, year by year, to strengthen their relationships with the widestpossible breadth and depth of subjects. These subjects are anything and everything, sinceall the world is a communion of subjects: other people, the body of the earth, myth, math,theater, dance, poetry, physics, logic, philosophy, language, music, art, history, theirpeers… a well educated person is capable of engaging their whole body, soul, mind, andspirit when they wake up in the morning. They are as alive as is humanly possible, adynamic subject who loves and attends to and engages every other. True education is, andalways will be, about questions of interbecoming. 28

Heart Motions by Emily Fecsko 29

The Courtyard of the Soul By Soren Dietzel There are different kinds of fear. There is our survival instinct that keeps us safe and warns us ofharm. That is good, but it is not what I am talking about here. I am speaking here about the kind offear that holds us back from a full experience of life in all its beauty. Fear of judgement, fear of failure,fear of stepping into destiny. Fear of the responsibility of our own freedom, of our ownempowerment, the kind of fear that is learned from past pain, the fear that does not serve. I amspeaking here about the landscape within the human heart. The fear that is confronted in personal orspiritual development—a fear of growth or a fear of change—the fear that only exists in an illusoryreflection of the inner state. An experience that may be transformed when we go in and through thatfear to learn what it is teaching us and to open to guidance and nourishment from our inherentworth. To call upon the good within to see the beauty that exists without. 30

HUMANQUALITIES by James Kuhn We are here We are human We are gathered We are quiet We are noisy We are crowded We are spread Thinly across spaces We are fierce We are fuming We are battered We are defiant We are choosing We are shrouded We are sent To receive The world’s many faces We are a storyStill moving Watch and feel The features emerge From the pace and shape Of our agreements Though it may seem That they simply conflate In a rising crescendo Of a dirge For the end of times Hold back, hold on, wait Times will come 31

When we will be hopeful And the rhythm Of the signs Of this age Will signify change And we can only hope That this change is chock full Of the good stuff That it ain’t limpin’ That we got somethin’ When we can look at each other As humans Full of flaws And different strange humors Not separate societies Housing blocks and objects Tethered to the same systems of bother Huge corporate structures Stuffed full of bylaws And pockets of bureaucracy tumors Human bodies Waking, sleeping Passing through our relative realms Realms of being And weeping To be seenReading, writingForming letters By the guiding of the pen Articulation of the air Or by clatter of the keys We are a divine and devilish comedy 32

Hateful speech screaming The tortured ones’ howling And the sweet lovers’ ripples Trickle down the stairs of memory Each pebble of a person Leaving mineral traces of their will In the spaces of their loved ones’ stories Human Salt of the earth And grain of the ground We come from times far gone And question how far we go on 33

Of Gods and Men By Eliaz Hassell They say that the war was caused by men and not gods and that the bomb missed its mark sounding the earth like a drum . . . She rumbles; it hurts her. And man avoids death. Obedience is a dog’s task. Ours is to guide. So if a higher power says to me duck, fly or receive the anguish of intellectual murder I will listen. The bomb sinks into oblivion beneath my feet. 34

Saltrisen By Adeline Lyons I know your shepherd. He told me over candlelight when you were barely born that the Shearing Day would come. His hut was warm that night: I took it as a fireside tale. I laughed and filled the flaskwith ale. No wonder I was ridiculous to you, pureamong the flock—unflocked among the flock. No surprise I went unrecognized. We both had to forget for that fatal day to arrive. The blades cut you to nakedness— snipped your rim to bits so only the center remained. I pray that you are sustained by that centripetal source. I maim myself further, spinning into tricky yarn, for the sake ofyour preservation. With hopesof your bleating into heaven:bleeding into an unfleshed lamb: reimagining the substance I am. 35

THE NEXT EDITION OF “FUTURING NOW” WILL RELEASE IN JUNE, 2025Special Thanks to Rosibel Mejia forproviding valuablefeedback and aiding mein the editing processto Carol Kelly forhosting an “initiativecafe” at which I wasable to raise some fundsfor the beginningstages of thispublicationto the Youth Section ofNorth America forfunding this first issue

Events 37 The Light in the Depths—a gathering in Ballycastle, Ireland 16-20 April 2025 A five day gathering of workshops, lectures, theatre, art, and conversation Contact ezra@threefold.orgThis 2025 summer conference will take place at Hawthorne Valley Farm in upstateNew York. We hope to bring together over one hundred young people from across thecountry to this beautiful Biodynamic farm and Waldorf school! This will be anopportunity for youth, ages 16 to 35, to encounter the questions and challenges of ourtime and engage in conversation, work, and art to meet their lives actively. Questions?Contact berenika@fund-balance.com

Initiatives The Residency Program at Free Columbia, in Upstate New York, is a transformational process with a focus on the continual dialogue between artist and community. For more information, contact the residencydirector at soren@freecolumbia.org THREEFOLD YOUTH HOUSE 38 9 month residency in Threefold Community combining Study, Work and Free InitiativeBegins September 2025Contact ezra@threefold.org

Ideas Traveling Theater Troupe Are you interested in stage performance? The Michael Chekhov Technique? Steiner’sSpeech & Drama Course? Storytelling? Do you want to work with a cohort of actors in alearning-by-doing format to engage in intensive rehearsals with the ultimate goal oftaking a performance on the road? There is a seed growing this initiative right now.Reach out to the email addresses below if this gets you sparking. adelineroselyons@gmail.comjames.kuhn.jk@gmail.comem@storiesbyem.com 39 We need more of these! Contact me for the next issue!

Payment Details Become a subscriber! *email me*Sliding scale $5.00-$15.00 per print publication 40 Venmo: @Adeline-Lyons PayPal: adelineroselyons@gmail.com I welcome and would appreciate anyand all feedback. Email me atadelineroselyons@gmail.comMake a donation