NetworkM asked Bridget Blanning to write a live blog of the Denver Youth Conference.  She was kind enough to oblige and we present her notes to you now. 

This January, on the beautiful Kapti Coast in New Zealand, 28 energetic, young people and 8 experienced wise ones, arrived to form something quite unique. It was a Gathering that was run for youth, by youth, and was held at Te Ra Waldorf School, where lovely and generous staff opened their arms and facilities to us. The themes that we discussed and workshopped were centred around freedom and responsibility, and for 5 days we worked in the realms of thinking, feeling and willing. 

“This evening I promise you a tale that will remind you of nothing, and of everything.”  With these words the old priest announces the story that concludes Goethe’s Conversa-tions of German Refugees.  It is commonly known as the tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily:  Goethe himself inscribed it simply THE TALE.  Both the title and the introductory remark suggest something centrally archetypal. 

2009 marks the 150th anniversary of its publication, yet Darwin’s theory of evolution is still the subject of ongoing and often acrimonious debate — why? The conflict is usually presented as being between science and religion, and if accepted this allows all non-Darwinists to be summarily dismissed as anti-evolutionary religious zealots (Creationists), but a short enquiry will show this is a radical oversimplification of what is really at stake here. Which, of course, is not the idea of evolution itself, but Darwin’s account of how it all happened, and especially so as it concerns rationality.