Cosmos and Body

Recently the so-called Red learning group had a special learning week. Meeting with Mara and Douglas, a philosopher and a physicist, this group dove into the topic “What is the human being, really?”

Studying examples of feats of extreme sport athletes, chi masters from asia lighting paper on fire with their bare hands and more all fed into insight into what is human potential in a wider sense.  In the evening they gazed through telescopes, observing the moon, stars and even had the chance to see Saturn’s rings- all to look at human identity from a different angle- we are actually a part of all of this too, right?  In parallel to this the Red group spent a couple of days with Uta, the professional midwife of Tamera, where they looked into the miracle of the human body and female cycles.  One evening they were looking at the moon through a telescope and the next day they were looking back in time to the longstanding relationship between a female’s body and larger cycles of nature.  To add to the richness of this week, there happened to be a theatre piece being performed in the nearby town of Odemira and so we went to be part of the audience.  This piece, called Engolir Sapos (swallowing frogs) addresses racism towards Roma people in Portugal through a thought-provoking and artful conversation between a father and his daughter who falls in love with a Roma boy.