Awakening Together, Finding a New Dream

This workshop uses video materials created by San Francisco's Pachamama* Alliance for its Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream symposium, which was developed in response to a request from the Achuar tribe of Ecuador. After the Alliance had helped the tribe save their rainforest from oil exploitation, the tribal leaders thanked them and said, “...but if you truly want to help, you will go back home and change the dream of our brothers and sisters of the north for they are destroying Pachamama".

Like the original symposium, this workshop, adapted and expanded for Friends, aims to “bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on the planet as the guiding principle of our times.”

We’ll employ a combination of worship and worship sharing, video clips, small group exercises, guided meditation, discussion, journaling, and sharing of our own gifts to explore “where are we in relation to bringing forth such a presence?;" “how did we get here?;” “what’s possible for the future?;” and “what is my part in a new, emerging dream?” A goal is to leave Friends informed, inspired, and feeling ready to take on their part of the "Great Work."

A bibliography and selected articles by authors such as Thomas Berry, Paul Hawken, Brian Swimme, Van Jones, and other leaders in the social, environmental, and economic justice arena will be made available to participants before and during the workshop. Please bring something that is "sacred" to you to share.

*"Pachamama" is a Quechua term that means, literally "mother earth" but includes a sense of all the universe and all that is sacred.