Awakening the Dreamer...

A symposium designed to awaken and inspire people to take action for a just and sustainable world

By Sr. Christine Gebel, O.L.M.
May/June 2012

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“Let the rivers clap their hands and the mountains ring out their joy...” After reading Psalm 98 together, one of the members of our prayer group identified these words as her favourite scriptural text. They do form a beautiful image. However, reality can be very different. Last December my heart ached as I watched video clips of the damage and suffering wrought by flash floods in the city of Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, where OLM Sisters, including myself, lived and worked for many years. Illegal logging has stripped the mountains around the city of their trees, leaving the rivers muddied and overwhelmed during heavy rains.

Christine (top left) facilitates an Awakening the Dreamer symposium. March 2011, Toronto.

One need not look far in scripture to find descriptions of the kin-dom of God, which include justice, equality, abundance, fullness of life and so much more. This too is very different from the lived reality of the vast majority of people around the world.

Whether one reads scripture or the signs of the times, it is evident that there are many challenges and they are huge in scope, giving us all the more reason to face them together, joining forces with all people of good will. This is why I decided to join Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream, a symposium designed to awaken and inspire people to take action in pursuit of a fair, peaceful and sustainable world. I took their facilitator training and am now able to give the symposium that forms the backbone of this movement. The goal of the symposium is to help participants come to see that “an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on this planet is an achievable dream for our future.” This is a tall order, but when committed people gather together as one, it becomes clear that the total energy available for action and change is much greater than the sum of each one’s part. And, as humanity learns to work in harmony with the rest of creation rather than seeing creation as a thing to be conquered, the resulting synergy could lead to incredible change... Now, that’s something for which the rivers could clap their hands and the mountains ring out their joy.

To learn more about Awakening the Dreamer, log on to www.awakeningthedreamer.org

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