Wake up and dream

About 40 citizens came to the Damascus Community Center on March 21 to attend the “Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream” symposium, an event brought to our region by several local activist women.

Through a series of video presentations, group discussions and exercises, attendees focused on how we could act to “bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on this planet as a guiding principle of our time.” We discussed how the modern world is in a kind of trance of consumption and materialism. Only through awakening from this trance and realizing our connection to the earth and all its inhabitants will we achieve sustainability—defined as the ability to meet our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.

At this moment, we face the greatest opportunity any generation has ever faced. Can we wake up from our trance and reverse current practices that create environmental degradation, spiritual hunger and widespread human suffering? Or are we an inherently flawed species, bent on destroying everything around us, including, ultimately, ourselves?

One of the central themes of the symposium was that of interconnection. In a video clip, Paul Hawken, author of the book “Blessed Unrest, How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming,” discussed how the environmental and social justice movements have converged and created the largest social force in human history.

He said that this movement is more unique than any other in the history of our species; it is a superpower but does not have a central ideology or leader. It is global and classless, arising spontaneously in every country in the world. Like nature itself, it is organizing from the bottom up, in every city, town and culture. It has grown from 103,000 groups in 2005 to over two million in 2008. Millions of people are actively working toward ecological sustainability, economic justice, human rights protection, political accountability and peace: issues that are interconnected and intertwined. Hawken is confident that the movement “has the potential to heal the planet.”

You haven’t heard about it because it is largely ignored by politicians and the corporate media. But it is active in our own region. Many of our friends and neighbors are involved in the movement and participated in the symposium: they are members of SEEDS, Northeast PA Audubon, Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, Waynepeace, to name just a few.

We are blessed to live in a community where grassroots and non-profit organizations are taking a stand, working to protect our water and air, to educate us about alternative energy, to provide us with organic and local food, to make a place for art and music and poetry. Each of these groups started with the commitment of one person.

Hawken urges us to trade the trance of consumerism for a state of “blessed unrest” in which we are uncomfortable enough to take positive action in our daily personal lives and in our communities. The blessings come when we acknowledge that millions of people are using their energies and creativity to create a sustainable world for all the people and creatures on the planet.

I invite you to join us for another “Awakening the Dreamer” symposium (which will cover the same content as the first) on May 2 in Honesdale. Bring someone—young or old, new to the movement or already committed—so that we can continue to build alliances, to awaken from our trance and to change the dream.

For information and to register, go to awakeningthedreamer.org and click on Symposium map/Find a symposium/Honesdale, PA.

- Marcia Nehemiah