Reflection, then refreshment

After breaking into small groups of three or four outdoors to share our responses to Van's visit, we reconvened for sharing among the whole Gathering as a way to begin to deal with the profound impact of what was seen and felt as a whole community.

Then a nice long 90 minute break for lunch (Tracy poked fun at herself, graciously allowing more than her preferred 11 minutes), during which people reunited with old friends and made new ones. After that, a brief appearance by David Tucker, Executive Director of the Pachamama Alliance, in which he gave a history and overview of the work in Ecuador that led to the creation of the Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium.

Do you remember having your picture taken at your facilitator training weekend? Lindsay Dyson is the curator of all those photos, and she presented a slide show of faces, while we called out their names one by one. For 20 minutes, we were all here together in those images. (You can view the photos from the slide show here.)

Following that, Chuck Putnam and Hetty Einzig are leading us through an exercise in small groups, sharing best practices, getting present to the amazing community of leaders we are (those here together with those not here in body), and inventorying the powerful resources and connections each of us brings to the enterprise of bringing forth and environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on Earth as a guiding principle of our time.

The mood here is definitely one of enormous possibility — discovering where our "muscles" are strong, where they are weak, and where we weren't aware we had muscles at all — and expectation, knowing that all this is leading to not only a renewal and regeneration of who we have been until now, but to the birth of a whole new level of commitment and leadership throughout our community.

I'm struck by what a privilege it is to live in this work, with these people! And Lynne hasn't even arrived yet!