The Symposium seems to be, probably, the most sacred cow of the Awakening the Dreamer curriculum.
As Facilitators and Training Leaders, you could arguably say that the Symposium is our sole work, our main focus. All of our training is geared toward giving a Symposium, or supporting it somehow, through AV or back of the room.
And we want to be the human contagion for Pachamama’s mission; we want to spread the Symposium’s message across the globe as we joyfully manifest our local gatherings. We are delighted to hear when new countries, even new continents, are getting the message of Awakening the Dreamer. We’re thrilled to see the numbers ratcheting up for total count of Facilitators around the world.
You feel the vibrations from these international expansions; you feel part of the global web of possibility.
However, right away on Wednesday morning, Tracy Apple surprised us by announcing that the Pachamama leadership had decided there would be no sacred cows—including the Symposium.
They were walking into the combined five days of the Conference/Summit completely open for something new to emerge from the collective wisdom, how our work and our focus might need to look completely different. So, we started by cracking open the commonly held assumptions about our main job as ATD Facilitators; namely, to give Symposiums, hopefully lots of them, and with lots of people in attendance to hear the message.
Tracy talked about how hard it was to maintain a sustained role as a Facilitator of Symposiums, how the focus on replicating events doesn’t cause people to stay empowered.
“When people say they are more than just a presenter, they get more invested,” she said.
It was inspiring to see Tracy, Ruel Walker and Jon Symes (and especially Tracy) who have been responsible for manifesting the Awakening the Dreamer Symposiums and the Training Leader program, be so open to starting from scratch if need be, to creating something totally new together.
I could see how transformational leadership sometimes requires that kind of courage and radical surrender to move forward as an organization, even if it means scrapping sacred work that’s been sprinkled with your own sweat and tears.
Jon Symes really got my attention when he started talking about a new acronym: CAIBU, or Change Agent In Blessed Unrest.
Jon said that the Change Agent moniker was created this year to give people more of an activist mentality to their Pachamama work. This new context or label has a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year fit. It isn’t cordoned off to the side, emerging only when a Symposium is scheduled.
I had heard the term Change Agents before, as far back as November at the Training Leaders program held in San Anselmo. But I had never heard the reason for that new title.
Suddenly, as Jon explained it, I finally understood and felt the importance of that distinction: The paradigm shift is from Facilitator to Change Agent, so naturally, there would be a shift in the job description for these two titles, right?
The former is someone who generates Symposiums. But the latter—what exactly does a Change Agent do? The answer: a Change Agent could put on Symposiums, but they could be a part of all kinds of things, it’s wide open.
It’s like a title without a job description—and we are the ones who get to sketch in our duties.
To me, that was a significant shift in the vocabulary of the organization that freed me from the quantitative stranglehold of worrying about when and where I can put on my next Symposium and how many people I can scrounge up to attend it.
Suddenly, there is a freedom, a way in which we are all invited to be Creators in the organization—to make handbooks, develop youth programs, teacher training, create clergy training supplements, design CD covers, write articles, start blogs, do daily elevator Symposiums, or whatever and wherever our particular talents and skill sets lead us.
Delightful.
Instead of the Symposium serving as our primary linkage to the Pachamama organization, the door is wide open for us to connect to it as Change Agents through our own passions, with our own hearts serving as the GPS system for where and what we create.
That changed everything for me.
Instead of a quantitative focus (always counting–like Rain Man with his toothpicks–the number of Symposiums I’ve led, the participants who have come, the organizations I’ve connected with) there was a subtle but profound shift into a qualitative measure of our success.
So, we are free to create a new way of manifesting the Pachamama mission.
Of course, the Symposium is beloved.
Some Facilitators were (understandably!) nervous and emotional about the possibility of that particular manifestation of the Pachamama Alliance going away. But after five days together at St. Mary’s, it seemed clear that the Symposium also is here to stay. As Tracy said: “For some people, their expression of being a Change Agent is giving Symposiums.”
But get ready, because there is a new acronym in town that wants our attention and our consideration: CAIBU!
Oh, CAIBU, I love you.
We offer a huge, sincere thank you to Jon, Ruel and Tracy for allowing us to be part of the process and for casting the possibilities so wide.
By doing that, you’ve scooped up all of us into the Pachamama net.
Instead of having to catch and release those of us who might have been worn down by recreating the Symposium again and again or who have been yearning to express other gifts, you now have the very best of us fully empowered and on board the Arutum Express.
Elaine Gale is an assistant professor of Communication Studies and Journalism at California State University, Sacramento, and a former religion reporter at the Los Angeles Times. Contact her at egale@csus.edu.
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