Is the American dream destroying the world?

Some believe so and, on April 14, Loyola will be part of an “international effort to raise awareness of the current global crisis” through the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium, according to an email from Sara Clark, administrative assistant for the religious studies department.

According to the Awakening the Dreamer website, the goal of the symposium is “to change the dream of the modern world and to shift our thinking and actions of consumption and destruction.”

“Awakening the Dreamer is an interactive program intended to . . . awaken people of North America and other developed countries from the dream of the modern world, with its culture of consumption and acquisition,” said Sister Mary Pendergast of the Sisters of Mercy, who wrote the article “Awakening the Dreamer” for the magazine Viva Mercy.

“A lot of religious and secular organizations are offering these all over the world,” said Sister Rose Weidenbenner, a Sister of Mercy who is helping to organize the event at Loyola. “It’s an international movement to awaken the dream.”

According to Pendergast’s article, the roots of the movement are in the Achuar, an isolated tribe that inhabits a remote and largely untouched part of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador and Peru. The symposium was created by the Pachamama Alliance.

“The word Pachamama is loosely translated as ‘Mother Earth,’ but more accurately, it includes the sacred presence of the Earth, the sky, the universe and all time,” said Pendergast in her article.

Pendergast has participated in such symposiums in places outside of the United States.

“We saw places where people are merely squatters on a piece of land where crocodiles live,” Pendergast said, recounting her experience at the symposium in Belize on the Sisters of Mercy blog. “The same dream tells them that they are not worth the consideration of others, they are not good enough to be carefree and happy-go-lucky.”

Wedenbenner said that the symposium is meant to remedy such injustice by spreading the knowledge of the costs of our actions.

“It’s a symposium that looks at the current social injustices in the world and at environmental degradation,” Wedenbenner said. “Knowledge is something that empowers us. It doesn’t leave us in frustration or despair. And getting knowledge gives us the ability to change the dream.”

The Symposium at Loyola will be facilitated by Myra Joines, communications director of the Sisters of Mercy in the Gulf Coast region, and Jeannine Burch, a trained facilitator for Awakening the Dreamer with a master’s in Pastoral Studies from the Loyola Institute for Ministry.

It will be cosponsored by the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the Loyola Institute for Ministry and the Department of Religious Studies.

Daniel Quick can be reached at [email protected]