#50 - on the work of collective dreaming
And how we participate in the care of souls.
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THANK YOU, LOVE YOU.
All political projects are collective dreams of what could be. Martin Luther King Jr. affirmed this in his immortal speech, but it is the genesis of all forms of activism. Writer and researcher, Lolu Olufemi recently described Feminism, in her book Feminism, Interrupted, as a ‘way of wishing, hoping, aiming at everything that has been deemed impossible.’ The work of imagining new ways of being, relating and organizing how we co-exist is to be in a conversation between the ancient and the emergent. Dreams come to us; inside a REM cycle, when moisturizing our toes, while drying dishes, and when roused to wistfully gaze out of a cafe window to find stillness in between scurrying bodies.
Dreams are whispers from an imaginary world unbound by the matrix.
We often think of the dreamer as lofty and unrealistic. As someone stuck in a childlike state, who has not contended with the fundamentals of the world. And is wasteful in the ‘dreaming’ versus ‘doing.’
But dreams are not meant to be practical; they are simply meant to be possible. They are subversive to dominant systems, because they do not exist within the paradigm of road maps and project plans; they exist on another plane as a pathway and anchor through devastation. Dreams are timeless by nature, because they already exist in another reality. They arrive across generations to pass through many hearts and many hands, slowly and finely kneading shards of wisdom into its fabric, so as to realize something much bigger than any single individual could conceptualize.
The dreamer sees the world exactly for what it is, and therefore knows there is another way. They do not differentiate between waking life and dream life, recognizing the subconscious as a bridge between realms. To dream out loud is to risk being seen as irrational, ridiculous and strange, but the dreamer knows it is not about them, it is about articulating a possible version of us.
Dreamers, or seers, are just one role in the constellation of what is required in the care of souls - a term that originates from a Christian context, but was reimagined by the Sacred Design Lab. In their work on identifying new language and roles to fill the gap in-between the move away from religious identity and the need for a common story of what it means to be human, they introduce seven jobs in the care of souls:
The Seer: Helps us approach the sacred
The Healer: Breaks cycles of violence
The Steward: Creates the infrastructure for spiritual life
The Elder: Grounds our gifts in history and community
The Venturer: Invests in creative ways to support human flourishing
The Maker: Reminds us how to be human
The Gatherer: Forms communities of meaning and depth
In this framework, the dreamer is akin to the seer, and is dependent on each role to truly flourish; not more or less essential than its peers. The point of this all, as the Sacred Design Lab describes is to ‘build a society that values souls more than money,’ and recognizes their work as a ‘labour of imagination,’ to be used to inspire more alternatives.
This interdependency and passing of the baton between soul-care-work is seen in the story of Tuluwat Island - a 280 acre parcel of land located in Eureka, California that was stolen from the Wiyot Tribe on February 26, 1860 through a genocidal attack by settlers. In Yes! Solutions Magazine, PennElys Droz, an Anishinaabekwe mother of five, a Program Officer for the NDN Collective, and an active founding Board member of Sustainable Nations, tells the story of how Albert James had a dream in the 1970s of returning to Tuluwat Island, where his father had fled from and survived the massacre. His dream was largely ignored by the city until the 1990s when his nieces began to organize on the proposal by gathering Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in vigil to honour the lives lost, heal and rebuild the power of the Wiyot Tribe.
This renewed bond led the tribe to fundraising for over a decade through community gatherings to re-buy a small portion of the land (1.5 acres) that was up for sale. The partnerships and allies built over the years led to the City Council voting unanimously to return 45 acres of the land to the tribe, but with title restrictions that still deterred complete sovereignty. When they finally returned to the land - it was a mess, and contaminated with toxins from decades of industrial use. This did not deter them. And they began an intensive clean-up process that brought the ecosystem back to life, earning them an award, and inspiring city officials to fully return the land.
On October 21, 2019, the city formally returned Tuluwat Island to the Wiyot Tribe, marking a major achievement for the global #LandBack movement, and the beginning of reimagining an economy on the island rooted in land stewardship, care work, equity, collaboration and sacredness. It would be remiss to not acknowledge Albert James as the dreamer of this work, chosen perhaps by his ancestors as the person at the right time, place and spirit to bring the ancient into a new possible future, over 100 years after it was stolen.
Dreams become feeble and essential to sustaining settler colonialism when they exist purely as discourse, rather than embodiment and praxis. For a dream to be realized in the external world, it must exist inside the incubator of a better world within, and in the care of trusted companions to be materialized in small steps towards alternatives to the status quo. Psychotherapist and organizer, Gabes Torres writes about her process of divesting from Thanksgiving - a holiday being celebrated this weekend in the US - as part of her commitment to decolonization. She acknowledges the difficulty in letting go of family traditions that radiate a genuine sense of warmth with the reality that the journey towards liberation will require endings that will hurt and be disorienting. ‘Is it possible to decolonize a holiday that is inherently colonial in its essence? Can we truly create anew from its anti-Indigenous foundations?, Torres asks.
In this way, a dream is also a provocation and summoning from your ancestors to contend with all of the illusions that keep this dream from realization. Every time you speak a dream out loud, you might take notice of the ways in which your body tenses, and the ways in which it relaxes; where a dream feels uncomfortable and terrifying, and where it feels soft and inevitable. The inner untangling and letting go is how a dream is carried through to the next generation.
When we share our dreams in community, we begin to do the collective work of linking, weaving, and expanding our perspective; taking leadership from identities and lived experiences that offer a path to liberation for all. In Act Build Change, Micha Frazer-Carroll writes about how the disability imagination requires us to question everything we assume about the world. He describes how subverting the medical model that asserts there is something wrong with the body, to something being wrong with architecture and buildings, shifts us from the egoic and colonial notion of blaming the individual, to infinite possibilities of how to reimagine place and space. ‘What if?’ questions are always ambitious, until they are not. Until a portal opens, and the decades and generations of kneading dreams are ready for baking.
Dream work is real work, and as author and disability justice activist, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha says, ‘I am dreaming like my life depends on it. Because it does.’ Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech on his dream nearly 60 years ago and his words continue to light a torch towards Black liberation. The more dreams we dare to utter, the brighter the path will become.
Much love.
Hima
#HimaLive
In the spirit of this newsletter, I am hosting a workshop and space for collective dreaming and embodiment, as we prepare for our next cycle. I am so excited (and very nervous); but feel really called to gathering in this way.
I wrote about my intention more here, and you can learn about all the details here. If you feel called, please join us!
The gathering is by donation, and my only ask for our energy exchange is your commitment and presence. Feel free to message me if you have any questions, or if there is any way I can make this space for accessible for you.
#ThisWeekInTweets
I love the 7 jobs of the care of souls! These are beautiful archetypes.
I read about the Wiyot Tribe a couple months ago, but I had no background about this dreaming, so now it’s even more amazing to me! Thanks for sharing 💖