1st Latin American Regional Symposium

Welcome to the Weaving The Americas/Tejiendo las Americas Symposium

When I was a boy I would sit and look out the window. I would sit there for hours, just watching the sites go by. My parents would say, “What are you doing? Go out and play.” But I would just sit there. I realize now I was dreaming. I was dreaming of this moment – here and now – of sitting with all of you. I didn’t know it then. I had no idea. I thought I was watching the reality outside my window. But now I understand what it means to travel through worlds, to enter what Audous Huxley called the Doors of Perception. And I understand what Jung meant when he said we must dream the dream further. And so a little less then a year ago a dream began. It began as a small thread and slowly began to weave an idea, a magical dream of weaving las Americas together. And here we are today.

Yesterday in the small rural village we visited, in the biblioteca PAVA, we sat in a circle weaving our dreams together. Grown men and women, children of all ages. Did they know we were going to show up in their dream? We sat in a circle calling out our ancestors one by one. I watched the children giggling and laughing and I knew at that moment that one day one or two of them will also realize that the doors of perception are open and they will slip through. In that moment I was the boy looking out the window and I was the man calling out to my ancestors. As Einstein once famously said, “People like us know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” So I will leave you with the words of the great 12th century poet, Mevlana Jellalahdin Rumi, “Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing there is a field. I will meet you there.” Thank you for reminding me of what I always knew.