CINCINNATI – His eyes sparkling, Vancouver high school student Adam Wray described what’s resonating with him after being part of a three-day gathering in Cincinnati last week.

“I’m going away inspired by not so much the speaking, not so much the actual conversations but discovering all these people here who all have light and they all have something they want to do,” Adam told Axiom News.

Adam was one of a couple teenagers to join the 150 people from around the world gathered April 24-26 to share stories and wisdom on the theme of “connecting for community.” 

A member of the student council at his school, he has been grappling for the past year or so — often through conversations with his father — about his leadership role and what it means to create a community.

They both agreed that this gathering could be a place to delve into those questions more deeply.

While he’ll be thinking more on what he experienced, Adam is also now planning to attend a California event on transforming education in the summer, as a result of a connection he made with participant Ward Maillard, who works in an alternative education system.

Adam’s ultimate dream is to transform education in Canada and he says after attending the event this feels a little more possible.

“Coming here to this place where people are thinking dangerously and revolutionarily, has been really inspiring for me to continue thinking along the same lines and believe my dreams can become reality.”

As Adam’s response and many other stories that came to light in the course of this gathering show, a new world story is emerging. It is bubbling up in nooks and crannies of diverse fields of action.

It is happening in social services, where people who have a disability are at the centre of neighbourhoods and communities reconnecting.

It’s happening in the work of the church with possibility-oriented, small-group conversations whose intent is the restoration of humanity.

Participant Edgar Cahn has been teaching and advocating for time banks, a structure for people to exchange their time rather than money,  for 20 years. There are now more than 800 time banks around the world. They are often strengthening communities. Conversations around the exchange of people’s gifts in time are sparking more liveliness, curiosity and authenticity than monetary transactions.

The new story is an interweaving of many stories. Some of the themes participants shared include:

• Inviting art back into the centre of our lives in a way that builds community
• Architecture that humanizes us
• Developing protocols and ways of being together so there is surprise and aliveness
• An alternative way of noticing the world
• Seeing gifts rather than deficiencies
• Restoring our sense of connectedness
• Understanding that healing power arises from the low, from the grassroots and not from “royal protocol”, the protocol of the dominant narrative.

The dominant narrative or Pharaoh’s narrative, as Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann described it, is all about being faster, better, cheaper and doing “twice at once.” Its image is that of a production/consumption machine and its mantra is that no one has done enough yet . Its communication currency is memos.

But though Pharaoh’s system has a huge grip on our imagination, “we are watching its waning power,” Walter said.

People are departing for “the wilderness,” where stories and connectedness, alternative ways of seeing and hospitality offer promise of healing and restoration.

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