First tie up your camel.
The Conference Camel
CPE Supervisors’ Conference.
Shoalwater, Western Australia
August 13th-17th, 2017
This year’s conference of CPE Supervisors in Australia and New Zealand began with this story:
There was once a man who was on his way back home from market with his camel and, as he’d had a good day, he decided to stop at a mosque along the road and offer his thanks to God. He left his camel outside and went in with his prayer mat and spent several hours offering thanks to Allah, praying and promising that he’d be a good Muslim in the future, help the poor and be an upstanding pillar of his community.
When he emerged it was already dark and lo and behold – his camel was gone! He immediately flew into a violent temper and shook his fist at the sky, yelling: “You traitor, Allah! How could you do this to me? I put all my trust in you and then you go and stab me in the back like this!”
A passing sufi dervish heard the man yelling and chuckled to himself. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘Trust God but, you know, first tie up your camel.’ (From The essential Rumi, Jalal al-Din Rumi)
It was good for the 50 or so conference participants to hear this story, as it helped them to understand what heretofore had been a somewhat mystifying conference theme. And once the story had been told, the camel metaphor became open to a multitude of insights and applications. The most basic of these was – naturally – around the importance of the CPE movement in our part of the world ensuring that it has its house (or camel) in order as supervisors hone their craft, and as the organisation faces the future. Those foci very much informed the content and activity of the conference.
_______________________________________________
Worship
Michelle Benjamin: Worship Leader
The Conference began on Sunday evening with a worship service, and each day after that began with a morning devotional time.
_______________________________________________
Open Space Experience
The opening day of Conference began with a quite specific question: What is our vision for a CPE certificate? … within the broader issue of assessment of learning. To assist in addressing that question participants were introduced to the notion of Open Space Learning, and then engaged in a process that led to many open spaces, and concluded very much open-ended.
_______________________________________________
Common Standards
One of the most significant moments of the Conference: the acceptance of a set of Common Standards for all ANZACPE Associations.
_______________________________________________
Review Committees
Barbara Howard, Barbara Hall, Rosemary Say, Kath MacLean, Gwen Vale. Rosemary’s review committee. Absent: David Dawes.
An important features of each ANZACPE Conference is the pre-conference review committees.
_______________________________________________
Annual General Meeting, etc
Time for business. . . and several sessions were given to matters relating to the administration of ANZACPE, including time for the AGM.
_______________________________________________
Supervisory Paper
Jenni Wegener
One morning’s sessions were devoted to a paper presented by Jenni Wegener on Resistance in Supervision.
_______________________________________________
Leisure Time
There were many moments of just chilling out: alone, in groups, at meals, playing cards, going for a walk.
_____________________________________________
Diana Goss Paper
David Glenister
The winner of this year’s Diana Goss award was David Glenister. His paper was entitled Bridges, Babuschkas and Balaam’s Ass. . .
______________________________________________
St John of God Retreat Centre
The Garden