Who's the Government? Who's the God?

Christmas itself gives us the reason for our activism. The nativity story is indigenous, pantheistic, and it is radical. Animals with intelligent eyes surrounding a newborn whose mother made love to the power that we all have? This ain't about shopping. It's about starting our culture over. From the moment of that miraculous thing called birth, that glowing spark in the manger ... this is not the time to bow down to the old-timey leaders in their bunkers and jets. This is the solstice, when the light and heat increase every day. It is the promise of change and the green wild life of Spring.

I'll admit - the back room deals of Copenhagen cast a pall on efforts to change the world for the better. Obama and the Chinese have recast an old Cold War conflict, with the two world powers forcing agreements from their pre-eminent position. This is the exclusive top-down approach in which world-wide chaos - wars, hunger, disease, sweatshops - is an acceptable expense for the corporate boards. Consumerism and Militarism are supposed to continue as the reigning systems. But the force of heat and light begins to grow this week. The longest night will burn away! Amen?

We didn't have the money to fly to Copenhagen from New York. (And they haven't invented a veggie-fueled jet yet, either.) But as people return we hear vivid accounts of new relationships, movements, alliances between the global south and north. All the culture that Obama and Clinton did not acknowledge does in fact exist - is born and growing. The secrecy and isolation of the Chinese/Obama meetings says it all. The rest of us are waiting outside, with the rising seas, the fires and droughts and freak storms. It is dawning on us that the Earth is the only government and the only god.