In the same week two momentous new items have gone viral around the world and are causing a veritable collective tsunami among millions of our brother and sister Earthlings from the four directions.
The Vatican has just been painted green with the “Encyclical Letter Laudato Sí: Care For Our Common Home”, by Pope Francis.
It seems that the Pope has not been content with a pale green paint as many of the documents emerging from the platforms of the demagogic programs of the national and transnational governments; nor from the official COPs, or from the G-7, G-8 and G-ONG, and even many of the platforms and programs of countless conservation organizations, environmentalist groups and ecological organizations of which even we are part.
In this document of 192 pages, Francis and his brilliant team of consultants that will surely surround this first Latin American pope, finally managed to accompany this controversial figure of world-class, as was his predecessor and namesake Saint Francis of Assisi, and witness and accomplices of the fact that Francisco has knelt to listen to the Mamma, to listen and obey her messages and recommendations.
We who walk on two, four or a hundred feet and we who crawl on her skin or under it, those who live in its waters, sweet and salty, those of us who were conceived by the intercourse of Father Sun and Mother Earth, those who inhabit the brother trees or the tops of the rocky mountains or the warm sands of the desert, those who fly and even those who live in towns, cities and megacities, and those who travel by land, water and sea, and even outer space, and those of us who today are witnesses to what Mamma told her son:
“Pope, you are quite a Father, but the Mamma sono io !! It is I!!”
With his radical Eco-Encyclical, Francis has called us all, Christians and non-Christians alike, all of us children of Mother Earth, Tonantzin, Gaia-Pachamana, to stop from our nonsense, nonsense and barbarities, and to finally put ourselves to work together to build the first Terran citizenship of the history of our species, citizenship that no longer continues to be the “owner of the resources of Nature” as for two millennia the Church of Peter made their followers believe until today, but it is she, the Mother Earth, that is the real owner of the existence of those who live by her gifts, and from it.
With this step and with this call, we will not continue to define our common Mother merely as a “planet”, since it is not flat, it is alive, and our lives depend exclusively on it. If we can keep calling it our common home, our home, because ECO, which comes from the Greek word “Oikos,” just means to say, our home.
And from now on, we will also hear the message that the Andean grandparents and grandmothers, who live in the foothills of the Pachamama, sent us a few years ago, it was time to move beyond anthropocentric legislation to start create new laws to protect the life of all living beings, not just the “development” of one species, one of the families of the Pacha: Us!!!
As they have done in Ecuador, Bolivia, and many counties and cities in the United States and India, the city of Mexico, as they are soon to do Colombia, several countries in South America and the European Union, and as we hope and fight to achieve at the level of a Universal Declaration for the Rights of Mother Earth in the General Assembly of the same global United Nations, the UN!
The other good news last week was that eventually the White House, the other symbol of the hegemonic power of the Empire, was transformed for one night into a RAINBOW HOUSE, with the pretext that the legislators of the United States agreed at last, with only one vote, that all people of that country had the right to love, live and marry the person that each decides. Thus, another nation adds to the recognition of that human right, as they have done in Ireland, Finland, Luxembourg, the UK, France, Brazil, Denmark, Argentina, Iceland, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, Canada, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and … Mexico City.
In a little less than half a century, since 1972, some visionaries, after traveling many roads, external and internal, of listening to the old guardians of the original knowledge, we begin to understand that the rainbow was a sign of Mother Earth in her amorous dance with the Father Sun, through the light spectrum they reminded us and made us see that everything around us, what we are, what we know and do not know, is a manifestation of that light, embracing each natural element, to give color and life. And the Rainbow Bridge, which connects precisely the Earth with the Universe, is the only symbol of nature that contains, without exception, all the colors together in harmony, without any better than the other, each different from another, and it is precisely in this complementary difference that lies not only its beauty but its central message: We are all one, and therefore, everything that exists is for everyone, as we were reminded by the Maya-Zapatista brothers, not just for some, let alone just for humans.
The White House tinted by the colored lights as a Rainbow House not only represents a triumph of the struggles of millions for the rights of those who have chosen a way to love without prejudice, rejection, without social and legal harassment, without marginalization and out of all the closets, but the millions of human beings who just a few decades ago managed to be able to love, marry and have families with people of other races and colors, other religions, other castes and other social classes.
And this historical fact also means a quantum leap for humanity, as having been adopted in the heart of the Empire as a symbol of the rainbow including recognition not only the right to sexual choice of the citizens, but also recognizes the right to an African-American, with all the limitations and commitments that this post implies, for the power to become the political head of that country, and from there to influence some decisions to continue guiding the rest of society, even xenophobic, racist and classist, (as evidenced by not only the example of Donald Trump’s statements, but the recent actions of brutal violence by the same Anglo Saxon police against the Afro-descendant population in the United States).
The symbolic converted into a historical event, is an incentive for us all to keep working and fighting until we achieve acceptance of the legal practice and the law of biodiversity, natural and social, in all areas of life.
As above, below!
As in, out, and all around!
The recognition of the Rights of Mother Earth, and for a Rainbow, inclusive, fair, respectful, peaceful, loving and humane society harmonized with everything that exists!!
For all our relations in all the Universe!
Coyote Alberto Ruz Buenfil is an author, activist and public speaker focusing on sustainability issues and the rights of the Mother Earth.