Even as conflicts escalate the world over, we can lend the weight of our presence to a different kind of action. We are learning that it is possible to integrate a more subtle form of activism with social action, and that one can flow quite naturally out of the other. We’re discovering in groups of all kinds around the world that our lives are deeply joined; that we can participate at a level of sensibility that is complementary to problem solving and does not seek to make one side right and the other wrong. Entire groups are awakening to this truth as they dare to take the position that they do not know the answer. Instead, they choose to embrace opposing views, give focused attention to the silence, and trust. Then a common voice may arise.

This week, the Indigenous Peoples of the World are gathering in Fort Collins and Carbondale, CO at the same time the UN Climate Change Conference takes place in Copenhagen, the Parliament of World Religions in Melbourne, and the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded President Obama in Oslo. In any group in which you have more than a casual membership, I invite you to set aside conversation for a short time, postpone closure in your own mind, and listen in the silence for something new. After all, it is that time of year, and as nature has always shown us, it is out of darkness that light is born again.

Yesterday, I gave blood for the 1^st time in over 30 years, having been thrown into anaphylactic shock and sent by ambulance to Mass General Hospital emergency room in Boston after donating white cells to a very sick newborn baby in Cambridge. In those days they used a centrifuge to spin out the white cells and the remaining blood was sent back into the donor’s bloodstream. Turns out there’d been a hairline crack in the centrifuge and when the serum was returned to my body, it was filled with lethal bacteria. I vowed never again to give blood. Though they no longer use that procedure, any thought of ‘doning’ terrified me. But when Michelle Obama wrote and asked for service in honor of MLK, it was the tipping point for me. And since I already belonged to an Obama group, I looked for what other options she suggested. Donating blood was one of them and by golly, I did it! Now I’ll do it routinely. Better than that, every person I later told about it has donated blood too! How about you?