Google, known for its many doodles to mark special, often random days, went with Cesar Chavez's birthday rather than something more Easter-themed.  Apparently, a lot of people were upset and would have rather seen bunnies and eggs, oh my!  Some even mixed Cesar with Hugo Chavez, the late Venezuelan president and controversial figure(!).  I thought this article got it right on, however:

Google’s odd choice should remind us that whatever one thinks of Chavez’s politics, they are impossible to understand apart from his belief in the resurrected Christ.

For Chavez, social reform was never merely external. Without peace of spirit and purity of heart, there was little point in pursuing justice. Collective bargaining, just wages, shorter workdays: for Chavez none of these made sense outside the fact of his risen Lord.

Beautifully said.  Whether Google meant to make the connection or not, I would rather see a man practice resurrection than see another marketing tool take over a holiday (holy day).  That phrase, practice resurrection, is now the name of a book by Eugene Peterson but comes from a wonderful poem by Wendell Berry.

Here it is in full:



Copyright Wendell Berry

The word "farfetching" comes from the poet Mary Ann Hoberman's book, A House is a House for Me, first pointed out to me by my friend Rachel D.  It's a beautiful children's book with a wonderful message: everything and everyone has a place, has a home... not just us humans.



Here are some quotes [all sic] from the book.

"The more that I think about houses,
The more things are houses for things.
And if you get started in thinking,
I think you will find it is true
That the more that you think about houses for things,
The more things are houses to you. 

[some examples given] 

Perhaps I have started farfetching....
Perhaps I am stretching things some.....
A mirror's a house for reflections....
A throat is a house for a hum....
But once you get started in thinking,
You think and you think and you think 

[more examples] 

And once you get started in thinking this way,
It seems that whatever you see
Is either house or it lives in a house,
And a house is a house for me! 

[more examples, ending the book with:] 

And the earth is a house for us all."

It's a beautiful message, and I believe pertinent to my free-ranging thoughts found here on this blog, while also acknowledging we live on this one beautiful gem in a sea of darkness and light.

And we're living on a living planet, circling a living star....

Amidst the ongoing debate on the parameters and extent of the Second Amendment, there is some troubling news that the assault weapons banned (first passed in 1994 and allowed to expire in 2004) still does not have enough votes to make it to the floor of the Senate.  Furthermore, many gun makers are having trouble hiring enough people to manufacture the increase in demand for guns and ammunition.

It makes me think of a recent discussion I had with a friend about energy versus matter, flow versus stasis, wave versus particle.  The first is related in Einstein's famous equation:
Anyhow, I do wonder about the power of guns and how do we stop violence.  I would like to learn and train more in the nonviolent arts of Qigong andTai Chi, tapping into the energy source behind and in all matter we see and experience.  There's some pretty cool videos that show how powerful these guys can be!


Now isn't that cooler than bullets, if not the way out from violence?  Maybe we can't stop bullets physically once they're fired, but there's a lot of training we can do (and energy we can tap into!) before someone pulls the trigger.

May we beat swords into plowshares with our minds, hearts and hands.

Ten years ago our country was led into a war of choice we were told was a necessity.  In order to stop the threat of Saddam Hussein and his alleged "weapons of mass destruction," we had to massively destroy a country with our own weapons, bought and paid for by the American people to enrich American corporations.  We were lied to, bamboozled and fooled into killing thousands of Iraqi men, women and children.  Our ideals of freedom, democracy and equality were contorted into a misguided ideology left thousands of our own men and women dead and maimed, some physically and perhaps all psychologically.