On Friday I traveled to Takoma Park, Maryland, to visit with Bernie’s daughter and family. This was my third effort to get down there; the first two went awry due to ill health starting in Thanksgiving, but I made it this past weekend. It was wonderful, everything you seek in a family: warmth, love, good food, gracious hospitality, as well as integrity and honesty. They’re very private so no more detail, only to repeat what I said and wrote to them, that it meant worlds to me.

It helped that temperatures in Maryland rose to 80 and I could put on loose slacks and short-sleeve shirts, rather than continuing to huddle in woolen sweaters with scarves wrapped around my neck. Both spirit and body felt somewhat shrunken this past winter by eternal warm layers, and it was almost a fulfillment of a Passover wish: Lord, free up my arms, legs, neck and throat and let them soak in sunlight.

That day, Saturday, was full of fulfillment, especially when Alisa, Bernie’s daughter, showed me a house in her neighborhood whose side yard contained some 25 bins. Free Community Bins, they called it, covered and labelled not just in English and Spanish, but also in other languages: Women’s Clothes, Men’s Clothes, Kitchenware, Children’s Toys, Housewares, Books, etc. Anyone could both give and receive these items, no questions asked.

I walked from one to the other, and my heart pounded with joy. What a simple idea, and yet so doable. Takoma Park is highly diverse and quite prosperous, the pink and white dogwood flowering gorgeously alongside rosebud and cherry trees, the kind I admire and love to take photos of. But here was one home, one family, that did something else with its yard, and for tree-loving me, the blue, yellow, and green bins reading Stuffed Toys, Glassware, and Blankets were equally as gorgeous.

It inspired me to think more creatively about what is possible for simple people to pull together. The transfer station (or dump, as most people refer to them) at our neighboring town of Leverett has small booths and stations which also are full of give-away books, games/toys, housewares, and clothes.

So many ways to share what we have and keep the flow flowing. The energy of life is meant to stream everywhere, into all corners, like water. If we hoard it in some shape—be it money, things, education, and even joy—the water gets turgid, swampy, and finally turns to mud.

Compare that to an article in today’s New York Times of an Air France program for the wealthy, flying from New York to Paris and back for $16,000, where, in addition to the usual and unusual luxuries (a Porsche taking you to the airport?), you are totally separated from people. Can you imagine that? Not just onboard the plane, but also in airports and limos, coming and going through special doors and gates, always barricaded from the rest of humanity by vigilant escorts.

I can understand this if you value your privacy and are easily recognizable, but most people are not. Do they really think that writing that philanthropic check is what will connect them with humanity?

A wealthy and snobbish uncle of mine once mentioned standing at the bar with his wife in First Class on some airplane or other and looking at the crowded rows of economy passengers in the back. I think he called them riff-raff. Well, this weekend I was part of that riff-raff, waiting at the Washington DC airport for a delayed flight to Hartford/Springfield, and had the distinct pleasure of kicking back and forth a small beach ball to an equally small boy, which caused me to spill some cold water on the churchy skirt of a woman who’d been to Easter services and who immediately told me not to worry about it.

People do amazing things for strangers, unknown faces they see on the street, small children not their own. If ever you doubt how connected we really are, take a look at these photos, and remember, this day after Easter, Matthew’s famous reminder in Jesus’s words: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

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I found these dry leaves mysterious and very beautiful.

It’s the eve of Passover, a major Jewish holiday celebrating liberation, and I find myself low in spirit. I can go to Seders, in fact I’ll participate in a delayed one on Saturday evening in Takoma Park, MD, where I will be for the weekend.

Here at home, I wonder why I’m without family. I talk to both brother and sister; one gladly welcomes the holiday, one does not, and I miss them very much. Spring has definitely arrived, especially after last night’s thunderstorms that drove away yesterday’s heavy clouds and let us open our eyes this morning to blue and sunny skies, warm temperatures.

“The birds aren’t eating at the feeders as much,” my housemate notes, “they get what they need elsewhere.” She’s right. We’ll finish up the bags of birdseed and won’t buy any till early winter.

Passover often brings up these depressive moods, the wish for liberation accompanied by noting, for the umpteenth time, how unliberated I still am, how strong the conditioning of childhood. I read a lot about Cesar Chavez and the accusations against him. My heart broke for the strong woman who talked about what happened to her at the age of 15, when he invited her to join him on a march across California, in the middle of which he took her to a motel room and raped her, then telling her she must not tell anybody, otherwise he’ll go to prison.

The evocation of the rape takes almost no time at all. What takes a lot longer is the description of the silence around it that lasted almost a lifetime, the secrets.

Bernie told me often that there really is no such thing as secrets. If we’re all one, he said, the universe knows—maybe not the details, but it knows. Spoken like the rational mathematician and engineer that he was. I flounder in other streams, streams of uncovering, unveiling, taking the lid off (inside as well as out), taking breath and saying: Yes, this is me, and this, and this, and this.

I watch Aussie many times for clues on how she does it. Aussie, stay! I command when she wants to rush towards someone passing us on the road, tail wagging. She can’t just run to someone who’s uncertain of her intentions. Or No, you’re staying home, I tell her when she follows me to the car, and instantly her tail drops half a floor, she turns around and goes home.

She feels disappointment, but when I come back, there she’ll be, excited to see me once again, all is forgiven. And much, much earlier, her ears will perk up and she’ll barely move as a couple of squirrels merrily chase each other around the apple tree while she’s planning an ambush. She doesn’t ever seem to be discouraged by setbacks.

Isn’t that the way to live, I tell myself. Just push it aside, push it aside, go on to the next experience, life is short. But Aussie is a Canis lupus familiaris while I am a Homo sapien, and I won’t commit violence to memories, to surges and sinkings of feelings. Let it go is not an invitation to be a dog, or be anything other than what I am.

I imagine the mudra, or hand position, I’ve shown over many years. “Just hold it loosely, not tightly,” I’ve said, showing my hand palm up, fingers not clenched tight but opening slowly, still curled lightly around something—a bad memory, an old anger—but loosely, as if offering it to the world.

That, an offer to the world? Something that has poisoned my spirit against the holiday of liberation, against my native religion?

Yes, those are offerings to the world, too, just like the video of the woman in yesterday’s New York Times talking not so much about what Chavez did—that recounting took less than 30 seconds—but how she’d had to keep it all to herself, never tell the parents who were so proud of their daughter’s closeness to him. Loyalty to the cause, the family, the tribe, the nation. What we sacrifice of ourselves to keep connections even when it means that we’re honoring all truths except our own.

Please don’t misunderstand, I was never raped. Boundaries were badly broken, as simple as that. But what makes it more complicated, as in the case of Chavez’s victims, is the inability to tell anyone, the invitation to do violence to your own truth, to even doubt your sanity, and push it all away for everybody’s sake. For peace in the family, peace in the nation.

That kind of violence is the part of the iceberg, the big part, that lies hidden under the waves. What was done, when it finally comes out, is visible. But the secrecy, the keeping things to yourself, the stuff that remains hidden—whether for your own safety or for someone else’s—and then the processing, churning, cooking, everything that needs to be done for healing, that can take a very long time.

And that’s what separates me from Aussie, I think. The gifts I give the world aren’t just the dropping of I want to come along in the car, or Why do you leave me behind? The gifts I give the world is the sharing of mortality, which is just one t away from morality, the mystery of hurt, innocence lost early on—and most of all, their consciousness, their awareness.

As Jane Hirschfield says:

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

I know the ritual of the Seder in my blood, and the glass of wine and empty chair left around the table. For whom? The prophet Elijah. But I like to think of it more from the start of the Seder, when the front door is opened and an invitation—in old Aramaic, of all things—is made to all people who have nowhere to go, to join the family, join the ritual of liberation.

Our family did that, but shut the door harshly on the unfamiliar, the unknown, and even anything the least bit unconventional. They said the words, then closed the door tight, not just against truths coming in from the outside, but also against truths coming from the inside and going out into the light.

You can’t hold them back, and often your journey in life consists of opening that door again and again and again. It’s life, I tell myself, even as I look at Aussie outside eyeing a fat, pregnant squirrel. Even if she gets her, it’s still life. Old Passovers are also life, and when you come down the column and try to total it all up, as Hirschfield implies, you can’t find a precise number. It can’t be reduced to a minus or a plus, to a total in black or in red. It is extra, extra, extra-ordinary, beyond the laws of arithmetic.

Sunday will be the holiday of resurrection. But not yet.

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I didn’t go to any of the No Kings rallies this past Saturday, of which there were a number here. I’d gone to the first two, but these past weeks of heavy involvement with local efforts to protect immigrants (including yesterday and this evening) have taken a lot from me.

Of course, none of those whom we’re concerned about could attend these rallies. I notice how many people who were not born here, including those who are American citizens or have green cards of all races, remain invisible. ICE agents’ approach of detain first and ask questions later, without warrants or identification, especially when they’re accompanied by violence, leaving spouses stunned and children weeping, causes many nonwhite people to basically stay home.

Every month Elena (not her real name) gives a basic cleaning to our home. As usual, last month she cleaned my office, where a small American flag that I’d used in a past rally lay flat down on a credenza. When I came back after she’d finished, I noticed that she’d stood the flag up against the wall behind some books in the corner.

I was deeply moved. Instantly I felt in touch with a much bigger and more diversified crowd than the one I have here, many of whom don’t believe or vote like me but care about this country in their own way.

How is it that the Right usurped the American flag to such an extent that when we see it waving outside a house, we automatically make assumptions about the people living there? How did the Left let them do that? And why is it that, to this very day, rallies for progressive causes rarely show American flags? As I wrote earlier, the first No Kings rally I went to last June showed way more Palestinian flags than American. A Martian landing there would have assumed that the rally was for no kings in Palestine, not the United States.

I don’t usually wave flags nor pledge allegiance to them, just not my thing. But if there’s a country in the world that stands for No Kings it’s this one, so where did the famous visual symbol of it go? Many Republicans accuse liberals of being ashamed of this country.

I have little space for shame or guilt, perhaps because my upbringing was full of both. It’s important to cure racism, homophobia, and misogyny, but I see no value in bludgeoning ourselves to death over those things, whether verbally or in print. That doesn’t make even one person happier.

So here was Elena, living in this area for 20 years with no legal status, who left a very young daughter back home all those years ago never to see her again (but working her butt off to save money to buy the now young woman a home), who lets out a short moan when I ask her about herself and her family, specifically are they safe, nods, and says so far so good—and she’s the one who lifted up that flag into its proud, upright position.

I thought of so many of us who get cynical about this country, but this woman had no questions about it. She lives here, has gotten lots of benefits for herself, her husband, and a little girl they had here, otherwise she’d go back home to stay with the daughter she left behind. And she’s the one who raised the flag in my office.

You know you’re in a privileged position when you get into cynical arguments about what’s wrong with us and this country, preferably over a glass of wine. You can do that kind of thing forever, listening to your favorite podcasters and reading your favorite newspaper columnists. The people who are in need can’t afford to do that.

My test for how effective a mensch I am is whether, with whatever action I’ve taken, I’ve lightened the load of one person today, especially of someone at risk, insecure, unsafe, unsheltered, or hungry. I can read and listen to as much commentary and history as I want, invest my energies in being fully up-to-date, but if it doesn’t result in some action, no matter how small, then I’m only taking care of myself.

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“Aussie, If you read the word stressed backwards, what do you get?”

“Don’t know, I’m illiterate.”

“You get desserts.”

“Desserts! Quick, get stressed, and then we can all eat ice cream.”

“I just read the blog of my friend, Ken Byalin, who explores what the Buddha meant when he said that life is suffering. Specifically, what is suffering? What is trauma?”

“Do I have to listen to a dharma talk in order to get dessert? Because that’s the perfect way to get me stressed.”

“Listen to this, Aussie. Ken writes that many people think of trauma as something terrible that happened to you once. But AI defines trauma as your emotional response to those terrible things, see?”

“In other words, there’s this conversation, and then there’s my reaction to it, right?”

“Right. It takes two to create trauma. The Buddha said that life is suffering, but life is just life. Then there are our reactions to it, so the two together—life and our reactions—can bring on trauma, but not necessarily. For example, my response to thunderstorms is to run to an interior bathroom which has no windows. Other people love thunderstorms.”

“I rush to the back seat of the car in the garage and hope to Great Canine that you left a door or even a window open.”

“Thunderstorms are just thunderstorms; the trauma lies in how you and I react to them. Take this conversation about suffering, trauma, and stress. How do you feel?”

“Stressed. Could I have a red velvet cupcake?”

“Aussie, what Ken is saying is good news. We can’t stand in the way of life; I can’t prevent thunderstorms from happening. But we can try to work with our reactions to them, see? The more we practice with our breath and the focus of our attention, we start affecting how we experience trauma. When I stop reacting badly, Aussie, there’s no more stress or trauma. Isn’t that a wonderful possibility?”

“Not if it means no more chocolate ice cream.”

“For instance, a dear friend went through terrible experiences in Vietnam that haunted him for many years. But he shared a lot, both privately and publicly, about what he went through and wrote beautiful poetry about it. His reactions, which were once imbued with trauma, began to change, affecting his entire life. As long as I think that trauma lies out there, life events that nothing can change, there’s nothing I can do and I get depressed. Seeing how much depends on my reactions, on me, gives me a way to heal.”

[Snore snore]

“Shunryo Webber, who teaches at Green River Zen Center, told me that listening is a sacrament. Listening quietly and respectfully, with no comments and certainly no answers or solutions, can transform a human being and a relationship.”

“So can dessert.”

“When someone’s listening to you, you’re no longer alone. You’ve shared something painful with others, and unconditional acceptance is still there. When I share things with others—even with you, Aussie—I may be unselfing just a little. Another being comes into the picture, my sorrow is no longer just my own. Now that I think about it, that’s what happens when I’m sad and we walk in the woods.”

“Speaking of which—”

“I walk among the hemlocks and beeches, the soft shiver of last year’s leaves, the snowmelt coursing down to the creek, and my burden feels lighter. I’m unselfing, see? I see things from other points of view. Say the truth, Aussie, don’t you feel that way when you see our first purple crocuses?”

“I like peeing on them.”

“Aussie, however our life has gone, it’s important not to feel alone with it. When I share from the heart, I unself little by little, which eliminates much stress.”

“Does that mean there’ll be no more ice cream in the freezer? I WANT MORE STRESS!”

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“Aussie, do you think we could ask Donald Trump to buy me a new pair of boots? These old ones are so worn and torn inside that they make my feet crooked. The jeans fall right over them and I can’t tie the laces anymore. I hear he’s been buying good shoes for his cabinet folks and advisers, and I could use a good pair.”

“Ha ha ha. Like everybody else, you need favors from the Man. I’m calling him right away. I’ll tell him you’re a guy because he only buys shoes for men.”

“They have to be size 7-1/2.”

“Are you kidding? They have to be at least a size 11.”

“Don’t be silly, Aussie, I can’t walk in size 11 boots. Did you see photos of Marco Rubio in the shoes Trump bought for him, with inches to spare?”

“At least Marco can breathe in them. Don’t you like shoes that breathe? You’ll just have to grow into size 11 boots.”

“Auss, at 76 I’m shrinking rather than growing. What are the odds that as my body gets more compact my feet expand by 3-1/2 sizes?”

“That’s how you become big, don’t you see? In order to fill big shoes, you have to grow bigger. What a wonderful incentive for Little Marco, who could use a little uplift. Don’t you want to feel uplifted?”

“No.”

“How are you going to fill big shoes if you don’t become bigger?”

“Aussie, I just want to fit into my size clothes and my size shoes and my size body. I want to fit me.”

“Fit you? Don’t you have any more ambition than that? Don’t you care about growing, improving, increasing, enlarging? How are you going to do anything for the world wearing size 7-1/2 shoes?”

“I’ll do what I’ve always done, Aussie.”

“But think what you could do if you wore size 11!”

“Slip, slide, fall, stumble. I’m also slimmer than Donald Trump, Aussie. Do I need to weigh 215 pounds like him?”

“[Sigh] Think of all those Big Macs!”

“Aussie, I think we could do a lot just as we are.”

“Silliest thing I’ve ever heard. Don’t you go to school to get smarter? Don’t you read books to know more? Don’t you talk to more people all the time? We’re always doing more and more, so why not make more room for your feet? For one thing, you’ll cover more ground.”

“I won’t be able to walk, Auss. And even if I could, I don’t want to cover more ground. I’ve had it with more and bigger. If anything, I’m discovering how much there is in less and smaller.”

“If that’s the case, maybe I should ask the Man to buy you new boots size 5. It’ll be Post No. 133 tonight on Truth Social: This dog got a pygmy for a human hee hee! I will be so ashamed.”

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“Conflict is the spirit of the relationship asking itself to deepen.”

I read this sentence in the book Healing Resistance, by Kazu Haga, on nonviolence. I’ve never been much of a proponent of nonviolence, but this book, based on the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr., is changing my mind. It’s nonviolence, as Haga distinguishes, not non-violence (hyphenated), which usually refers to being against overt physical and destructive violence, as in war,. It’s more about the commitment to be as authentic, vulnerable, perceptive, and also skilled and effective enough in any relationship as to dissuade abuse and manipulation of any kind, including with the self.

It’s this last one that pried me open. I never thought I was being violent towards myself. Maybe a little hard, that’s all. But once I started paying attention, I watched abuse take place in so many ways. First, how often I mentally put myself down, especially now as I get older. That was dumb, I say if I slipped a bit while putting on my rain boots. Or: Boy, my mind is really going, as I shake my head when, once again, I left the soup on the burner for way too long. I think I say this to show others that I am well aware of some growing deficiencies, that if I screw up, at least I’m aware of it. But who really cares, other than me?

Or more subtle things, like: Here you go again, or You always do this (You always do too much work on Sunday and then you’re tired). I shake my head at myself and at my day-to-day life as though neither of us are fine, in fact, we’re lacking. Or at times I might tell myself not to go there, there being some mental picture or remembrance from the past I’m not at peace with. But why shouldn’t I go anywhere I want? What am I still afraid of (aside from thunderstorms)? I’ve confronted outside dangers and risks way more blithely than the ones I face inside.

Some of this may be because I’ve internalized the ideas of a culture that looks down at older people. But these are also age-old criticisms I’ve leveled at myself. True, we live in the Land of Imperfections, but what is it about this Judeo-Christian culture that makes evildoers out of so many of us?

The poet Sylvia Plath wrote:

His blood beat the old tattoo

I am I am I am.

My blood beats the same even as I’ve practiced for many years in a tradition that says I’m really not I’m really not I’m really not. Short of ending my life, I can’t stop the blood from its refrain. At the same time, I’m more aware than ever of the multitude of tiny scars and abrasions that come out of all this denial and subterfuge, all stored up in consciousness, in karma.

And then there’s the above quotation from Kazu Haga’s book: “Conflict is the spirit of the relationship asking itself to deepen.” A friend relates that when he and his wife of many years have an argument or conflict, he thinks to himself: Okay, here it is, bring it on. We’re going into it again, we’ll continue going into it in the future. He doesn’t see this resolving very soon; instead, he practically welcomes it, understanding what he’s being asked to do.

Skill is important here. We can have the same conflict again and again without visibly deepening anything. I wish both Bernie and I had had more skills in our own conflicts.

But if I don’t have that skill with a partner, I could at least develop it internally, with my self. Frustration with slowness, disappointment at impatience and indecision (Do I sell and leave the house or don’t I?)—these are unnecessary, leave emotional lesions in my psyche, and affect how I relate to others. This time of my life is perfect for deepening this primary relationship.

The Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg wrote: “But after a certain point in life a person has to dunk her regrets in the morning coffee, just like biscuits.”

As a coffee afficionado, I can tell you: It makes the coffee a lot richer.

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Aussie and I went back to the woods for the first time in several months. I wore my dilapidated winter boots because, even as the edges of the forest reveal old leaves and brown earth, deep inside the snow comes up your calves; it certainly did mine and everything got wet and cold. I plan to ask Donald Trump to buy me a new pair, preferably one that fits.

Naturally, I went to the woods above the Montague Farm, where we used to live communally when Zen Peacemakers owned it, the woods I call home more than any other. Aussie was overjoyed at finally being off the road and wandered all over sniffing out the varmints that burrow deep underneath, following a million tracks, and even rolling on the snow, paws scrabbling in the air, to assuage an itch.

She finds her way, I find mine. We both know where we’re going, it’s the pools of water that feed into the creek, our destination of 20 years, only my way isn’t easy. Always after winter the old trails are unrecognizable, what with massive gray limbs on the ground, bare, leafless trees and a white landscape blocking the geographical hieroglyphs of 2025.

To my eyes, Aussie’s way of walking towards the pools looks like detour after detour, her snout to the ground sniffing madly as she’s pulled towards the brambles, then across my path and down to the creek in the valley, then over to the hemlock groves, then back up following deer spoor. But then, to her eyes, my way of walking is a detour which she can’t figure out.

How do you go straight on a trail of 99 curves, asks the old koan. To human eyes, I go straight and she takes detours. To canine eyes, I’m probably the one detouring all the time.

I owe warm thanks to Jeff Bridges for alerting me to the importance of detours. He reminded me that we all take them. Each and every life is a detour, only instead of following orange signs reading DETOUR with arrows, we make it up as we go along. My life, your life, Aussie’s life, the lives of all beings. Maybe it’s another word for karma.

And detours are interesting. You didn’t think you’d go down that road, it wasn’t in the plan, but now you’re looking at a new landscape: Look, there’s a new farm there, or Look at the sheep behind that enclosure, or See the square bales of hay dotting the pasture like crossword puzzles. Detours take you to unfamiliar places. You could grumble that they slow you down, much like your parents grumbling about why you took a year off from school when you could have gotten your degree a year earlier. But in that year off you taught English and arithmetic to children in a poor Guatemalan town, learned Spanish, and how to make fabulous pepian.

Jeff also called my attention to detourism, which invites you to travel to lesser known spots all over the globe rather than visiting just the popular destinations and being part of the mad crush. And that’s not just for travelers.

Our life is one big detour with a million little detours built in. I’m writing this now, but I paused to get up to watch a bluebird feast on thistle outside the window. Had to make that mini-detour before coming back to my chair and continuing to hit those keys.

Is there such a thing as a straight highway to wherever we are going or to wherever we want to go? I kind of doubt it, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get angry at detours, as if out there somewhere there’s a cross-universe highway that’s straight, no potholes, few exits so few opportunities to get lost, and no police chasing you down for speeding and scaring you to death with a screaming siren.

My life is a detour, and so is Donald Trump’s. For many of us, Trump wasn’t supposed to happen. Implied in that assumption was that there’s a straight, if somewhat slow, alternative route that’s the real thing, a true interstate with McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts stops along the way, trustworthy and predictable. A little like Joe Biden. Implied in so many reactions is that that’s the real thing.

But the detour called Donald Trump has caused me to listen more to people without my education or belief system, to reflect more deeply about the costs of globalization, and to contemplate the question of what it means to be an American in a way I never did before.

It’s like the parents who don’t want their child to take time off from school (e.g., mine) because there’s only one true way to attend school, and usually one true way to live your life, and that doesn’t include going off somewhere to teach English to little kids, or wherever your detour takes you. In her challenging and fascinating novel Audition, Katie Kitamura writes that only when your children become strangers in your eyes can they truly be said to have grown up and living their own lives. It’s when you shake your head and say that you can’t recognize your son or daughter anymore—that’s when you know that they’ve finally gone their own way. Not your way, they’re doing their own detour.

One question you can ask is: What happens when detours intersect? Ah, that’s where the rubber meets the road.

Another question is: We’re all following our respective detours, but where are we going? Jeff said that we’re all going to the same place, but each of us in our own way. What place is that? Is there such a place? Bernie used to tell me that life goes in the direction of realizing the One Body, realizing all our oneness.

Is that where all our detours are headed? I have no idea.

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I spent 2 days in New York City without checking news and saw the above sign at Judson Memorial Church in the Village. That’s why I didn’t know till this morning about the accusations of rape and abuse against Cesar Chavez.

Many years ago I read a book by Peter Matthiessen, Sal Si Puedes, describing the three years he spent with Cesar Chavez in the late 1960s. Sal Si Puedes was a barrio in San Jose where Chavez spent his early adult years and began to organize. It means Leave If You Can. Imagine a home town called by that name.

I remembered it this morning. Matthiessen himself told me many years later, in a cautious note, that the great labor leader was a very complicated man. Extraordinary—and complicated. A man with little formal education and no imposing physique or eloquence; his very humility was a great draw. He seemed heroic for many years even as the Farm Workers Union, which he co-founded with Dolores Huerta, got into legal and ethical trouble later on.

He seemed beyond the pale of ordinary humanity, a religious Catholic who became more mystical in his later years and saw himself almost as a Christ figure, in danger of death not at the behest of priests or Romans but by big farm owners and the vigilantes they hired, loving the poor, the illiterate, the dispossessed. Peter didn’t write a biography of him, but rather described the three years he spent in his company, and even in that earlier time there was a kind of absoluteness in how Chavez saw good and evil. He saw his work as a religious mission, which helps strengthen one’s resolve in the face of overwhelming odds but can also breed fanaticism and blind loyalty and devotion.

In a way, the accusations were no surprise to me. I had long known of the macho values that are such an inherent aspect of many Latino cultures. Several years ago, while still handing out food cards alongside Jimena Pareja towards the end of Covid, I said to her: “Why do parents with such little money have four or even five children, when there’s barely enough to eat?”

She said: “This is part of the culture. Look at what happens when they shop in Walmart. When they’re ready to pay, the woman who works outside digs into her bag and gives her husband the money. He’s always the one to pay, not her. And if a woman wants her husband or herself to use contraceptives, she’s called a slut who must want to sleep around, otherwise why use a contraceptive?”

Obviously, these are generalizations. Not all Latino husbands act like that, and certainly not all do the things that Chavez did. But after that conversation, it didn’t surprise me that many Latino voters in this country voted for the current president because they don’t embrace liberal values such as separation of church and state and, of course, abortion. I have told friends who want open borders that many of the people they want to welcome here will bring cultural values that they themselves have fought against for many years.

The work of recognizing, honoring, and integrating differences is way harder than getting the right political votes.

In that spirit, the rush to drop the Chavez name from streets and schools deflated me (I’m glad for the substitution of Farmworkers Day). I’m horrified by the tales of rape and abuse by Chavez towards the women in his union. Those women felt they had to be silent in order not to betray the cause. Luckily, there’s no reason to stay silent anymore, but there’s also no reason for such fast erasure.

If anything, it should be seen as an invitation to further study the years of that struggle and to more closely examine what happens when cultures come together, when values collide. Which is not to say that all Latino men are prone to do what Chavez did, certainly not that, but we often seem so glad to ward off complexity in the rush to first create heroes, and then villains.

Once, after the murder of George Floyd, a then-member of our zendo expressed what I saw as self-righteous joy at the push to remove the names of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln from the rolls of the honorable. At that point I said this:

I would like to know who here has absolute confidence that if posterity examines their life 100 years from now, they’ll find nothing wrong. Who among us never wears clothes made in Asian sweatshops, who among us eschews all meat and fish products including dairy, which vegetarians among us can swear not to have benefitted from low-wage labor that goes into the agricultural products they consume (which Chavez and Huerta fought against), who among us can swear by the materials used to build their home and those used to deliver electricity, heat, and water, who among never participates in processes that pollute the air, streams, or earth. Who among us can certify without a doubt that 100 years from now, no one will study their life, shake their head, and say: How could they have done that? How could they have lived like that?

Rape is beyond the pale; nothing justifies it. But women being put in their place was standard in civil rights organizations and continues to be so in religions that nobly espouse other causes. It’s not enough to just bring things to light; once they’re there, look at them, hear them, study them. Bear witness, and then decide what to do. The rush to erasure doesn’t do that.

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“Next year, the Man is going to win the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“How do you see that, Aussie?”

“Because he’ll end the war with Iran.”

“Aussie, he started the war with Iran.”

“Of course he did. How can you make peace if you don’t have a war first? The problem with the world is that it’s too peaceful.”

“Really, Auss? Sudan? Somalia? Pakistan and Afghanistan? Russia and Ukraine?”

“But they don’t involve us, see?”

“Iran wasn’t fighting us, either, Aussie.”

“Which is a problem for the Man. In order to win the Nobel Peace Prize, he has to get into a war first. Was it his fault that there’s nothing around? There’s good old terrorist Mamdani in New York City, but he kinda sorta likes Mamdani. But the Man is brilliant, see? He figured that if he could start a war, he’d have something to end (though he prefers the word win), and then get tix to Oslo. I tell you, he’s brilliant.”

“Aussie, thousands of people have lost their lives, there are big disruptions to the world economy, and we’re paying at least $2 billion a day for this war.”

“No biggie. They can deduct $2 billion from Lori’s accident insurance payments from Workman’s Compensation, also from her social security and Medicaid. There are lotsa places from which to make up that money, don’t worry.”

A friend with Stage 4 cancer visited the house yesterday. I could see the physical traces of the aggressive treatments he’s undergone, but he was in high spirits. Loves his body, loves his life. He told me a story of going to hear a musician he’d heard about a great deal play in a club one evening, and when he arrived, he was one of only three people there: the musician, his agent, and my friend.

“Should we just forget it and watch the debate?” the agent suggested. It was 2004 and George Bush was debating John Kerry that evening on television.

“’Course not,” said the musician. “I’m playing.”

And did he ever play, my friend told me. He played his heart out, song after song, hardly broke off to drink some water, one of his guitar strings broke and he re-strung the guitar, and he just played on as if there were a thousand people in the room instead of two. At the end of that, they turned on the Bush/Kerry debate.

That’s the kind of dedication we’re often called to have if we’re to make peace. It doesn’t matter how few we seem (we’re not), it doesn’t matter that we don’t have big destroyers and jet planes (though there is a CodePink armada heading out to Cuba with urgently needed food and medical supplies to break the embargo we’ve put in place, with our Palestinian activist friend, Sami Awad, participating), and it doesn’t matter how many sit on their hands or else get distracted by the Million and One Distractions (a new Buddhist meditation hindrance). Nor does it matter that most of us don’t win Nobel Peace Prizes. We go on playing with all we’ve got. Just look at the new green sprigs–the first ones this year–at the feet of Kwan Yin.

I look at arrogant photos of Navy carriers and Air Force jets sowing havoc in places they can’t see and in people they don’t know. Photos of cities are presented like some backdrop to big plumes of gray smoke, as if the day-to-day peaceful lives most people want to lead are just background to fire and ash. But fire and ash are not the whole story, far from it.

I’ve had questions regarding the man taken by ICE when he came to the immigration court in Burlington, MA, and his wife, scheduled to go for the same appointment and afraid for her two small children. He is still detained, but at least not flown to Texas or Louisiana prisons or deported, and a new lawyer is trying to get him released while posting bond. His wife has asked for her hearing to be on Zoom given what happened to her husband, and we are waiting for the verdict. In the meantime, she continues to take care of her children and find some work somewhere.

I read a biography long ago of Andrej Sakharov in the years he and his ill fellow resistor wife, Yelena Bonner, were exiled to Gorky (Sakharov did win the Nobel Peace Prize, by the way). A reporter interviewing him asked how he felt towards those people who just pursue their mundane lives and don’t take the risks he had. Sakharov, showing his beautiful humanism, said that he never harbored any negative feelings: “There are those who fight on the front lines, and those who put their children to bed.”

Some of us have to gather to protect immigrants, and some of us continue with our daily tasks in the face of calumny and violence. Both take courage. Not so sure about that new Buddhist hindrance, the Million and One Distractions.

I’m heading down to New York City for 2 days, will blog again later in the week. But please support financially my blog; it’s my quarterly ask. I need money to maintain the blog and it’s an important part of my own support. I can’t help immigrants financially without it. Prices here are climbing just as they are everywhere, including dog care. Aussie has decided that at the ripe age of 8-1/2, she’s had it with kibble and has been lobbying for Stella & Chewy’s Freeze-Dried Beef Patties, “Perfect for picky eaters.” She has refused to eat breakfast, though she makes a big rush for her dinner. I did have some concern that she was sick, but no, she’s just getting older, like the rest of us.

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“The trouble with you, Henry, is that you have no strategy. Here I am, sitting quietly but alert, waiting in ambush for the wild turkeys that are marauding our birdfeeders, careful, very smart, patient, cunning—oooh, am I cunning. But then you just run out the dog door and yap yap yap, they’re all gone, and there goes my breakfast. You’ll never make it here.”

The usual back-and-forth between Aussie the patriot and Henry the Illegal Chihuahua takes place this morning. But today I don’t want to listen to any of it, though these canines sound so much saner than the humans in Washington.

How much sanity is there when our Secretary of Defense—sorry, of War—says that there is no clear evidence that Iran placed mines in the Straits of Hormuz, affecting the flow of oil throughout the world, and an hour later other American officials state that intelligence has clearly shown that Iran has begun to lay mines?

Or his characteristic quote: “Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it.” No need for all the ethical standards designed not to hurt civilians, even as modern warfare relies more and more on air-borne bombs and missiles that kill civilians rather than soldiers on the ground.

It’s been three hundred thousand years since homo sapiens appeared, and this is how we still talk? Our President and head of the Pentagon thumping their chests and making victory noises like some suited-up versions of an aggressive gorilla, while people who feel that war is not an answer except perhaps after all other options have been deployed, are woke, weak, liberal, weak-kneed, and setting the country up for failure?

The Dalai Lama has often been quoted as saying that if you want to be happy, do something for others. In my life, he’s proven to be right every single time. Religious texts urge us to be kind, charitable, or just do the right thing, but when one experiences the oneness of all creation, helping someone else is so obviously natural that it makes you feel good.

There’s the opposite scenario, when you feel unsafe, when you run into shelters or abandon your home, when you shake from fear of explosions both in the air and on the ground. Trauma affects us physically, including our DNA; I believe that violence of any kind, including not just war and destruction but also verbal violence and even repression of feelings (which is violence done unto ourselves), manifests in all our make-up, including the physical.

A dear friend, no longer here, spoke of her hurt grandchildren and said: “You just have to love and love and love, even when your heart breaks because you can’t do enough, because what you do won’t be enough, because you see that they’ll still get hurt and wounded and damaged, and what you do won’t be enough.”

We, too, are hurt and wounded and damaged. So are thousands of missiles the answer? More destroyers and jet fighters? More days of horror raining down from the heavens?

Day by day I practice widening my small capacity to love. And I don’t bother asking whether it’s enough.

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You can also send a check to: Eve Marko, POB 174, Montague, MA 01351. Please write on the memo line whether this is in support or immigrant families or of my blog. Thank you.