MIRTH'S MAGNIFICENT FINDS

In spite of my (almost) atheism, today's picks have a religious flava. One takes beauty and inspiration where they can find it.

The goals of justice and equality and peace and love are unending and the various means of protest to achieve them are as valid today as in our past.
Small actions ripple out to cause larger impact. This is sometimes described as the Butterfly Effect...the notion that the movement of a single butterfly's wing will create a disturbance in the air that becomes amplified as it travels to eventually cause large-scale atmospheric changes. Large actions can become magnificent.

In the summer of 1941 the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters threatened Roosevelt with a 100,000-strong march on Washington to protest the exclusion of Blacks from economic opportunities in the war industry. To prevent it, FDR desegregated defense industries.


Inspired by this earlier event, on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King led the March On Washington. More than 200,000 people protested lack of jobs and freedom. It was at this demonstration that MLK delivered his I Have A Dream speech which still thrills and inspires all people of good heart.

Moved by the march and the speech, a year later Curtis Mayfield wrote the glorious song People Get Ready, sung in this video by Eva Cassidy who died of cancer in her 20s and she spoke of how this song brought her peace during her treatments.

Bob Marley, in turn, was influenced by People Get Ready when he wrote the awesome One Love. If you don't crank this one up and let your eyes fill from the love he had to give you in this music, then today you are not fully alive.

And I am inspired by bravery and marches and speeches and music to give you this:

"Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Philippians 4:8

Now get out there and flap those wings!

Question Girl