This was in Fridays, Berkeley Voice, by Martin Snapp, felt I would pass it on. George Why? Because they were holy men, not eccentrics MARTIN SNAPP: SNAPP SHOTS Why did they do it? That's what people have been asking me since Sundar Shadi died last Friday at the age of 101, coming on the heels of Joseph Charles' death two weeks earlier. Why did Mr. Charles get up every morning and wave to the traffic passing by his house in Berkeley? And why did Mr. Shadi break his back every year to prepare those magical Christmas displays outside his house in El Cerrito? I think I know the answer. They did it as a gesture of divine love. Like Gandhi, St. Francis and Martin Luther King, Jr., they read the Biblical admonition to "Love thy neighbor as thyself" and took it to heart. Some people called them eccentric, but that couldn't be more wrong. An eccentric is someone who wears odd costumes or collects big balls of string. Mr. Charles and Mr. Shadi weren't eccentrics; they were holy men. If you truly want to love your neighbor as yourself, what better place to start than by wishing him or her a good day -- and really meaning it, from the bottom of your heart? That's what Mr. Charles did. As for Mr. Shadi's Christmas displays, he wasn't even a Christian. But he knew his neighbors were, so he created the displays to wish them well in a language they could understand. As Louis Armstrong sang: "I see folks shaking hands, saying, 'How do you do?'/What they're really saying is 'I love you.'/And I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world!'" � � � __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/