For whatever reason this morning, I was hunting through old images and came across this shot that I had taken in 2015.
I had been invited to shoot a pagan festival in the farmlands around Lakeland and remember driving down an unlit narrow country road to a place I had never been before on a Halloween evening.
For a few moments there wasn’t even a distant sign of a building anywhere. It was just me and my car, driving into an unknown darkness.
I didn’t even know any of the people that were supposed to be there, because the guy who invited me wasn’t going to be there for another couple of hours but had just told the landowner that I was coming.
This is one of those stories that could easily end “and he was never heard of again”. And that thought sat vividly towards the front of my mind.
Once I found the farm opening, I saw a handful of parked cars and could see the celebration a hundred yards or so beyond the farm house.
When I reached the group, it was about 15 or 20 strong and I found and introduced myself to the farmer. “Jim sent me” sounded as lame then as it does now in writing it, but I got a warm handshake and introduced further to a couple of the organizers.
Though they certainly did make me feel welcome, I mostly stayed on the peripheral taking pics of the fire spinners and here is my favorite from the night.
Now in truth, there was very little about that moment that was remarkable or even that kept it in my memory. It took stumbling across these images to even remind me of the event.
But as I breezed through the images this morning, they reminded me of something that I am missing and quite possibly something that we all yearn for … simpler times.
Being 2015, it was obviously before COVID and it was also before the Trump normalization of hate and racism that is currently so pervasive.
And yet, 2015 isn’t really that long ago.
But in these five years, how the world has changed and how sad our lives have become because of it.
I am not trying to be political and while I am mildly hopeful of a change at the top soon, I remain concerned that now that the scab has been picked off the hate and racism, it will still engulf us for years to come.
People are so polarized now and they have been openly allowed to vent their hate, that there may be no easy return from the precipice that we have been led to.
Do all the bigots, racists, misogynists, suddenly become decent human beings again just because of a change of administration? Somehow, I doubt it.
There has been a cultural shift that has damaged us all and the lives we are trying to live. And it has resulted in mutual intolerance to where each side is convinced of their righteousness, without a need to listen or understand.
Like most of my friends, I do not believe “there are good folk on both sides” when it comes to certain issues. Some issues are very much black and white.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to listen to them, or try to understand where they are coming from, and try to bring them into the fold.
We need to begin inclusiveness and education as a way of calming the hate and putting out the fires that have so effectively been stoked.
Only then do we then begin to return to simpler times.
So, simpler times is a wonderful goal to aim for when times are anything but simple. They will often equate to a mere phrase that is a cornerstone of all humanities, of all religions, and of all dreams.
Peace on Earth
… just a thought!
