Harsh Reality

FTLComm - Tisdale - sunday, March 24, 2002

You don't have to be a photographer or artist to realise that what is sometimes remarkably beautiful is also remarkably hostile. From childhood we are taught to focus on the positive and if we can not ignore the negative, at least give it another name that will not make it seem so bad. Yesterday in the late afternoon we set out to take a few pictures with the sun slipping toward the Southwestern horizon and the cold air

having giving the melting snow surfaces a sheen of transparent reflective ice. Were winter to be a being we would know that it is still enormously powerful and alive, but clawing away just to hold on against the onslaught of inevitable spring and summer, while deep in its dark and terrible heart beats a desparate coldness that will fight on for a week or so more then be forced from the scene until it regains its hold on the living in late October.

The camera and its CCD are just an extention of our eyes and the mind to which it is connected so that even the images which capture what may or may not be there, are tempered by the filter of our own perceptions. But darkness and light must always be in balance. Life is of no consequence without the possiblity of death and good is the complete opposite of evil. Contrast is the

real awareness that lets us both see and perceive. But just as cold is the absense of heat, so darkness is the absense of light. Now this will help you to understand the true nature of evil. Evil does no more exist than does coldness or darkness, it is the absence of good. So the old saying that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing, reflects this reality. Wilst working through these thoughts be also aware that poverty is

not a thing unto itself, but it too is the absense of wealth. Sharing and generousity are not only the responsibility of those with wealth, but oddly enough, those who live most in poverty understand most the concept of sharing and generousity. So this Sunday, let your eyes follow the gentle and subtle texture of the snow above and notice that the shadows are temporary, stealing across the positive image only to highlight the positive with the negative. When ever and where ever you can, continue to emphasis the warmth, the good, the light in your life and share it with those around you, so that they too may come out of the darkness.