A tilled field.


5/17/2020

So, Buck. what are you trying to communicate with this photo?  If you take a picture, you obviously want to say something.  Here, we have a field of tilled earth, with the Sewanee Cross and a powerline cut in the background.

A thoughtful person might have many responses simultaneously - agriculture, conservation, the holy ground of an alma mater.

That same person might see a vast swath of monoculture in an otherwise incredibly biodiverse swath of North America.  A zone of human control over the world around them.  Vast amounts of petrochemicals and synthetic additives to produce a crop, and an economy.

That same person, myself in particular, might also see something else.  I have prepared a field such as this.  It is not easy, or cheap, but it is necessary.  What you see here is lots of time, consideration, and money pinned on the hope of making a profit.

Hope, not expectation, is why somebody fueled up his tractor, timed his activity to the weather, and disced up his field.  This is the singular motivation I want to emphasize right now- hope.  There is no promise this crop will come in.  But, it is what a farmer does-prepare the ground, sow the seed in the hope of a fruitful end.

This is a credo we could all live by right now.  Sow with the hope of a favorable outcome.  More than ever though, we need to recognize these might be fantastical hopes, we may not meet them, but we must try.  After all, what is hope without casting doubts aside for the promise of a better outcome?

Is anyone going to emerge from the Corona Virus unscathed?  No.  We will all bear some mark - some hit, be it financial, psychological, or, at the extreme, the loss of a loved one.  But we must hang on to hope.  Without hope, we're doomed.

This is not to discard the very important warnings about how life should be lived in the coming time.  The coming time must be filled with hope, compassion for our fellow travelers, a little bit more patience than might be the norm.

This whole thing was unforeseen, yet inevitable.  There was no way we were going to dodge a bullet like this forever.  It was coming, and we chose to ignore it in very recent history.  Now, we have to deal with it.  The only way to deal with it is either hope or despair.  I choose hope.


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