Lionel Hughes
The Maybridge Ukrainian Orthodox Church is still used for summer gatherings.
"Pontiffs! Pontiffs! We are all pontiffs haranguing one another, brandishing our croziers at one another, dogmatizing, threatening anathemas!" Thomas Merton
Church yards in remote places don't necessarily make stories—not good ones at least. This is a principle I have always applied to magazine editing. It makes some of my editorial decisions easy.
Church yards do, however, make for two very important things: they make great places to explore the beauty of light with a camera and, on a good day, they make deep impressions that are well kept to yourself.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant said that only in graveyards do you find perpetual peace. I'm not sure that the impulse silent tomb stones create in us to shut up qualifies as perpetual peace. Graveyards do expose the utter stupidity of opining—they mock the urgency to dogmatize about anything. They are excellent tonics against the stew of opinion in which we all exist from day to day.
The dead care as little about your opinion as they have the luxury of caring about each other's.
So grab a camera, find one of Saskatchewan's many time-worn church yards, and deliver yourself from the surfeit of harangue, dogma, and threat in the world. Find the light.