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This past Saturday morning, I woke up and made the mistake of checking out CNN.com before I did anything else. The first story I found was this one about a church in Florida planning a Qur'an-burning event.
G'head. Give it a read. I'll wait.
Now, I usually try to stay very calm and composed on the Internet, and work hard at not speaking ill of anyone, but I have to be honest: reading that article sent me into a blind rage. I started sputtering to my husband about everything I thought was wrong with this, and ranting and raving and generally being completely incoherent. But then, eventually, my apoplexia subsided, and I was left with only one thought:
Something needed to be done about this.
I tried to come up with some ideas of how I could protest the actions of this church, and even turned to Twitter for ideas. As I thought about it, I remembered an experience I had with my friend Kelly on the phone a few years ago. She was having a bit of a rough time of it, so I spontaneously said, "Give me your address, I want to send you something." She gave it to me, and later that day, I slid a photograph I had of a sunflower in an envelope with a note that said, "Hey -- a friend of mine once told me that she couldn't look at a sunflower without smiling. Hopefully this will work for you, too." Then I stuck a stamp on it and put it in the mail.
Months later, I ran into Kelly at a BlogHer conference, and at one point she mentioned she still had the photograph, placed in a location where she could see it. "It works," she said. "I smile when I look at it."
I was so touched that she told me this, and it made me realize that photographs are really powerful -- I mean, words are meaningful, but let's face it, when you send an email, it often gets deleted or archived. Regular cards and letters might get shoved into a shoebox or a drawer somewhere. But photographs, man, they get displayed. In fact, the realization prompted me to host a photodrive on my blog for a local children's hospital here in Houston last year that was wildly successful ...
... Hmm.
Maybe the power of photography could be used to bring about peace, as well?
The more I thought about it, the more this seemed like a good idea -- and so, Photobomb 2010 was born. I decided that I would petition my readers to send me photographs with their images of peace, complete with a message of peace written on the back. Once I'd collected them all, I'd put them in a giant box and send it to the church. A big huge box of goodness, making it very clear that we are in vehement disagreement with the policies and position of this church.
Are you with me?
I hope so. And if you are, here's how it works.
1. Print a photo you've taken -- one that depicts an image of peace. It can be of anything: your favourite pet, a flower, a sunset, whatever. You can print one image or more, or lots of prints of one image, or lots of prints of lots of images -- seriously, the more images the merrier. It just needs to convey and emotion of peace (and for some inspiration, I just happen to have a Flickr set of my favourite peace images -- it can honestly be anything so long as it makes you feel peaceful). Whatever. It's up to you. Please, no smaller than 4"x6," and no larger than 8"x10." And remember: this does not have to be professional quality -- just pick a photo you've taken that you love and feels peaceful.
2. On the back of the photograph, write a simple message of peace. I'll leave it to you to decide what you want to say, but it can be something like the following:
Give peace a chance.
Do not engage in behaviour that typifies the
