Finally, finally, a picture of The Spare in her full Fairie Festival regalia! Isn't she fetching?
The May Day Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farm is held in a section of rural Pennsylvania, just south of York. Almost every year, a group of extremist protesters take root along the road and shout venom through a megaphone at people going up to get inside the gates. These protesters call themselves Christians, although I'm not sure the very busy Jesus would agree. If memory serves from my Methodist Church days, Jesus wasn't big on declaring that some people were going to hell, no questions asked.
The protesters hold signs ("Pagans Will Burn") and shout Biblical scripture, all of which is met with much mirth from the festival attendees. As one jolly fellow wearing little more than a wrap walked past them, the protesters shouted, "Men who wear skirts will go to Hell!" To which the festival attendees replied, chanting together: "Jesus wore a skirt. Jesus wore a skirt."
I'll take a shortcut here and just say LOL.
Except all is not funny. When Spare and I passed the protesters, she turned to give them the raspberry and stopped short. There, standing among them, was a little girl just the age of many of the little girls all dressed up for fairy tea parties and fun dancing in the drum circles. Only this little girl stood miserably amongst the haters, staring through the fence slats as if in a daze. She must have been hot, because everyone else was.
I feel for that poor little girl. What must her life be like? These protesters (no one from the local community even knows who they are) remind one of the Westboro maggots. They're just shouting to hear themselves and air their superiority. What do they do at home at night, when the day and the hateful shouting are done? Do they warn the poor little girl against Pagans? Probably. Does she hate herself for wishing she could go to the festival, all dressed like a fairy? Probably.
What a world.
9 comments:
Spare is a vision of faery splendiferousness!
That's terrible. The little girl doesn't know any better, and she never may if this keeps going.
People can be so awful sometimes.
Poor little girl. It's a shame she has to put up with those nasty thinkers.
And yes, spare looks great!
That's so sad. I'm going to have to think happy thoughts for that poor little girl, that she learns to think for herself and leaves the hate behind.
(My word verification is 'tracks'. I wonder how blogger comes up with these)
~Illisse
We'll all just have to clap even louder!
The Spare looks delightful!
When I was an AIDS activist in New York in the early 1990s, I attended a Catholic mass at St. Patrick's cathedral. I wore an ACT UP T-shirt when I went in. A parishioner (who in hindsight was clearly a closeted gay--my gaydar just told me so) stood up and blocked me from going to communion--and the ushers let him. It was an NYC cop who came up to us and pulled the guy off of me, but by then communion was over. I said loudly to the cop and the man blocking me, "I am a Catholic and have as much right to go to communion as any of you."
Your protestors remind me of those small-minded, small-hearted parishioners at St. Patrick's, whose actions made it all-so-easy for me to abandon a religion whose attention to its Messiah's message of love for all (the parable of Zaccheus, anyone?) was lip-service only. "You shall know they are Christians by our love." Hmmm. Really? Can't say that was my experience.
I'm much happier as a post-Christian--the Pagans actually live with the beauty, balance, and delight that I think Jesus was trying to teach his followers.
I remember going to the Hill Cumorah Pageant one year (the Mormon telling of their religion) and walking through the protesters to get to the amphitheatre. I remember seeing a little girl, who was maybe five or six, standing like a deer in the headlights as a corpulent man wearing a sandwich board and carrying a sign both proclaiming the sins of Mormonism was actually leaning down to scream in her face. I have to assume that she was going to the Pageant, which would be why she was the object of such venom. And the cops just watched this display of sadistic bigotry, probably because the protester would cry police discrimination if he was stopped from screaming at this little girl. Lots of people are disgusting, but the most important thing is to remember that not all of them are.
she's a beauty
Heartbreaking. Poor little girl.
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