On walls

This week was an absolutely historic week in our countries politics. Marriage equality has come to all 50 states, the Affordable Care Act remained the law of the land, and the confederate flag, a symbol of racism to so many has been taken down from the South Carolina state house has been taken down (in quite dramatic fashion). And while this happened, Obama gave provided perhaps his greatest oratory moment in his eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a tragic victim of the Charleston 9 shooting. There have been other legislative decisions, which seem to have divided families, friends and parties causing an epidemic of Facebook un-friending.

When I was a kid, I remember thinking just how funny fences were. I remember asking why don’t we just take the fence down if we’re going to keep jumping over it? In elementary school, when we learned what borders were and thought just how confusing and absurd that was. What about this dirt makes it Missouri dirt and what about that dirt makes it Illinois dirt? As elementary school progressed, learning of actual fences were designed to keep people out and border protection was a thing. I just wanted to scream that borders are just made up in our minds, why doesn’t anyone else see this?!

These walls become famous. The Berlin Wall, designed to keep Western fascist out of East Germany. The Great Wall of China, designed to keep out invaders but later to symbolize protection from outside influence of Western influence. Hadrian’s Wall kept Rome’s colony from Scotland and remains the largest wall in Europe.  Hailing walls as architectural feats would be like calling the guillotine a great feat of engineering or calling avoiding eye contact with a homeless man as self protection.

When I think of how despicable walls actually are, I’m reminded of one of my favorite spoken word poets, Andrea Gibson. In her poem “Gospel Salt”, she says:

“in that 1906 California earthquake, when 28,000 buildings fell and the people said, “When 28,000 buildings fall do you know how many walls are no longer there?”

When we have no walls left, what are we left with? Each other…and this has to be a good thing, or at the very least, a start. Another poet I admire, Buddy Wakefield says,

“please stop inviting walls into wide open spaces”. Building walls of ideologies, politics, and who people choose to love? A swing from the hammer of compassion and common sense will destroy that, and I for one will be happy to pick up the rubble with you if it means we’ll talk to each other.

I’ve seen this article being passed around Catholic circles, and while admittedly disagreeing with some of their assertions, the three main points of staying an institution that ‘listens before it speaks, encourages love, and encourages working together starting with dialog’ resonates. How can we be a united people if we cannot even speak with one another? Tell me how building walls promote unity: when Jesus begged ”that they may all be one”; when the Buddha proposed that “he who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.” And did not Muhammad speaks: “Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and earth were a unity joined together before We clove them asunder?

If our conversational goals can be unity instead of conversion, we might just stay in our chairs across from one another instead of throwing them at each other. We could build a wall of Sweet and Low, Equal, and coffee creamers, and that would be just as ridiculous to me as the Berlin Wall. When that first hammer flew, a people cried, “can we talk?”