The Wall

There lies deep human tragedy in the building of a wall through a territory for the
sole purpose of protecting two peoples from each other’s, and from their own, ferocious
violence. As with all that is truly tragic, that objective circumstances drive this wall
forward with seeming inevitability does not reduce, but rather more acutely defines the
tragic nature of the situation. And as with all tragedies, it is important to ask how and
where this one first began.
Where did the wall first begin to be built? Only one answer to this is
commensurate with the magnitude of the tragedy: The wall’s beginnings are to be found
deep within each of us, for the wall was first built in human hearts, and few human hearts
indeed remain still free from its stony constructions and pointed barbs.
It was in hearts that people, due to some combination of their ethnic, religious and
political associations, were first excluded, barred and stripped of their rights to empathy
and compassion. This wall was built in hearts long before concrete, chain-link mesh and
barbed wire were erected into a physical structure. The physical wall is simply the
inevitable result of the wall in human hearts. With tragic inevitability, a lack of
compassion and respect has led to a willingness to accommodate injustice, and a
willingness to accommodate injustice to a willingness to employ violence. The response
to the outer violence has been to create a wall, but in truth the violence was the result of a
wall, not just the cause of one.
Much has been said about the tragedy caused by the wall, and about the tragedy of
the violence that preceded it. Almost as much has been said about the injustices suffered
in this conflict and that preceded it. The lack of human respect that underlies all of these
is not so often discussed. The lack of human compassion that pervades all of them is
rarely or never mentioned.
Perhaps it is sometimes necessary to see something manifested plainly before us
in the outer world before we can learn to recognize its manifestations within us. Perhaps
this wall has had to be erected outwardly in order that it may be torn down inwardly. For
it is in people’s hearts that they are fundamentally at odds with themselves; it is their
hearts that are divided, by a wall erected by themselves (under whatever pressure from
outward circumstances) and it is ultimately up to each person individually whether this
wall is broken down or persists. As long as it persists, we are divided within ourselves
and can never become whole, that is to say healthy, again.
Only when each of us finds the requisite strength to become whole can those
peoples, that is, those ethnic, religious and/or political communities to which we belong
begin to become whole and healthy. Only when the walls are broken down within human
hearts will empathy, compassion, mutual respect and, out of these, justice and peace
begin to take hold between and amongst humanity. Only when the inner wall has been
confronted will the outer wall become superfluous, and should these walls fall, they will
fall together in a supra-historical moment whose significance will outshine all of what
went before it.
The wall’s fate lies in each individual’s hands just as its birth took place within
individual hearts. Once the wall is brought tumbling down within us, with the astonishing
speed of a fundamentally healthy organism renewing a wounded part of itself, unifying
bonds will weave again within the peoples co-existing here, and this will replace the
chronic, wasting struggle of an organism, in its deepest existence unhealthy and
unwholesome, to attain outer health without facing the true sources of its disease.
Where is the wall being built? Where it began: within our hearts. Until it is
recognized there for what it is, the source of our tragic situation, we shall not be able to
overcome the tragedy, but shall play it out over and over again, blaming its oppressive
horrors on everything but their true cause, our own unhealthy condition.
“Physician, heal thyself, and then look to the salvation of thy peoples and thy
land.” Each of us shall find that the wall’s outer necessity crumbles as its inner challenge
is faced down. The force required is the force of our own restored humanity; out of this,
compassion and respect will grow just as inevitably as justice and peace must grow out of
compassion and respect. Then will we be whole and healthy again, and out of our
wholeness and health we will be able to renew our peoples and a land too long choked
with enmity and harrowed by hate.