For Wilshire Baptist Church
I love history, especially when there is some mystery involved. Like, what’s the story behind the brick wall behind our house? I also like the way history can point toward the future.
Our back property line is marked by a long, low brick wall that probably dates back to the first house built on the site in the early years of the 20th century. At 38 feet long, the wall doesn’t stretch the full length of our back yard, and at only 16 inches tall, it’s not going to keep anything in or out. So it has no function other than as a piece of landscape architecture from the past, and yet the wall is a prized possession, the answer to a chronic question, and perhaps a key to the future.
It’s a prized possession because, well, who doesn’t like a little bit of history on their land. I regard it fondly as a sort of ancient ruin — right up there with Stonehenge and the Roman aqueducts – and I intend to protect it and preserve it in a way that would be applauded by the Ministry of Antiquities or some such official agency.
The question it helps answer is, “Why don’t you put a fence around your back yard or at least across the back?” That’s a fair question that’s been asked by numerous guests, because from our back porch we can see the unpaved alley, the neighbor’s back yard and house, and beyond that Avenue D (Texas 78) and First Baptist Church. A fence would provide some buffer, but the wall sits on the property line with no room to build a fence behind it in the alley. And if we put up a fence in front of the wall, we’d have to fence out the wall and the trees that are just in front of it. So the wall stays, and there will be no fence.
As for a key to the future? On a recent Saturday morning after pulling weeds and clearing some brush, I squatted down at one of the tumbled ends of the wall and started playing with the loose pieces. Before long, I had gathered other loose bricks that were half buried on either side of the wall and added them to the mix. My goal was to try to bring the end of the wall to some sort of aesthetically pleasing conclusion. The jigsaw puzzler in me wanted to create a perfect square corner, but it was impossible. None of the broken pieces and random bricks in my pile fit together in a way that made any sense. But my blood is pretty much full-strength Scotch-Irish-English, and I started thinking about what I’ve seen in the English countryside where field stones were gathered up, sorted, and stacked to build walls that are both functional and beautiful in a rough sort of way. So I gave up on perfection and just stacked the bricks on top of each other.
And that may be the way we need to look at the future after this COVID-19 situation is over. We’re never going to be able to rebuild life as it was. Too much has changed; the pieces have been scattered and they won’t fit back together like they did. But, if we sort through the pieces and see how they fit with what we have newly built from scratch during this strange time, we might find that we can create something that is not just functional but is beautiful in its own unique way. Whether it is at school, work, church, community or family, there are enough good pieces of the past to create something special for the future.