W is for WALL

Our neighbours lived in a large house reached by a sweeping stone drive from the main road. Two huge stone pillars, supporting iron gates, marked the main entrance and each was flanked by a shorter white wall that ran for about six or seven yards in each direction. The whole entrance was shrouded in trees and on the lower side, beyond the entrance and down the hill, the wall had tapered into a dilapidated collection of large stones, about a foot high,sometimes a lot less and in places, missing altogether. Someone in their wisdom, had maintained a level of security by erecting a few strands of now loosely hanging barbed wire attached to some less than secure wooden posts. At the bottom of the hill, which marked the lower entrance to the premises, the wall reappeared, largely intact but in a crumbling state that offered no confidence regarding its longer term stability. However, a line of mature oak, beech and chestnut trees tended to deflect the visitor's eyes away from the structure and into the field beyond. This field, through which the driveway meandered down the hill, had once been a lawn though in all my time the grass length meant that it never resembled such. The owners were in their senior years and though I rarely saw them, they were very approachable and good neighbours for mum and dad. But the wall was where I spent most of my time, climbing on to it, walking along and perching on top of the pillar at the end. From that vantage point I could see the Callan river just a hundred yards away, the spires of Armagh Cathedral and the chestnuts on the old tree that formed an umbrella directly above me. Sadly, the wall, entrance, driveway and house are all gone now and a piece of history has been replaced by a black open fence.

The wall at primary school was a more sturdy affair, about seven feet high and also made of stone. It marked the boundaries of the playground on two sides and was one of our home bases in a game of rounders during PE. Built into the middle of one side was a small shed which acted as the coal bunker and in my 'senior' years at the school, I became a frequent visitor during the winter months to help stock the stove with enough coke to last the day or at least thaw the school milk. But it had its drawbacks. Though it was too high for even the tallest year seven pupil to climb over, it was never tall enough when a wayward shot flew over the imaginary crossbar at break time and so many a match was abandoned in the warm up until someone could pluck up enough courage to ask the neighbour to return our ball. I don't know who lived there but by their gruff reaction sometimes, I guessed they probably munched on children for breakfast, so I was never keen to become any better acquainted. We were a nuisance and, like their wall, they never got over it.

But this wall was much higher, almost twelve feet, made of solid concrete and reinforced. I t wasn't a wall for walking along or for asking for your ball back. It was there for a purpose, to keep people out but, more importantly to keep others in. On both sides life went on as normal, except on one side, normal was what the people had come to expect and was a world away from the other side of the wall. It had appeared, literally, overnight and had divided families and friends. Those who choose to oppose it paid the ultimate price and the wall was lined with a multitude of wooden crosses as testimony to their attempts. I visited Berlin once, long before the people pulled it down. From a viewpoint on the western side, I could see a world of grey, where colour did not exist and uniformity was the order of the day. I could see the site of Hitler's bunker, the watchtowers that kept a continuous vigil for potential escapees, the river that ran parallel and the rolls of barbed wire that looked as tense as some of the inhabitants and were more secure than those near home. This was a place from which the powers that be had ousted God in favour of a more man made regime but as I stood and surveyed the Fernseheturm or TV tower across the wall and built by the government, the sun came out and made a perfect cross on its centre dome.

And I thought of the believers inside the walls and that sign of the cross that, despite man's efforts to expel Him, God was still there and faithful as He had promised when He said 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.' And I thought of how, by faith, the walls of Jericho had collapsed and how the Berlin wall is now only history but God is our past, present and future. Keep building your faith!