What Walls Say, Security, and some pics from Honduras

Yes, that's me on December 8. 2013

Colorful leaf giving its all for Christmas.

Walking to church today, on this my 52nd birthday, on streets and sidewalks in Tegucigalpa the walls around each home in the neighborhoods sent clear messages. Not that I've gotten any crazier than you knew me to be; am not saying these walls have voices or speak with audible sound. But being a student of communication, have realized that sound is not required to convey meaning between humans. How people live sends signals. These Tegucigalpa walls could be construed any number of ways: Stay Out, Go No Further This Way, Walk Elsewhere, You Are Not Welcome Here, My Fortress, Don't Look Because You Can't See, You Cannot Be Trusted, You Are Separate From Us. 

Beth and I went hiking at La Tigra National Park in November.

Beth and I had coffee in El Valle de Angeles at La Estancia.

 Trujillo on north coast. First place for Christian mass in Western Hemisphere.

Mostly, the walls made it clear I was on the outside, excluded. That's one thing I'd like to note in this writing, the sense of exclusion and how it can affect a community.  Another point I'd like to make: in the US, despite our very heightened sense of individualism, we strike a living balance between separateness and togetherness, inclusiveness, in a way I value enough to keep. To me, that's one way the word security achieves meaning for a community or nation: the measures we take to keep what we value.

Lake Yojoa

However, the word "security" today, especially in national terms, usually conjures images of up-armored, gun-toting police or armies and weapon systems in national defense, metaphoric Big Walls. I argue that when a family, community or nation overemphasizes these methods for their "security," they misspend resources. That is, if security is disproportionately achieved through force or defense (a big imposing fence or wall), then life behind that wall will suffer, will be less than it could be. 

Another view of Lake Yojoa

Am talking not only in material terms. Of course, fences or walls cost money and paying for them takes resources away from other important facets of life, say education or health or highways at the macro-nation level. At the micro level on my own plot of land (which I hope to have some day), I will choose to distribute limited resources according to how I will live. If I overspend on a defensive wall, there is less available for vital parts of life: house, garden, yard, decent furniture, qualities that make life enjoyable. Security on the micro level translates to the macro level: big fat expensive fence walls do not make for a home nor do big expensive armies and weapons make for a nation, at least one worth living in. Viz the Soviet Union, North Korea, or consider Pakistan, where the Army (those who live on the wall) owns the nation, financially, economically, and psychologically. 

Yacht race on Lake Yojoa in early October

Am also talking about mentalities of obsessing on big fences, force or weapons to build walls against outsiders. This mental dynamic affects people inside the wall, those on that wall defending, and those outside the wall. In the first case, people inside a big and looming wall can have a latent tendency to live in fear, which can cause knee jerk and overreaction, herd instinct, a quickness to misunderstand. Indeed, a wall's primary function, it seems to me, is to make people inside feel safe. Whether or not they truly are can be up for debate. For those people that must or choose to serve on the wall, they usually default to considering others outside the wall as a threat; it’s a matter of profession. They usually become part of the wall. This can take away from a person’s availability to interact and lessens their innovative, creative side, an important quality for a thriving people. In other words, entrepreneurship is not valued in the military and policing professions; risk/reward is calculated in life and death terms and failure is an unacceptable outcome. (I prefer to live in a society where failure is not a black mark, second and third and fourth and seven times seventy seven chances exist.) Finally, people outside the wall can feel excluded, arrogated at, distrusted. A high, impregnable wall by default and at the outset accuses a passerby. I would argue this initiates an exchange between people that can end up in a violent overthrow, e.g. Cuba, or a goofy government that accuses the wealthy and enervates incentive to produce, e.g. Venezuela.

These women in La Jigua insisted on a pic with me. Must be the hair.

A pig in Chepelares, one of the towns in which I observed the elections.

As you can probably tell, I miss the neighborhoods of the US where I can walk and see front doors, houses, warm lights inside, and those inside can see me walking down the street, if they choose. There is no default to fear or distrust or accuse. We have a way of life I value, indeed enough to be willing to put my life on the wall to defend it. But to say that is security falls short. Security comes from the way of life created by all of us in our community, our civil way in our nation. Doctors, bankers, waiters, teachers, construction workers, even lawyers, every walk of life in our nation contributes to our security because we have all taken measures to keep what we value. We adhere to laws, written and unwritten, certain customs and manners, so we can enjoy what we have built together and will continue to build through our Constitution. We live in a relatively open civic system; we got a good thing going. Let me finish with an hypothesis: there is a time and place for a wall, but the less visible and less costly they are, the higher the quality of life will be for that family, community or nation that secures themselves with unity in heart and manner. And am proud our Pledge of Allegiance acknowledges the Spiritual Power, the invisible and most effective security, and says outright, “…one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” 

Waterfall near Lake Yojoa

If you find walls and people and thinking intriguing, please let me refer you to a poem by Robert Frost, mending the fence between his property and that of his neighbor: 

...He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me-
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Frost both questions and acknowledges a human need for boundaries, reflecting existence on this Earth. 

God bless your holiday season. Also, isn't it crazy that Christians celebrate the birth of Yeshua at this time of year, when sunlight is at its nadir? What kind of God would send his Child to Earth at such a moment? Some kind of Other Worldly But Here Love. Wishing you comfort and joy. Love, Tim