Posted by Benjamin on: 07.01.2008 /
Yesterday my wife and I were over in one of the richer neighborhoods in Seattle, and poking around for public beach access so she could jump into Lake Washington, as it was a scorcher of a day. We finally found a parking lot down near the water with a little beat up sign that said “Public Beach Access” with an arrow. There was a tiny little path down to a non beach–the trees and foliage grew right up to the water, and there was a rock sticking out into the water, next to a 6 foot high fence with barbed wire. My wife went for a swim. I stood and looked and pondered.
The 6 foot high fence was separating us from a private club of some sort. It had about 150 feet of real sandy beach, with sand that was obviously brought in. (You have to understand that *no* Washington State beach has *real* sand naturally.) There were children’s toys, with slides going into the water. And a long dock extending out into the water, with expensive looking yachts moored there. Etc.
The barbed wire was tilted outward, clearly designed to keep people from moving from our side to the other side, and not vice versa.
The funny thing was, my wife was greatly enjoying her swim, and I was standing watching this brilliant lightning storm away on the other side of the lake, and there was not even one person on that private beach, although it was a scorcher of a day–the hottest all summer. The water was beautiful.
I was cranky about that fence and that private beach for a few minutes. But I realized that I am guilty of exactly what the members of the private beach club are guilty of, only on a much larger scale. It’s like a small metaphor for the way the U.S. and the rest of the western world treats the “huddled masses” so nobly spoken of in the written poetry at the base of the Statue of Liberty. We have large scale barbed wire fences, and other various devices (including, for instance, bombers and fighters and cluster weapons) to make sure all those dirty people don’t come over to our side of the fence and enjoy our expensive private beach. I don’t see any easy solution to this–neither for myself, nor for the owners of that private beach on Lake Washington.
The possible solutions seem to fall into two categories. Invite the huddled masses over into the wealth, or leave the wealth and join the huddled masses. Neither solution set seems enormously practicable, although the latter seems more doable than the former, from my perspective. Maybe they are all over there enjoying the water and the lightning storms, while I am sitting over here feeling depressed.
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Comment by: Brad
1 07/1/08 11:32 AM | Comment Link |Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin…..**SIGH**….don’t give people the wrong idea. There are exactly THREE beaches in Washington with real sand.
Cheers,
Brad
Comment by: Benjamin
2 07/1/08 1:42 PM | Comment Link |Brad,
I had no idea. Where are they?
(I think we might have to clarify what we mean by “real sand”)
Comment by: Helen
3 07/2/08 6:02 AM | Comment Link |Great allegory Benjamin.
Brian McLaren talks about this in Everything Must Change - how our solution to the inequity of the world is not to share, but to set up security that keeps them out when they inevitably try to get where life is better. He says “What parent wouldn’t do everything they can to cross border so they can raise their child where children live 30 years longer??”
Comment by: Janice
4 07/2/08 2:09 PM | Comment Link |Isn’t there a third option? To seek some sort of ‘justice’ so that the beach on the barbed wire side of life looks similar to the beach on the other side? Why should the public beach be SO much worse off than the private beach? Private beaches will never go away, but we can work to make other beaches nicer, more liveable. Not everyone will even consider trying to join the private beach….they may not want to, why should they? Why can’t they stay where they are IF they so choose? Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have their own nice beach though….
just thinkin’…
Comment by: benjamin
5 07/2/08 3:28 PM | Comment Link |Janice,
I love your just thinkin’.
Your “why” resonates with me. I wish I understood the answer. I am interested what it is that constitutes the difference between a 6 foot high fence with an additional 18 inches of outward tilted barbed wire, and a more neighborly wall of the sort that Robert Frost talks about in his “Mending Wall”
SOMETHING there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
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.”
Helen,
Wow–indeed! Brian does have a way of putting things just so. I wonder what our (non)response to the width of the divide–the enormity of the disparity–says about us? It seems a lot easier to mostly have a nonresponse/ignore it from this rather nicer side of the fence. One thinks of this passage from the story of the rich man and Lazarus:
Comment by: joe
6 07/3/08 2:52 AM | Comment Link |Mmm.. difficult one.
Using a different example, there are plenty of large houses around where we live. It would be difficult to move around if I had fits of jealousy every time I saw one.
Does anyone deserve that much more wealth and nice stuff than the rest of us? Probably not. It probably wouldn’t work if they were made to share, although this has been done before with some long term effect.
On the global scale, of course we are ridiculously rich and wasteful. We certainly act like gated communities. Being the kind of people that we are, we would rather not take Jesus at his word so we don’t ’sell our houses and give everything we have to the poor’ and rather contextualise and theologise away these hard sayings.
And that is a dilemma for those of us who seek justice, but recognise that our lifestyles are a significant barrier to a better world.
On the other hand, someone hardened by jealousy and bitterness or broken by self-hatred is not much use either. Most of the time, the best we can do is to use all the resources we have to assist those who do not have their full share, reduce and simplify our own lives and appreciate what we have by using it sparingly. The best way to show our appreciation of fine wine, as Chesterton said, is to not drink too much of it.
Comment by: Janice
7 07/3/08 8:24 AM | Comment Link |TOTALLY appreciate your thoughts Joe.
The other thing that I was thinking about on my drive home last night was the idea that God has placed us each where we are (not that we aren’t free to move around) and shouldn’t people be able to live and ‘flourish’ where God has placed them? I mean I didn’t ask to be born here, God placed me here - in the same way someone in a third world country didn’t ask to be born there, why should they suffer for it? And why should they be forced to leave their “God given” home?
On the flip side, why should I be graced with all that I have? We are blessed with material wealth but perhaps suffer spiritually for it…
(not sure if that all came out as I intended, my thoughts sometimes don’t transfer well to type)
I just have more tothink about now….
Comment by: Benjamin
8 07/3/08 10:31 AM | Comment Link |Joe
Your link seemed not to have worked on “this has been done before” and now I’m terribly curious what you were linking.