The Impossible has Happened

Yes, that's right the Impossible has happened.   Where were you 20 years ago today?  In Germany and throughout Europe and North America, the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has been celebrated today.

On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill used the phrase the "Iron Curtain" in a speech in Westminster College in Fulton, MO.  That reference to the social, political and economic division of Europe became symbolized by the Berlin Wall.  The date of Churchill's speech is often cited as the start of the Cold War.  More than a continent was divided.  With the division of Europe and the Cold War, a mindset was developed.  That mindset was a lens through which the world would be seen and understood by millions.  What was possible was framed by that mindset.

As a child, I grew up with the notion that the Berlin Wall and the accompanying divergent worldviews could not - would not - be overcome.  The differences epitomized by the Berlin Wall were thought to be too great to change, but then the impossible happened.   The Wall didn't just crumbled over time or through neglect.  It was torn down by people taking to the streets.  People could walk where they couldn't before. People could cross from one part of the city to the other.  The impossible happened.

We are so often limited by what we think is possible.  That frame becomes the ceiling telling us peace is not reality.  Nonviolence will never be embraced by peoples or nations.  Nuclear weapons can not be laid aside - it just won't happen.  Even our expressions, "Get Real!" makes us recoil from our bold hopes back to the world of incremementalism and few changes.

People had been taught the mindset of the Cold War and increasing militarism.  The mindset taught them not to hope, not to try, not to stand for your vision of what the world could be.  Thankfully, the people in Berlin challenged that mindset - without giving up - until it crumbled before the eyes.  With the crumbling of that mindset, a wall could fall, streets could be open, paths to communications, social life and discovery could be explored.

Let us not stop the exploration.

What are the mindsets we must give up and let crumble if we in North America are to be a people of peace, of nonviolence, of hope?