I always liked Frost’s “Mending Wall.” Every year my eighth-graders conjured a rather
robust discussion of walls and fences.
Quite surprising, some might say, yet these students aptly posed and pondered
a smart sampling of good and bad reasons that people have barriers. Last Saturday the poem resurfaced as my
husband and I rebuilt a gate. The old,
rotten slats had lost most of their strength, falling victim to a frustrated
meter reader who pulled off the metal handle, leaving rusted nails exposed
among teetering wood. We unhinged it all
and started from scratch. Measuring,
sawing, nailing, we hung the new wood but with unexpected pause. I peered through partial slats with a
pleasure I hadn’t known before. A host of
thoughts converged. “May we put
larger gaps between the slats?” I asked my husband. A new sight of pastoral green captured me for
a moment, as the old gate’s slats had been flush, without gaps, and you couldn’t
see through. This new view offered a stillness, a serenity. And I remembered my eighth-graders discussing.
“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling
out,” Frost said. And did we have any real
requirement now to “wall in” the grass? No
neighboring livestock to separate from. No real need. Instead
of closing doors, in this case a gate, to keep people out, the Bible tells us
to go into the world. Jesus says
in Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.”
I didn’t want to shut people out. This peaceful new green
could remind us all of life and hope. In
John 10:9 Jesus says, “I am the gate, whoever enters through me will be
saved. He will come in and go out, and
find pasture.” And so my husband agreed to
widen the gate’s gaps. Now I walk to
that side of the house more often because of the pleasure it brings. I never knew replacing a gate would deliver such delight. Lord, let our doors
and gates swing open. Let the world see the peace You bring.
