Are You Putting Up Walls or Building Bridges?

I war against you

You war against me…

- “Border Wall” by Michelle Rhea Goddard

On May 27, 2020, I read an article that?seemed to sum up the sentiments in our country at the time. That article and some lyrics that I had already been chewing on became the basis for my latest single, “Border Wall.”

The death and destruction that we experienced as a nation and as a people, was truly on another level in 2020. I think it is easy to say that not one person in the U.S. has not in some way, shape, or form been impacted by Covid, either through loss of a loved one, loss of a job, loss of normalcy; there has been a loss in all forms from this virus. What perhaps was not anticipated was the loss of any semblance of human decency. While I was in Nashville sitting in my apartment thinking about and observing life at that time, I watched people in my town, which only a few weeks earlier had come together to help each other during the horrendous tornadoes, start to tear each other down rather than build each other up. What could cause such a shift in opinion and lack of seeing your neighbor as yourself??

I feel like I'm battling society

Humanity is raging

Inside of me

Can't I just breathe

Feeling it all up

Inside of me

All choked up?

Suffocating instead of loving

- “Border Wall”

The phrase ‘border wall’ kept coming to mind because it spoke to the barricades that communities were using to isolate and alienate others that did not agree with their points of view. I’ve never in my lifetime seen anything like the divisiveness that happened during the summer of 2020. What I wanted to understand is, given the mudslinging and arrows being lobbed at one another, how do we start to piece and stitch these communities back together again??

I started writing “Border Wall” as a commentary on how we got to this point and a hard reflection on what will continue to happen if we don't change and start to come together again. The irony of life is that we all want the same basic liberties and freedoms but when you give power to a few, the many suffer.?

It says on the dollar?

In God we trust

A penny doesn't lie

Neither do my words

If the sparrow speaks

How many people gotta die

Before we get to fly?

- “Border Wall”

And I say this not with a political agenda but rather through the lens of the Bible, interestingly enough. There have been numerous examples of kings that deceived and went against God's wishes and the whole community suffered as a result.?

Woe to him who builds his house with unrighteousness

and his chambers with injustice,

who uses his neighbor’s services without wages,

and gives him nothing for his work,

who says, “I will build myself a roomy house

and large chambers,”

and cuts out its windows,

paneling it with cedar

and painting it with vermilion.

But your eyes and your heart

are intent only on your covetousness

and on shedding innocent blood

and on oppression and violence.

- Jeremiah 22:13-14, 17

(Modern English Version)

For all of us to be free, we really all have to be free and the power needs to be distributed equally amongst all where everyone is seen and heard, not just a few at the top. Where the people's people actually represent the people and not special interests. Where humanity can say you've done a good job at the end of the day rather than what has been happening lately where the good job is measured in how many people can be deceived or power stripped away. In my humble opinion, nobody likes to be imprisoned or controlled by another, when you feel like your voice is being silenced by a machine that you cannot control, tensions mount until they get to the boiling point of which we've seen over the last 18 months.

Can I look at you?

And you look at me

Through everything that?

You?

You don't see

Seeing me

Don't we all just want to be free?

- “Border Wall”

To get back to the state, or perhaps for the first time, who knows, where we actually can have all voices being heard and seen, and strip away this divisiveness that we've created as a result of a power struggle is to realize that at the end of the day we all die and then who has the power?

Really??

While you may win the fight?

On this side of Life

I pray that you find a way

To the other side?

Through the dandelion fluff

And dust?

As they say

Dust to dust and?

Ashes to ashes

- “Border Wall”

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Michelle Rhea Goddard?is a techie turned Americana singer songwriter based in Nashville. You can follow her adventures on?Instagram,?Facebook?and ?YouTube; and read more of her musings on her?blog.