And the Wall came crashing down

I didn’t feel it anymore. I couldn’t feel it anymore. I had to go to the place where some claim it to be tangible just to see if I belonged.

We walked along the walls, through the colors and smells of the marketplace, down the white stairs and onto the open plaza where I was supposed to feel a stirring.

We split up, boys to one side, girls to the other, and I approached the Wall.

Nothing.

Not ever a tiny flutter.

It had been an experiment. We thought about how to connect to the collective mourning. I haven’t bought in for a while and this just felt like another empty coffin to explore.

Okay — we’ll make it cultural, I thought. We’ll go to the site and we’ll talk about the history and we’ll connect the dots and give our traditions a nod instead of going to the beach.

The Wall isn’t even imposing anymore.

We left the teeming plaza and thought about moving on, but we wanted to see if there were sparks at the section we were taught was heretical.

Down the stairs and over the ancient ruins, we found the Wall waiting.

Quietly. Peacefully. Surrounded by boulders testifying history.

My soul stayed where I last left it; somewhere deep in unnecessary torment. My heart surged because I could see my roots deep beneath the sifted earth.

We stayed a while on the empty platform and I thought about making this our thing each year.

As we walked back up where crowds gathered in the cooling evening air, I could sense the separation from the masses and mourned the emptiness of a compromise no one seemed to care about.

“I’m going to write how empty it was,” I said. “I’m going to tell people they have to take some sort of stand to show there is more than one way.”

Then I read that the evidence of my history is in danger in that place and that Orthodoxy is using it as a battlefield and I lost my drive to fight.

We had our moment; the kids touched history.

Today a piece of that history fell where we stood the day before and shattered into the broken present.