November 9 + The Berlin Wall, Carl Sagan and The North Country

Berlin Wall 1977
"Isolation is torture"
JDL

November 9 + Twenty Five years ago today the Berlin Wall fell. It wasn't a passive action, it was brought down by people. I had just finished presiding at a wedding in Glenwood Springs in 1989 and was at the Mexican restaurant, in the bar, because they were full. The TV was on and it wasn't sports, but news, with gripping images of people climbing over the wall. I have a piece of that wall in a drawer at home.

Today is also the birthday of Carl Sagan (1934), one of my favorite scientists, who with his gentle manner also took down walls, walls of ignorance and fear and gave people the chance to embrace wonder toward the world with an attitude of skepticism. He wrote:

"My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method."

Cold and grey here today. Just like I remember it. A great place to study Lutheran theology, which in some ways is also cold and grey.  A good thing really. Not crazy but real, like the world.