Steve West: Fence me in

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, September 29th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next: fences.

It’s almost October, which means you’ll likely be out in the yard raking leaves pretty soon. World’s Steve West now with some ruminations about the boundaries that define our yards and our lives

STEVE WEST, COMMENTATOR: When we moved into our home over 40 years ago, there was no fence enclosing our backyard. The forest from which our subdivision was hewed lapped up nearly to our back door. With only woods and a country lane behind us, our existence and identity dribbled out into the world that preceded us, one of forest life and piney woods. Our claim was staked by orange-tasseled wooden posts in the corners of our lot. An invisible and imaginary line ran between them and the street in front of our home, a trapezoid imposed on an unruly Creation. With that, our lives were bounded.

Later, we erected a fence only because of the arrival of our faithful German Shepherd, to contain her. We needn’t have bothered. Given her interest in what was going on in the home and not out, she lingered near, her longing face framed by the doors. She died over 20 years ago, and our children who, but for the fence, may have wandered off into the dark woods now live outside these lines—and yet, surely, they remain tethered here.

There’s not much need for a fence now. The deer easily vault the fence’s four feet, bed down in our pine straw, and purloin our bird seed from the feeders. Our neighbor’s malleable, near liquid cat glides through its rungs effortlessly, melting into the leafy ether of the diminished woodland. He unfailingly returns under cover of darkness, admitting nothing. Squirrels chatter over its heights. And birds, they have another universe, a sky unbounded.

Walking along the fence today, I run a stick across its wire mesh. It makes a kind of music, dull but resonant, and I recall the clang of other fences, like the one I occasionally slammed into playing dodgeball on an elementary school court; or the oversize bars fencing the zoo elephant–when I whacked that one, it went thunk-thunk-thunk as in don’t-even-think-about-it.

Or, I think of the tapping of my wedding ring on the fence behind which we waited for a train to take us away - the sound of bliss bounded by vow.

Fences help define us. Without a fence we may forget who we are; with a fence we are free to become more of who we are. I remember the Psalmist’s words, “The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places,” “indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”

Those ancient words resonate as I look at the only home my wife and I have ever owned, at the place where we raised our children, at the land where beloved pets roamed and where several are buried. It has been a pleasant place.

I let go of the fence. I go inside. I look out the unshuttered windows and sing along with Sam Cooke and The Soul Stirrers, “Lord be a fence around me everyday, Lord be a fence today.”

I’m Steve West.

MUSIC: ["JESUS BE A FENCE AROUND ME"]

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