What the World Could Be

In the musical Hadestown, the company sings a song called “Why We Build the Wall.” Hades asks, “Why do we build the wall?” Cerberus has trained them in their response: “The wall keeps out the enemy … Because we have and they have not / Because they want what we have got.” It’s your classic example of people in power who try to control us with fear. They separate us, which keeps us powerless. Hades kept people in hell through fear of the “other” then separated them from each other with a wall.

According to the story in Greek mythology, Orpheus has breached the wall and walked into Hades in order to rescue Eurydice. He also intends to walk back out of a place where no one leaves. There’s a moment in the musical when the company considers that they could also leave Hadestown. If one person can show them the way out, they can then follow.

I can’t remember the details of the program, but I can still remember his name: Marvin Evans. One summer in the early 1970’s, racial tensions (and sometimes riots) were flaring up in different places of the country. At the grassroots, though, some worked to promote understanding. During one summer, my mom and others in our town signed up for an exchange program where black kids from Evansville came to spend a week with white families in Loogootee. The next week, the white kids would go and spend a week in their homes. The program was based on a simple idea: spending time with people we don’t know breaks down walls and helps us to see how much we have in common.

Marvin Evans came and spent the week with us. I was jealous of my brother because he and Marvin were the same age, so they hung out together. We were excited for another new friend, though, and got to enjoy the experience vicariously as tag-alongs.

Growing up in a very small town in southern Indiana, we just didn’t know any black people. But that summer was an exciting week with these new visitors in the community. I would guess my mom got pushback from some of her relatives and friends, but I wasn’t old enough to be aware of the tensions.

However, looking back, there was tension. I remember spending the day at the city pool, excited about the black kids among us. But looking around, I saw that some of the regulars were not at the pool that day – because of these black kids. Nobody said anything, but their absence spoke volumes.

When I think about that exchange program all those years ago, I see now that it was a small group of people trying to lead others, showing them a way to a better version of the world we were living in. They planted seeds in their children to see things differently and to not accept what was dividing us, to dream of something better than prejudice and misunderstanding.

Hermes described Orpheus this way: “He could make you see how the world could be / In spite of the way that it is.” Let’s be like Orpheus – and like the people in my hometown who saw the value in “others.” As it says in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

In these times of division, our small actions can show others that there is a way out. Let’s start walking, everyone.