High Fenced Brexit.

Today the UK has voted to leave the European Union.
Today is a sad day.
A day of endings not beginnings.
A day of uncertainty not calm.
A day when what divides us begins to become greater than what unites us.
A day when the door has been opened for racism and hatred and economic collapse.

In our garden we have take down our very, high fence and replaced it with a very low one.
Our high fence has been blown down by strong winds too many times.
It has kept us hidden away for too long.
And it is strange how such a simple action is slowly changing our lives.
While the UK must now begin to burn bridges and build higher fences, our garden has become lighter, brighter, more open.
And, more importantly, as I hang out the washing in the morning, I chat to our shy, private neighbour over the fence.
She and her husband have lived in their house on this road for 58 years.
We have lived in ours for most of 17 years. 
And yet in all that time of unapproachable closeness, we have known so little about each other.
The odd smile, a wave, a passing hello.
But there is something about low fences and busying ourselves with washing-hanging that has made it easier for us to talk.
One morning, clothes pegs in hand, she told me that her son was in hospital.
" He has leukemia," she says, staring away into the blueness of a cloud-free sky.
So now, each morning we stand and chat over the fence.
Just enough space between us for her to feel safe.
"All my son's friends from work visit him in hospital every day," she tells me, her smile sad and  proud.
I smile too,.
" He must be very special," I say.
" He's talking about all the things he's going to do once he is home again," she says, smoothing hope into the clean white sheets she has hung out to dry.
" The chemo's started," she tells me the next day.
I hang out mismatched socks and wrinkled shirts as I listen.
" Hopefully he can go home when it's finished.."
The flowers between our gardens have begun to intertwine.
There is no high fence to stop them, scented petals and deep green leaves, reaching across the space  between our lives,  white roses and purple sweet peas curling through the gaps.
Slowly, the 17 year barrier to a gentle friendship is being dismantled.
I carry a bag of washing out into the sunshine of a Summer morning.
Our neighbour is standing in her garden, staring at her empty washing line.
It is almost as though she has been waiting for me.
" I just want to tell you...," she says, quiet and dignified," I just want to say,... our son passed away at 7 o'clock this morning.
I drop the bag of washing .
Clothes scatter across the still-dew-drenched grass. 
I try to stop the tears.
I don't know him, their son.
For all this time, our fences have been too high for us to meet.
But her sense of loss is as palpable and gaping as the emptiness of her washing-line.
" Don't be sad," she says, " I keep thinking he wouldn't want us to be sad."
I feel the sun, warm on my face.
It seems wrong, somehow, this beautiful morning.
" I"m only telling you because you have been so kind,"  she says " you've been asking about him every day and I thought you would want to know."
And she turns and walks back inside.
There will be no washing to hang out today.

There are no words that can describe the painful hollowness of her grief.
It is a gaping, unfilllable hole.
No mother should watch her son die.
But if there is anything we can do to help, we will do it.
Our fence, at least, is low enough now.

I wish that was true of Europe.

We create so many barriers and boundaries in our fragile world.
We build higher and higher fences and stronger and stronger walls. -
It makes it much easier to hide and turn a blind eye to the suffering and poverty on the other side. 
There ares so many reasons why helping our neighbours is not convenient.
Why carrying the burden of others is too heavy a load.
The saddest thing about this vote to leave a united Europe is the reason why it has happened.
It is a vote based mostly on xenophobia.
A vote by people who have forgotten that the European Union was created to maintain peace between nations that had been warring for a thousand years.
A vote based on the fear that we are too kind, too open- minded, too generous.
A vote that goes against the very essence of what it means to be human.

This morning as we hang out the washing, our world has become smaller,sadder, less predictable, less certain...
But we don't have to become less human because of that

it is time to start tearing down high fences.