The Fall of the Berlin Wall - 25 Years Ago Today

25 years ago today was when The Berlin Wall fell. The falling of the wall was one of the biggest international events, if not the biggest event, to happen during the formative years of Generation X. 

I had always wanted a piece of the wall of my own.

Having grown up Generation X, we saw pretty much everything crumble around us, from what we watched on the news, to our families and society in general. It was an era where a lot went wrong. That is why I clung to God throughout my childhood - everything fell apart around me and it was clear that nothing was going to be consistent. I took that faith into my adulthood as I've struggled with the larger questions like:

1) Is God really there?
2) If so, does he listen to our prayers?
3) If so, does he listen to me?

From the third question came this thing that I do every so often: I pray a prayer that would be mathematically impossible (or the odds would be astronomical) for these things to randomly come true - only possible for it to be answered by a Higher Power capable of anything. In other words, I ask for something incredibly detailed, profoundly specific, and extremely random so that I know that that if the prayer gets answered it is not just a coincidence but really God.

Since my connection to my generation is very important to me, and since the fall of the Wall was so important to the experience of my generation, this was my prayer that I prayed a few years ago:

"I would like you to give me my own piece of the Berlin Wall. I'd like it to be given to me by someone who was there right when (or soon after) the wall fell who chiseled it out themselves so I know it is the real thing. I would like that person to be a Gen Xer. I would like them to bring a large piece with them to my house, and then break off a smaller piece for me to keep so that I can see the larger piece it comes from and so I know it is 100% authentic. I'd like this all to happen right before the 25th anniversary of the falling of the wall."

Right as I was about to move away from Portland Oregon last spring, some friends came over to visit. One of my friends told me she had a gift for me - it was a poster she had bought on the street in Berlin shortly after the wall fell. She had kept it all those years in storage in her Portland house. She also had brought a piece of the wall to show me, and all the sudden she unexpectedly felt the inspiration to break off a piece of her piece to give to me. She borrowed a hammer, took her piece to the floor of my garage and broke off a piece for me.

I was in shock - the prayer had been answered down to every detail.  I grabbed my camera and took photos of the poster, the hammer, my piece of the wall...

What I learned from this experience:

1) We are all connected to something much larger to ourselves in a way much more substantial and tangible than we can imagine.
2) While we struggle with how much our prayers are heard and why some do not seem to get answered, prayers do get answered.
3) We are loved far, far beyond what we could possibly imagine.

The dust from the Berlin Wall sits in the seams in the cement of the garage in my old house in Portland Oregon, because there was a moment in space and time when the whole universe bent down and bowed before me so something extraordinary could happen.

The most consistent thing to happen in our lives - the lives of Generation X - was a constant crumbling of everything around us, and the biggest international event to happen in our formative years was the crumbling of a giant monolithic wall. As we head from one year in time to another, may all the walls of our lives fall - every wall that keeps us from something good - every wall that keeps us isolated, every wall that keeps us believing that our prayers go unheard...  

...our prayers are heard. 

For H.P. 

 (c) Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved. If anyone knows the photographer who took the picture for this poster, email me and I will credit them ~

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Five - The Berlin Wall as the Sun Descends

The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the significant world events of Gen X's formative years. From where it stood in Europe, it saw many days of cold, gray skies. Now a large piece of it looks out over the Simi Valley to the mountains where the sun descends on the desert and ocean breezes travel over open land. With my hand reverently touching the cement, I could feel a certain hope - I could feel it swallowing up hopelessness.

There have been walls in my life that held me in, that seemed insurmountable, that I feared would never let me out. When I have found the grace and the resolve to walk past those walls, it is has been astounding how those barriers began to seem so small compared to the limitless possibilities around them. Caught up in the problems we are facing today, it feels that things will never change. It's the larger picture that shows us that the potential of our lives is enormous. Beyond that, if we look out on the horizon, even while holding the broken pieces in our pockets of this fallen world that has disappointed us, we are reminded that there is something beyond this, something more than just this.

For those who grew up in a time of unraveling and seemingly endless crises in history, may you live to see a time when you can walk around it, and then past all of it, through the shadows of impermanence, and into the light of what does not fail us.  

May the possibilities swallow up the limits, may the hope swallow up the hopelessness.   

When our generation's time on this earth is done, when we are finally done walking the expanse of this day and age, may all of us get to that place on the horizon that we can now only strain to get even a glimpse of a place where there has never been walls, a place where there will be no more sorrow, a place where there will be no more pain....



"For believe me, this world that seems to us so substantial, is no more than shadowlands.  Real life has not yet begun."

                                                                                                                                    -  C.S. Lewis

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(c) 2012 photography and writing by Chloe - all rights reserved

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Four - The West Side of the Berlin Wall

While there are many pieces of the Berlin wall more or less this size in different parts of the world, I think this six ton piece is the most beautiful one. I was hoping to get some photos of this piece in California where it stands in the warm sun each day. I can't think of a more monumental symbol of history from the growing-up years of Generation X than the crumbling of this wall. So it was with enormous anticipation that I walked up to this slab of cement that includes the word "freedom" written on it. It was with humility for what this wall symbolized that I took these photos....

The Berlin Wall: Photography by Chloe

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In the weeks before approaching this wall, I imagined what it would be like to take photos of it. I was hoping that I could catch the sun behind it as it was descending. Beyond that, I was hoping I could capture sunflare coming out from behind the wall, exploding in colorful hues to mirror the artful graffiti on the cement. Everything I hoped for that day came true.

My guess is that these images came from a spray paint can held in the hands of a German Gen Xer. I hope to someday find out who it is. Here, in this beauty, is the artful soul of mankind that finds another way to survive, to begin again, and to create.   

Here's to hope...and to new beginnings.

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(c) 2013 photography and writing by Chloe - all rights reserved

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Three - The East Side of The Berlin Wall

I had thought that the entire Berlin wall was in a million tiny pieces. I'd seen fragments of the wall that could fit in your hand that friends had bought or received as gifts - gray cement with remnants of graffiti on one side - like too many puzzle pieces to ever be put back together. Watching the news as the people broke those pieces away with pick axes, hammers, chisels, and even bare human hands  was one of the most important historical memories in my Generation X youth.  Until recently, I didn't realize there are enormous slabs of the Berlin Wall in different parts of the world as monuments to history. One of these places is in Simi Valley, CA. 

When I look at the east side of this wall in all of its bleakness, I cannot help but think of how this is just one of a billion different walls that humans have created for each other over time. Throughout history, people and institutions have spent a lot of time trying to hold things in, or keep things out. These walls are created when you feel that any move you make will be judged unfairly. They are created when someone does something to make everyone else live in fear. They  are created when someone tells you that you cannot do something or that you are not good enough, or that or that your perceptions are not credible or that you are not allowed to believe what you believe.

Irina Ratushinska, a Russian Orthodox Christian writer, found herself in a Soviet labor camp for her ideas and beliefs. As a prisoner, Irina carved her poetry into bars of soap, and memorized the words until she washed them away. These words became books that were published later when she gained her freedom. 

So, reader, have you truly found your voice?

Does some wall hold you back? If some bar of soap or scrap of paper is near you, you can start writing now, you can start planning now.  If some laptop or stack of books is near you, you can start researching now.  Get ready now to speak the truth - when the walls come crumbling down, your story will be told - nothing, and no one will stop you.


"Gray is the color of hope."  

                                                                                         -Irina Ratushinska

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(c) 2012 photography and writing by Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved