What is a Brick Wall?

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What is a Brick Wall? Let me answer this question by involving you in the answer. I want you to imagine that today is Monday, September 10, 2001. September 11 is not yet part of our reality. I am going to ask you to envision that tomorrow, September 11, as improbable as it may seem, two passenger planes are going to fly into the Twin Towers.

Now, I know that it is impossible for you to go back to September 10 because we did experience September 11. But as you think about what you might have envisioned, do you think that your feelings would come even remotely close to how you actually felt as the event itself unfolded? Could you have imagined how the "hit" would have unfolded, the collapse of the towers, and your feelings as you watched? Could you have imagined the enormous impact on you emotionally, on the country, or the world?

Not at all. In order to understand September 11, you had to actually experience it. September 11 is what I would call a Brick Wall event. Brick Wall events are events that, for those who experience them, change everything. Nothing is the same after it as it was before it. We even heard the words immediately after the attack: "nothing will ever be the same again." And interestingly, we knew nothing would be the same again, even though we had no idea what living September 12 would be like. As the days, weeks, and months have progressed, we have discovered the difference between September 10 and September 12. Every day, we hear on the news, from our neighbors, or from within ourselves, "since September 11." Our use of "September 11" as the catchword for the terrorist attacks on America emphasizes the significance of the event as an event in time/ in history."

The World of the Dying CD Set

The Brick Wall is about life after events that change our life forever.

"After Auschwitz" is the title of a book written over 30 years ago by Richard Rubenstein. In the title, Rubenstein is informing the reader that the Holocaust was a Brick Wall event for the Jewish people. The Jewish world hit a Brick Wall of near extinction. The western world hit a Brick Wall and had to ask itself how this could happen in a civilized world. Nothing would ever be the same again. For those who might not have felt the emotional impact of the title of that book before September 11, they now have a glimpse of its meaning. Auschwitz, like September 11, has come to represent the event it is part of, even though it is not the event itself (the Holocaust or the terrorist attacks).

Christian theologians, Alice and Roy Eckhardt illustrated the impact of a Brick Wall event when they suggested that the way we tell time should reflect that the Holocaust altered the world. Instead of BCE, Before the Common Era, or CE, the Common Era, we should us BFS, Before the Final Solution, and FS, Final Solution. Time, in effect, starts over, and it starts over in 1941 as FS 1 (year 1), the year the death camps came into existence.

Their idea, then, reflects the impact another event had on the world years ago, when time started over again, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Time soon was altered to read, BC, Before Christ, and AD, in the Year of our Lord.

The Brick Wall is about life after, after events that would be defined as life-altering. I offer three presentations, life after receiving a terminal prognosis, life after the death of a loved one, and life after the Holocaust for the Christian world. The presentations are about those who have experienced life both before and after these particular events, because they are the ones who know the difference. They are our teachers. Those of us who are not dying, have not lost a loved one to death, and who did not live as a Christian in Europe before the Holocaust, can learn lessons for life from those who have, without having experienced the event personally as we did September 11.

Please look around the web site for more details.

And, welcome to the worlds after being hit by a Brick Wall, and how those worlds can change our lives for the better, in the way we live and in the way we love.