The Czech Republic table at Global Fair (the annual multicultural festival hosted by EMM with displays from all the missionaries home this summer and delicious ethnic food from local people and organizations) included our very own Lennon Wall - adapted for this context with encouragement to draw or write your own hopes and dreams for love and peace around the world. What a fun experience to watch this transform into such a colorful, festive piece. Hoping this can become a tradition for the Czech table every year!
Prior
to 1989 when communism ruled Czechoslovakia, western pop songs were
banned by Communist authorities, and especially John Lennon´s songs
because it was praising freedom that didn’t exist in the country.
When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, he became a sort of hero to
youth and his picture was painted on this wall, along with graffiti
defying the authorities. Although they risked prison for this
expression of feelings and activity against the state, it didn't keep
people from slipping there at night to scrawl graffiti first in the
form of Beatles lyrics and odes to Lennon, and then their own
feelings and dreams. The Communist police tried repeatedly to
whitewash over the portrait and messages of peace, but they could
never manage to keep the wall clean.
The
Lennon Wall represented not only a memorial to John Lennon and his
ideas for peace, but also a monument to free speech and the
non-violent rebellion of Czech youth against the regime. In 1998 the
wall had to go through reconstruction of its crumbling facade but the
spirit of the wall lives on. It used to be covered in anti-Communist
graffiti; now it is covered in messages of love and peace.
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| The actual Lennon Wall in Prague |
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