Calvin comments

The first time I saw the Reformation Wall with Calvin, Farrel, Beze and Knox I went home and took a long hot shower to wash off the sense of depression I felt. To me their faces were marked by hate and anger and carried none of the joy I feel religion should bring. And the more I read about Calvin in research for a future novel, the more he makes me shudder. His burning of Michael Servatus near what is now the Hospital de Geneve, because Servatus wanted to debate the trinity is said to have been so badly received that it marked the beginning of religious tolerance which is still too weakly developed. How many people have died in the my-god-is-better-than-your-god battles down to the modern day right down to this week's implication of Blackwater's Eric Prince, for wanting to murder muslims just because they are muslims and not Christians.

I try and avoid the wall whenever I'm in Place Neuve. The rest of the park is beautiful and I can wend my way to the university without seeing it. However, it is on every computer in the language lab. I doubt that I can use it as an excuse to avoid the lab, for a quick click and those faces disappear.

And maybe it is the idea of walls in general that bothers me. The Red Cross musuem did an exhibition on walls and the horrors they lead to, be it the Berlin Wall, the Gaza Wall or the Texas Wall. To quote Vincente Fox last month in Barcelona, "We should be building bridges instead of walls."

None of those faces against the Reformation Wall look like they are interested in bridge building unless it is to enclose those who endorse their beliefs without question.

I'm not alone in my reaction to the wall. A minister friend and his wife, former Bostonian neighbours visited, and I felt that the wall was a good thing to show. We stood for a few minutes and he suggested we go.

A little later we were walking through Paquis, where the prostitutes hand out and more than one was hanging out that day both in position and wares well displayed. The minister told me he preferred the hookers to the wall and his wife agreed. To deny the joys in the world, is a denial of whatever dieties or powers have brought forth.