The Borderlands

On my walk I pass a yard with flocks of two types of fake birds. There is a group of fake Canadian geese and a neighboring group of fake pink flamingos. On this particular morning, the two groups apparently wandered a little too close to one another. The result was this image of a goose pinning a pink flamingo to the ground by its neck. It was like a scene from an all fowl production of West Side Story and the Sharks and the Jets finally rumble.

I wonder if the homeowner staged this scene to be funny or if a neighbor had looked at all these fake birds for as long as they could stand. Either way, it certainly captured my attention. A strange sight indeed amidst all the other yards full of inflatable holiday cheer.

Life is that way for us all. In the midst of the best of times, the harsh realities of sickness and struggle are never far away from us. By the same token, in the midst of the hardest struggle, love and light are as close as the next sunrise. We are always living in that borderland between the geese and the flamingos. And sometimes they merge.

The story we remember this season is set in this borderland. We have lowly shepherds and lofty angels, taxes and new birth, those who come to adore and one who seeks to destroy, God and humans. This is why the story holds such power across the ages. Though long ago, and to me in a land far away, this story takes place in our world because it takes place in this borderland. God came to us then, and comes to us today, in the real world where we live, always between the geese and the flamingos.

Peace.