by Flora Tang 

Only when you pass through
the land mines behind mesh fences
the barbed wire that slices
through the heart of the rugged desert,
do you arrive at,
the land between.

The land of both and the land of none,
a single paved path where you drag your baggage along
The land between the “welcome”-“goodbye” and the “goodbye”-“welcome”,
Where some never reach the “welcome”
because for some, this land between,
leads them to a land they own, but do not belong.
“Welcome,” for the fair-skinned foreigner with the baseball cap and hiker’s backpack,
“Welcome,” for the righteous ones of us returning home, returning home.
But it is the people between who forever belong to the land between:
they who are a song with no music
can only be heard in the land
with no name.

So you pace
back
and forth
in this land with no name
where others are rushed through, but you must linger on.
you stand up
and sit down again
on those cheap plastic waiting benches that already lost their shine
in this narrow strip of land between
a date palm and an olive tree
forever waiting
waiting
for the welcome
that is yours

as you stare into
this valley of the shadow of death,
where each nameless grain of sand
illuminates the brilliance of life,
where you
too
your olive skin and your glistening tears
your loss and your piercing pain
radiate His luminous glory
whose weight you alone must bear

for the land between is a land of solitude,
where the sojourner has none for company,
whose crown of thorns none else can ever carry.

For only when you pass through
the mesh fences which do not shield you from the land mines,
the rugged desert whose heart bleeds from the piercing barbed wire,
can you arrive at
the land between.

In this poem, the author reflects on the experience of many travelers, particularly in the Middle East—waiting to pass through a border. Christians are a pilgrim people, also a people “between”—between the borders of birth and death, between the event of Christ’s redemption and the fulfillment of our salvation in heaven. What borders do you find yourself between this Lent? Where in your life are waiting on God?

Image: Qasr al-Yahud, June 2017.