A Day Without Flamingos

© Jeff McGraw Adobe Stock

A flock of flamingos financed my first youth mission trip.

I think I got the initial idea from a book about youth ministry mission trip fundraisers, but in the hands of our high-achieving and innovative high school youth group, it evolved into a trip-defining cash cow. Here’s the gist: You sneak into a neighborhood, under cover of darkness, and plant a bunch of gaudy plastic lawn flamingos in a church member’s front yard. Around the neck of the lead bird hangs a Ziplock bag containing an explanation, instructions, and some self-addressed stamped envelopes. In essence, it’s a clever reminder that our youth group will be heading to the Yúcatan of Mexico this summer and could use your support. But we won’t be inclined to relocate the flamingos to the next yard on the list until you send in a donation for the trip.

Extortion was never so much fun.

The plastic flock migrated around our town for several months, embarrassing homeowners and gathering up donation checks. The flamingos were given names along the way (the lead birds were Norm and Ethel), were featured on our hot-pink team t-shirts that year, and re-emerged to continue their tyranny of shame for two future trips.

Now imagine my joy, as both a birdwatcher and as the instigator of this unorthodox fundraising method, when our hosts in Mexico told us that, for our upcoming fourth trip, they would be taking us on a boat excursion to a bona fide flamingo sanctuary. Our team of youth and chaperones took a day off from our cement-pouring and brick-laying labors to travel by bus from Mérida to Celestún, where we boarded boats and motored upstream through mangroves, to finally arrive in a cove that can only be described as… PINK.

The cove was inundated with thousands of flamingos, wading in the shallows or soaring alongside our boats, gliding in pretty-in-pink formations. And when I say pink, I truly mean pink. Pink like a taffeta prom dress. Pink like a Barbiecore convention. When flamingos fly, they show off crisp black on the trailing edge of their wings, an accent that only makes the pink seem pinker. Sure, it's honestly a bit more salmon-colored when the lighting's right, but in the presence of a thousand of them, I promise you your brain is only thinking to itself, "Wow, that's pink." The color is mesmerizing; it’s no surprise that a flock of flamingos is referred to as a flamboyance. It’s power-pink, like Vegas neon, and we were engulfed in it, our camera shutters firing in rapid-shot and yet barely audible over all the honking (flamingos sound like Canada Geese but more nasal and angsty-screamy).

Flamingos in Celestún, © 2021 Timo Mitzen, Macaulay Library

Some fun facts about flamingos (or what my daughter, in her younger years, simply referred to as “Mingos”) that I learned on the trip:

1. Flamingo chicks are born an uninteresting gray; their color develops over two to three years due to the carotenoids found in their diet of algae and brine shrimp.

2. Flamingo chicks are also born with relatively straight bills. As they develop, the beak shapes itself downward, with strainers called lamellae, and since the lower mandible is larger than the upper — the reverse of most other birds — flamingos strain more effectively if they feed upside-down. Which they do.

3. Boating in a cove with a couple thousand of them is an absolute shock to the senses.

But here’s the moral to the story. Two summers later I was serving the same mission but with a different youth group. None of them had yet experienced the pink paradise of Celestún, and our host had agreed to another excursion to see them. Trust me, I hyped this trip up big-time. “Kids, prepare to be blown away by the majesty of our Lord. You won’t believe how many flamingos you can cram into one cove. You won’t be able to hear yourself over all the angsty-honking. Set your camera presets to maximum awesomeness.” We boarded the bus, did the drive, paid the fare, boarded the boats, motored upstream, entered the cove, and behold…

No flamingos.

The same cove, devoid of pink, was a far more eerie, forlorn, swampy place. Gone was the neon wonder. Gone was the excited sound of bird-teeming life overhead. A sad disappointed silence had replaced the excited rumpus of the prior trip. At least that’s how I remember it — although I also recall some sarcastic laughter and reasonably good-natured “loserville” jokes from the team. The members of that fateful three-hour tour have still not let me live it down.

So, did you know that a flock of flamingos will happily travel up to fifty miles in a day to find better food options? Yeah, neither did I.

We scoured the shores until we found a lone pair of flamingos holding stone-still like shell-shocked tourists. Whatever the memo regarding breakfast plans for the morning had been, they didn’t get it. And while we could at least report that we had seen flamingos on the trip, my youth group was clearly unimpressed.

Those Pesky Things Called Wings

Birders will tell you that birds are fickle and unpredictable. When someone posts a rarity in our county text thread, others will quickly head to the spot mentioned, but often to discover that the bird has already vacated. I remember asking a birder once for the last location of an American Bittern in a nearby wetland. They responded, “Yesterday he was along the left shore, but I noticed that he had two of these pesky things called wings… so all bets are off.”

Wherever my anticipated flamboyance of flamingos was on the day of our visitation, it was probably their gain and clearly our loss. But that’s how it works; the flashes of wonder we see in the world today might hide from us tomorrow. Maybe we assume that today’s beauties will still be waiting for us in the same exact location two years from now, or that we can always expect plenty more of the same good that we’ve already tasted. Instead, the Scriptures remind us, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Proverbs 27:1, James 4:14). We return to the scene of the sublime, only to discover our favorite drive rerouted, our favorite trail inaccessible, our favorite restaurant closed. Our health takes a difficult turn. Our kids get too old for bedtime stories. With the exception of our Lord himself — the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8, Exodus 3:14) — change is inevitable.

The good things in our life have wings, which means they can easily fly away — a truth that Proverbs 23:5 alludes to when it warns, “Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle." The things we seek sometimes have a habit of flying off. That’s the hard reality, and it keeps us humble when we’re hyping our youth groups with tales of hot-pink wonder, or confidently making plans for the next quarter, or making assumptions about tomorrow’s health or capacities. After all, our very lives will also one day flap those pesky wings: “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10).

This is a morose, Ecclesiastes sort of truth. But how do we live in light of it today? That’s where the joy flies in.

First, we savor the wonders of the moment. His mercies are new every morning; that’s the joyous truth even in a book with a title like Lamentations. Some days will be full of the flamboyance of grace; enjoy them. There’s nothing better to do under the sun than to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Delighting in his wonders and thanking him for them — this does glorify him, and joy will accompany us when we do so (Ecclesiastes 8:15). Today, look for life’s flamingos: God’s surprising vivid beauty on display. The moment might be fleeting; don’t assume it will be there tomorrow. Enjoy the gift today.

But also, we live for things permanent. These momentary flashes of beauty are signposts to something more solid, or what C.S. Lewis called “not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” Lewis uses the impermanence of simple joys to remind us of the day we were made for. So does the author of Hebrews, when he writes, “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). Your present is not permanent. That’s good news if your present is a swampy eerie mess right now. But that’s also good news if your present is relatively bright, full of brilliant flying colors. Don’t neglect the regular reminders that, for those who trust in the permanent work of an ever-present savior, something brighter awaits: an enduring home in an incorruptible body with our unchangeable Lord.

© 2016 Doug Hommert, Macaulay Library