parable

Watch this short film titled "Oh Sheep!" [sic—no vocative comma]

Partway through this, I was already thinking about joking that the moral of the story was fairly anti-Trumpian: don't build walls because forcible separation only creates more suffering. Then I saw the ending, which came after an attempt at finding a wall-free solution. At first, I was at sea, confused and a bit chagrined that the story didn't seem to have a discernible moral. Then, as I thought more deeply about what I'd seen, I began to realize that, as parables go, the power of this story lies in the fact that it can be interpreted in multiple ways. Just as is true with holy scriptures, you enter into a dialogue with the text, coming at it from your own personal angle and seeing what only you can see through the lens—the gift—of your experience and insights.

So: what do you see, Dear Reader? Is this a story about nothing? A bit of random fun? Or might there be a message, here? And if so, what might that message be?