After the journey

Sometimes it’s what you do after the journey that matters. We spent four weeks preparing ourselves for Bethlehem. Four weeks to make a journey that we take every year. We see the sights—Mary nine months pregnant plodding along, Joseph new to this family thing worried about getting it right, an over-crowded city and an inn with no rooms, the stable and its manger ready for sacred use, angels singing good news to sleepy shepherds, a star shining and shining and shining until Magi from afar finally show up—and continue on without giving them as much attention as maybe they deserve. Then we celebrate our arrival and quickly leave, maybe not even waiting around to see who else has made the trip. Did it matter at all?

More than 20 years ago I went to Israel with a church group. I thought it would be the first of many such trips. Unfortunately, I haven’t been back yet, but that trip changed me in ways I wouldn’t understand for several years. Once we landed in Tel Aviv, there was a push to get us quickly out to a safer place. The day we were supposed to go to Caesarea Philippi we were rerouted because there was fear of retaliation for a suicide bombing. I was shocked when the bus stopped at a checkpoint before being allowed to enter Bethlehem. The Holocaust Museum with the display of children’s shoes and the names being read aloud kept me awake more than one night.

Then there was the night a few of us went to the baths somewhere in Jerusalem. I was approached by two young men. We were talking about the usual kinds of things young people talk about when they first meet. We exchanged names, which I no longer remember. They were 19-year-old twins who were reluctant to tell me where they were from. They were certain that if they told me where the lived I would not talk with them anymore. They were Palestinian and they told me that most Americans don’t like Palestinians. When I asked them why, they didn’t really know either. They said something about religion and politics and the conversation moved on.