Hello and Merry Christmas, dear readers!
In the past few weeks, we’ve waded into the waiting season of Advent. I’m waist-deep in memory and longing as I tuck Christmas decorations into corners of my home, thinking a bit about what once was and wondering about what could be. Advent embodies this season of in-between we’re experiencing right now. We are always waiting for the fullness of redemption, it seems.
Last week, I unwrapped our small, hand-carved olive wood nativity from crinkled cellophane bags and placed it in the dining room, all the while grumbling to myself because it felt as if I was trying to conjure false cheer while currently living in a bizarre alternate reality.
We bought the nativity from a tourist shop located just outside the gates of Shepherds’ Fields in Bethlehem, and the memory of that trip to Israel unfurled like a ribbon from my memory, as I unwrapped and placed each carved piece on the table. When visiting Bethlehem, visitors must cross from Israel through a no man’s land into the West Bank. Our guide, an Israeli Jew, was forced to leave us at the border after arranging for a Palestinian guide to pick us up beyond the barrier. He said, as a Jew, he wasn’t allowed to visit the other side. He didn’t promise us that the next guide would be waiting. He said he “hoped” the man would be there to greet us.
“What if he’s not?” Michael asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and told us he would return hours later to pick us up.
He left us standing at the border, and after waving an uncertain goodbye, we crossed through empty stalls of bullet pocked metal barriers. We slid our passports through a small window opening to a soldier sitting behind bullet proof glass. He was our only witness. There was no one else there to see us pass over.
On the other side, we were relieved to find our new guide waiting for us. We spent the day in his company, moving from various holy sites where bells chimed, the scent of incense lingered, and pilgrims chanted and wailed in supplication. It was a feast for the senses, but the beautiful pageantry of it left me feeling conflicted. As a lifelong believer, I’d anticipated a deep sense of oneness or awe, inspiration or mystery to accompany me in Bethlehem, and instead I felt as if I was missing something rich and complex lingering on the edges, just beyond my ability to comprehend it.
The closest I came to grasping it, was during our visit to the Shepherds’ Fields. It’s likely these fields are a proxy for the real location, but regardless, the sweeping views, the simplicity of a few notes of a hymn caught on the wind, the expanse of sky above us helped me to enter the story of Christ’s incarnation with greater clarity and depth. The mystery was in the wind, in the soft hum of music, in the great expanse of field, in the simplicity and quiet.
This memory keeps me company now, as we enter Advent and the Christmas season. I’m reminded of so many conflicting sights and sounds and experiences of that one day in Bethlehem (and oh, how Bethlehem is a history book of contradictions). The bullet wounds in metal, rules about who may enter, the beauty, the pain, the peace, the questions, the tourists, the pilgrims, the Jews, the Christians, the absence, the mystery, the longing, the presence. I’m grateful for all of it.
Even though I couldn’t grasp the fullness of Christ in the way I hoped to in those moments, it was enough to reach for the edges of his story, to touch the corner of his world with my own flesh and realize it already lived inside of me. There is healing in small acts of faith, even when all we have is a tentative hand reaching for a sign of his existence.
We are a world crying out for redemption, asking for a big sign that we are not forgotten. And instead of big signs, Jesus steps into this moment with us in the most unexpected ways, requiring us to pay attention to the small, the humble, the inconspicuous.
He is there in the snatches of a hymn carried on a loose wind. Emmanuel—God with us. Bound to flesh, spirit free.
