A Pilgrimage to David’s Royal City“Next year—get this—we should celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem!” Sometimes bold ideas do come true. I birthed that bold idea years ago in the middle of the night in a borrowed room with wood panelled walls in East Nashville a few days after Christmas. Two friends and I had met up in Nashville and spent the night bar hopping honky tonks on Broadway. It was the type of pipe dream that comes after more than a few cans of Yazoo and has no intention of ever happening. Only this time it did—for them, that is, not for me. I was in grad school, broke, and married. They were broke and single. Somehow that middle of the night pipe dream took root and they booked tickets to Bethlehem. A little less than 12 months later, on Christmas Eve, those two friends texted me a picture of themselves at midnight mass in Bethlehem at the Church of the Nativity. They had big, dumb smiles on their faces that said, “We did it!” Am I a little bitter that I didn’t get to go? Of course. Do I resent my friends for making a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to celebrate Christmas in the same geographic location as the very first Christmas, standing in the same place where Mary birthed the Savior of the world? Absolutely not. I think what I was after, and my friends perhaps found, was an awareness of the transcendence of Christmas. Like Charlie Brown, we sometimes know what we’re supposed to feel at Christmas, but it gets lost in the parties, the decorations, and the gifts (not to mention year end tax planning and insurance open enrollment). It’s hard to take it all in, to experience the awe, the mystery, and the glory of God the Son making his own pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Maybe that’s what we’re all after this time of year. Secular or religious, we try to find something transcendent, something bigger than ourselves. We try to create something special for our kids to remember and maybe for us to remember too. Maybe that’s the way it should be. Maybe those moments of transcendence or awe—even the little ones we get from driving past light displays in a minivan—whet our appetite for something greater and set us off on a pilgrimage to find it. This issue of The Second Mountain has an article on the power of awe in our lives and the need to cultivate it, a video that helps us fight better in our relationships, and some poems read by the great David Whyte. I hope it encourages you to slow down and notice the beauty around you this holiday season. And maybe even let your imagination run wild on a bold idea. God knows we all need it. Happy Christmas, Joshua
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