Tuesday, March 15th "The Birth of the Messiah"

Today was a day of mixed emotions for me. We headed out in the morning to Bethlehem. Outside the city we stopped at the Shepherd's Fields and spent about an hour and a half or so there. It was very beautiful there (and this is in its reduced size, it used to be all fields but now it's cut off by a few settlements and towns popping up around it, I would love to have seen it when it was just fields). It was also surprisingly quiet. For a good chunk of the time we were there it was only our group, a few other groups came in but they quickly headed out. After we left here we stopped at an olive wood coop. There was a lot of really beautiful stuff here, but most of it was really expensive and I'd have no use for it, so I only picked up a few small things (a Jerusalem cross for my wall, and a few small carved pieces).
Lunch was really neat. We went to a place called something like the Shepherds Tent Restaurant. It was a big tent with booths and benches around tables. The booths and benches were covered in blankets and pillows, it had a desert feel to it. For lunch we had pita and the accompanying dishes (humus, baba ganoush, and all the rest), it was delicious, and the atmosphere was fun.
After lunch we headed into the city to visit the Basilica of the Nativity. First I was a little perturbed by the fact that it was such a large impoverished city, no O Little Town of Bethlehem, but O City with an unemployment rate in the 40's of Bethlehem... In the Basilica I experienced a mix of awe and frustration/cynicism. It is beautiful, the area around the Cave of the Nativity was filled, and I mean filled, with scents and icons, and hanging lamps (although some of these had Christmas tree ornaments on the bottom which I found comical). What bothered me about the Basilica was the sense of tourist site it gave me. I had trouble really being present to this Holy Site of my tradition, because of this sense of lining up and taking pictures, the sense of being a tourist pilgrimage. This continued to bother me throughout the day, it's something consistent throughout this area, but it really struck me here (maybe because it's the first place we had to wait in line to see something and then were sort of ushered through it to make way for the group behind us). It must have really been something to behold without this spirit of tourism.
When we came back we had a little time before Evening Prayer. Evening prayer was led by a friend of mine from St. Paul's K Street who is over here working with the State Department. After the service we went out to dinner. It was great catching up with him and hearing about his experiences working here. I also hadn't been into West Jerusalem yet so it was good to get over and see it. Very different from East Jerusalem where the Cathedral is, much more westernized.