File this under Non-fiction

I have to be honest, I didn’t feel the same anticipation I once felt at the beginning of the IBEX weekly excursion. If history is an ocean, I’m up to my eyes in facts and inundated with the salty smell of the sea. But, during a stop on our fieldtrip Wednesday, I was pulled out of my daze from overexposure to history as we approached Bethlehem. During the ascent to Bethlehem, I was whisked back to childhood memories of a swaddling infant laying in a wooden manger, surrounded by family, shepherds and beast alike all waiting upon the Messiah. I even started singing, "O, Little Town of Bethlehem" conjuring up childhood memories of Nativity re-enactments with boys dressed as shepherds and wise men, and i remember the awkward realization that playing the part of Joseph means you have to hold Mary's hand, or at least that's what the old women in the church made my brother do for their pictures. (i considered the casting of Joseph for boys who don't care about cooties.) BUT Bethlehem is not and was never a landscape worthy of my childhood imagination or the flannelgraph embellishments at church. As far as i could see, Bethlehem was a dirty, poorly-constructed middle eastern town fighting through a thin facade of peace and modernity to grab at every passing tourist dollar-just like Jerusalem and Jericho. I realized i have been lied to. Whimsical notions of a picturesque Bethlehem flew in my mind like a pigeon with it's wings pinned down. People in a fairy tale don't need salvation-these people do. I was paralyzed upon realizing God took the form of man among real real real men. Bethlehem is real. Jesus came as an infant to people this city, not to a fairy-tale setting, but to a real city.