On the morning of the winter solstice, when all was black, Jerry opened his front door and tripped over a box. “A Gift for You From Harry and David,” the sticker read.
Before the box was even opened, family memories spilled forth. His dad used this fruit mail order company at Christmas time for his top clients and always included his own family. Jerry recalled his excitement over the tower of bright colored boxes tied with wide, red ribbon. Each box brimmed with delectables: apples, pears, almonds, cheese, chocolate truffles and more.
However, this tripped-over box was different, about three feet high and narrow. He carried it upstairs, stuck a knife in its sides and pulled out a live Christmas tree, full of branches perfectly tapered. A note hung on the top which read “Missing you. Love, Mom and Dad.”
He reached back in the box and retrieved a set of lights and two boxes of Christmas ornaments. In moments, white twinkly lights laced the tree, while silver and red chrome balls hung from its branches. He admired his Christmas wonder, then dashed off to work.
That night, he melted into his rocking chair with a steaming cup of chamomile tea and gazed at his Charlie Brown tree. What a contrast to the robust trees of his youth loaded with heavy ornaments and bulbous lights. They anchored sleepless Christmas Eves. Christmas mornings he tumbled down the stairs and gasped at the bounty of wrapped gifts, then he madly ripped them open to unveil his new treasures.
Now here he was, 27, in a nowhere town, with a nowhere job, surviving below poverty level, with no sitings of the divine, one siting of the northern lights, and a profound loneliness.
Maybe dad was right. Maybe he was way off course.
He was so tired of it all.
At this outpost, it would be easy to disappear. Forever. Who would know? Who would care? Just one less grain of sand in the galaxy.
Why not jump off the balcony. Or put my head in the gas oven.
Come to Jerusalem next Christmas.
Who said that? Was that God? Or was that me?
And if that was God, do I have the guts to respond?
Why should I go?
Is this really a time to ask questions? You’re considering offing yourself and this call is saving your life. You’re going to question that?
It was like a dare. Is he all in for God or not? Is he willing to do whatever He asks or not?
What do you have to lose?
Uhhhh.
Anything else going on?
Uhhhh.
Well then…
The Holy Land or bust!
He laughed out loud.
Yes, I will go!
His spirit brightened.
He suddenly felt like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol flinging wide the window shutters and shouting down to the orphan boy below.
You there! What day is this?
Why it’s Christmas, sir.
Oh, for joy, I haven’t missed it! Go fetch me the fattest turkey you can find!
Yes, sir!
***
“Don’t you mean Bethlehem?” said his dad icily on the phone.
Jerry hadn’t thought about that and his dad was right. If he was going to Israel for Christmas, the place to be was Bethlehem, the birth place of Jesus, not Jerusalem.
“I’ll be sure to go there too.”
“Where do you think this is going to take you?”
“Closer to God.”
“Jerry, when is this going to end?”
“Never, so I’d appreciate you not giving me a hard time, OK?”
He was silent.
“Dad?”
“That’s it, Jerry. If you go, then I am cutting you off from the family. You are wasting your life, and I refuse to enable this insanity any longer.”
“I thought you and mom would understand. Finding God. Don’t you think that’s important?”
“Not this way. You find God by being a responsible member of society. You find a job. You serve.”
“You don’t get it.”
“I don’t, and I’m done.” He hung up.
***
“Jerry, there’s no way your congregation expected this to go this long and with no end in sight,” said an agitated Bryce.
“It’s the last leg. I promise. This is my Hajj, my Camino de Santiago.”
“You’re what? You’re what? Look, you go to the Holy Land when you retire and on a tour bus. There are millions of fulfilled Christians all over the world who have never been there and never will be there. Why do you think you have to go there to find God?”
“I’m the doubting Thomas who needs to lay his hands on the stigmata.”
“You what?”
“Yeah, I know, I’m not sure what that means either.”
They both burst out laughing.
“Look Jerry, you don’t know what an advocate you’ve had here. But I gotta cut you loose. The congregation wants to create a search committee and move on. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ll learn much from your trip, but you can’t have it all. There’s a cost for every action, and the cost of this trip is your job.”
***
Was God really calling him to Jerusalem?
There’s a fine line between devotion and delusion.
Jerry pondered this back in his rocking chair. One voice scolded him, agreeing with his father, telling him he was crazy to consider such an irresponsible action. Another voice encouraged him, admonishing him not to question what God asks.
The audacity of hearing God’s voice. When his Princeton peers were commanding pulpits, buying homes and having their first child if not their second, here he was receiving food stamps, eating government cheese and rice, grossing $12,000 a year and alone.
Still, there was something real about all this. He did hear the idea. This was not some intellectual thought. His waking days were more and more a constant awareness of the God-ness in all things. Port Townsend, April included, had awakened his senses. It was a new foundation of faith that incorporated his body as well as his mind.
Still, with his former life, he could see his future so clearly, from assistant to senior minister, marriage, three children, retired grandparent with a fat pension and burial in a nice plot next to his wife’s.
With this new life, he could barely see tomorrow. His future was determined by inspiration without a clear picture of where he was going. But wasn’t this the clearest picture of all: staying true to his inner voice? And perhaps this was the voice of God. He was the only one who could hear it, and he was the only one who could champion it. The former self with all its trappings of job promotion and pension security was fake based; this was faith based.
On the other hand, life was comfortable in Port Townsend. Why upend it? What was he trying to prove by going to Jerusalem? Wasn’t God everywhere?
He was stuck.