Tourist or Pilgrim?

I

I rise in the darkness of an early morn to begin my journey to the Holy Land. I sit in the airport with my 'Spiritual Guide to Israel' and read...
'Tourists go to Jerusalem the way they go to Disneyworld: not to pray at its sacred Western Wall, but to take pictures of other people praying there. Pilgrims come because being in this place is part of who they are, a necessary segment in the story of their lives.'
I look out of the window as the plane carries me high above the clouds, to where the sun is waiting, and I pray that I might go to Israel not as a tourist, but as a pilgrim; that I might pray more than I pose; that I might go not to capture the HolyLand in snapshots but to let it capture me. I fly high in the beautiful blue. On my way to Tel Aviv.