Throughout my trip to Israel, Jordan and Palestine I had to manage a feeling I have come to call Holy Letdown. I expect anyone who has gone on a pilgrimage or a spiritual journey—whether to Jerusalem, Mexico City, Mecca, Varanasi or Bali—has experienced something like this.

Holy Letdown is a complicated mixture of expectation, imagined realities and whatever happens in the blurred pace of the present moments as it zooms by.

On one of the first mornings of my trip, I woke up early and walked down to the Lake of Galilee to watch the sunrise. We had covered a lot of ground the day before and that day promised even more sites. The lake was a beautiful molten blue with the hazy orange ball of the sun rising lazily over the Golan Heights.

I felt some intimacy with the man Yeshua in his wanderings. Surely he took in a sunrise like this many times. Surely he slept under these dawning stars. It was a Holy moment.

At my feet I had successfully ignored plastic bags, fishing line and broken glass littered along the boardwalk for a while. But its presence invaded.

Walking farther north along the shore I found a narrow beach surrounded by 19th century ruins. The beach was completely trashed and I stifled a feeble rage and disappointment with an attempt at a culturally relative view on trash and empathy with local public services stretched thin.

But still, when I returned to the Lake on foot during my pilgrimage along the Jesus Trail, the shoreline was positively trashed by beach goers and their refuse. This time there was no excuse. The beach was dotted with lined garbage cans many of which were almost completely empty. Holy Letdown.

Is the Lake still Holy? I think so. But my ability to tap into that holiness, to experience the sacred is refracted by (a somewhat) culturally conditioned expectation of holiness and its encounter.

Another example. To get to the traditional baptismal site of Jesus on the Israeli side, we had to drive through a very serious looking militarized zone. We could see Jordanian soldiers with guns on the other side. The water level was low, the water was turbid and it was certainly polluted. I touched the water but many swam or were baptized. I sat with my Holy Letdown trying to stay with the place and the moment despite all the distractions.

What does it mean when the holiness of the place does not live up to the holiness of the presences it contains?

In all the places thronged with spiritually hungry crowds of pilgrims and tourists, it really does detract from the experience of the holiness of the place. That is partly because for me holiness is also stillness and the greater the solitude the better. This is obviously my Eurocentric bias, but I think its a perfectly legitimate preference for connecting with the Divine. Many cultures experience the sacred collectively. Cool. But trying to pray the stations of the cross in Jerusalem’s Old City which is a tourist hotspot and thriving local market, felt absurd.

It got me asking, “Is the exact imagined route of Jesus’ tortured death march really so important when its this busy? Couldn’t we go out to the desert and do this and really feel it?” A lot of folks in my group still loved the experience. Again, good for them. But for me the Via Dolorosa was a Holy Letdown.

I am not passing any judgement on these places or my fellow pilgrims. I just think this term might be a dimension of Holyscapes. Any similar experiences in your travels?