Passover Remembered

by Alla Bozarth-Campbell

Pack nothing.   Bring only your determination to serve and your willingness to be free.   Don't wait for the bread to rise. Take nourishment for the journey, but eat standing, be ready to move at a moment's notice. Do not hesitate to leave your old ways behind -- fear, silence, submission.

Only surrender to the need of the time -- to love justice and walk humbly with your G!d.

Do not take time to explain to the neighbors.

 Tell only a few trusted friends and family members. Then begin quickly, before you have time to sink back into the old slavery. Set out in the dark. I will send fire to warm and encourage you.

I will be with you in the fire and I will be with you in the cloud. You will learn to eat new food and find refuge in new places. I will give you dreams in the desert to guide you safely to that place you have not yet seen.

The stories you tell one another around the fires in the dark will make you strong and wise.

 Outsiders will attack you, and some follow you, and at times you will get weary and turn on each other from fear and fatigue and blind forgetfulness.

You have been preparing for this for hundreds of years. I am sending you into the wilderness to make a new way and to learn my ways more deeply.

Some of you will be so changed by weathers and wanderings that even your closest friends will have to learn your features as though for the first time. Some of you will not change at all. Some will be abandoned by your dearest loves and misunderstood by those who have known you since birth and feel abandoned by you.

Some will find new friendships in unlikely faces, and old friends as faithful and true as the pillar of G!d's flame. Sing songs as you go and hold close together. You may at times grow confused and lose your way.

Continue to call each other by the names I've given you, to help remember who you are. 

You will get where you are going by remembering who you are.   

Touch each other and keep telling the stories.

Make maps as you go remembering the way back from before you were born.  You will be only the first of many waves of deliverance on these desert seas.

It is the first of many beginnings.

Remain true to this mystery.


haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story
Source: Alla Bozarth Campbell