We start today the way we start all ceremonies: lighting a Sacred Fire. 

These candlesticks represent The North, the element Earth. This lighted match brings the element of Fire, which needs the element of the Air to burn. As the wax begins to melt into a liquid it represents the ever-changing element of Water and the power to transform and reshape our lives.

May this ceremony today help us melt the trials and tribulations into our lives, lighting our paths to re-mold them as we mark the transition from Shabbat to our celebration of Passover with this Blessing:

Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha'olam asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav, v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Yom Tov.

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has sanctified us with laws and commanded us to light the festival lights.

     Our first cup of wine today represents the North and our shank bone sits in this place on our Medicine Wheel plate. It asks us to pause and consider the North, the color White, and all they represent.
 
   This is the Cup of our Elders, both alive and those who have come before us. It is the cup of the deepest, coldest winter. That time when taking a breath can burn your lungs with cold and we struggle to cover every inch of flesh to hide it from being frozen. We huddle together for warmth and survival and cabin fever begins to set in. 

    This cup represents the eathquake that shakes our world, the avalanche that buries us, and the struggles we face in life that we feel we will never be able live through. This is the place where Death sits, where old things are broken down into compost to create food and space for the new that is surely on its way. 

    When we are in this place we must work hard to keep holding onto hope and staying close to those we love. We must offer  ourselves the grace of time and space to become a new being. For the North cup also holds the magic of the butterfly’s cocoon and is the key to transformation. 

     Today, as we spend time in the North, we will pause to share remember our Ancestors leaving slavery, to share our deepest struggles and the shadows we ourselves walk through. 

   The Shank on our Medicine Wheel Passover Seder Plate sits in the middle of the North. Once our Ancesors sacrificed a Pesach lamb to be passed over from the Plague of Death. Today, we say this Blessing as we ask the Medicine of the North to take our suffering and prepare us for freedom and renewal:

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the world, Creator of the fruit of the vine.

Blessed are You, Our God, Sovereign of the universe, who has chosen us from among the peoples, exalting us by hallowing us with mitzvot. In Your love, Adonai our God, You have given us feasts of gladness, and seasons of joy; this Festival of Pesach, season of our freedom, a sacred occasion, a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt. For You have chosen us from all peoples and consecrated us to Your service, and given us the Festivals, a time of gladness and joy.

Blessed are You, Adonai, who sanctifies Israel and the Festivals.

   We take this time to Honor the Medicine of Water. As Native People we know "Mní wičhóni" "Water is Life". All living creatures share being made up of water. We spend 9 months growing in the sacred waters of our Mother's womb and that water gushes forth to announce our birth.

    When our Ancestors left Egypt the whole Red Sea of Water stood in the way of their escape but Hashem parted the water to save our lives, the used that water to conquer our enemies.

     When we wandered through the desert, Our Ancestor Miriam preformed a miracle to provide us with Mni to drink to keep us alive and we pour a cup now to honor her. 

We take time now to rinse our hands in fresh water three times to Honor the Medicine of Water.

     We have before us the first fresh greens of the spring and was handpicked today from our garden.  We have in front of each of us a small, tan bowl of salt water to represent the tears we cried from our time in the North.

We choose a bit of salad greens and taste their plainess.  (Eat a piece of salad).

We dip our spoon in the salt water to taste our tears and the depth of our suffering. (Taste salt water)

Next we dip a new piece of the salad in the salt water and eat them. We take this time to reflect on how the tears of suffering change and increase our pleasure in the newness life offers us during this time of renewal and say this Blessing:

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, borei p’ree ha-adama.
We praise God, Ruler of Everything, who creates the fruits of the earth.

We now pause to eat the salad before moving on.

   Today we have three pieces of each of 2 kinds of bread before us: traditional, store bought Matzoh and the homemade bread our family used to survive while we were homeless. Both are unleavened to remind us that our Ancestors had to run and leave behind everything they knew and loved in order to be free. They had lived for many generations as slaves and knew nothing about survival as nomads, but they knew staying was not an option.
   We use this Medicine to remember if they had not made the sacrifice in their lifetime we would still be slaves. They had to look ahead and see the bad coming but move through it anyway so we could all survive and be free. We use it to remember our own times when running to a new place was scary and meant a sacrifice.

   We break the center piece of the Matzah as our hearts were broken for all we lost by running. We will hide it for later use.

Now we will take time to talk about our times being homeless, how it changed us, if there are elements of that time we are still healing and growing from, and what good we see came from it. For those who have never been homeless this is the time to talk about how it feels that people you love have suffered being homeless, guilt when we see people living in tents on the street, and our own fears of one day living on the street ourselves.

We stop to remember  our Ojibwe ancestors who turned wandering into a way of life. They knew how to take suffering and make it into something beautiful and we ask to learn from them and create that beauty in our own lives

We see on our Medicine Wheel Seder Plate that the Karpas we ate are set in the East. We pause now to relect on the East, the Color Red, Newborns, and all new life. 
 

East is the place of the Air, it is the first sign of the day in the sky, the color of our blood, the newborn in our arms, seedlings coming up, and the dawn.  It is the tender, fresh skin found under a blister. It is the honeymoon of new life, the place where hope flies with all the Winged ones Hashem placed here. It is the dwelling place of the Shekinah.

We drink this 2nd cup and relect together on what is new for us this year. How did it grow from the old? Where do we hope it goes?

Now we reach the 3rd cup, the cup of the South, the Cup of Fire, the Cup of Yellow. This is the cup of youth and the young adult. The cup of the warm sun, the summer, and running dowhill as fast as possible to reach our goals. It is the cup of cacti, lizzards, and long days. 

Yellow is also the color of watning. The energy in this cup can become a forest fire, a sunburn, or a heated arguent. This is the cup where we must pay attention to move our life where we want to go and learn to look for consequences while we follow our passion. 

We take time to consider our strengths and the goals we know we are reaching, our hopes in action, as we drink this cup. We again take time to put herbs in our sachets as we talk to represent our journey.

The blessing over the meal and matzah | motzi matzah | מוֹצִיא מַצָּה

The familiar hamotzi blessing marks the formal start of the meal. Because we are using matzah instead of bread, we add a blessing celebrating this mitzvah.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ, אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, הַמּוֹצִיא לֶֽחֶם מִן הָאָֽרֶץ

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha-aretz.

We praise God, Ruler of Everything, who brings bread from the land.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ, אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָֽׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתַָיו וְצִוָּֽנוּ עַל אֲכִילַת מַצָּה

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al achilat matzah.

We praise God, Ruler of Everything, who made us holy through obligations, commanding us to eat matzah.

Distribute and eat the top and middle matzah for everyone to eat.

Time to break for some fun. We will watch while Rugrats for the Exodus story this year.  
 

We will play a game and use a spoon to drip wine whenever the story mentions a plague, we will discuss modern plagues after the show.

Dipping the bitter herb in sweet charoset | maror  |מָרוֹר   

  In creating a holiday about the joy of freedom, we turn the story of our bitter history into a sweet celebration. We recognize this by dipping our bitter herbs into the sweet charoset. We don’t totally eradicate the taste of the bitter with the taste of the sweet… but doesn’t the sweet mean more when it’s layered over the bitterness?

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ, אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָֽׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּֽנוּ עַל אֲכִילַת מרוֹר

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al achilat maror.

We praise God, Ruler of Everything, who made us holy through obligations, commanding us to eat bitter herbs.

Eating a sandwich of matzah and bitter herb | koreich | כּוֹרֵךְ

When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the biggest ritual of them all was eating the lamb offered as the pesach or Passover sacrifice. The great sage Hillel would put the meat in a sandwich made of matzah, along with some of the bitter herbs. While we do not make sacrifices any more – and, in fact, some Jews have a custom of purposely avoiding lamb during the seder so that it is not mistaken as a sacrifice – we honor this custom by eating a sandwich of the remaining matzah and bitter herbs. Some people will also include charoset in the sandwich to remind us that God’s kindness helped relieve the bitterness of slavery.

Finding and eating the Afikomen | tzafoon | צָפוּן

The playfulness of finding the afikomen reminds us that we balance our solemn memories of slavery with a joyous celebration of freedom. As we eat the afikomen, our last taste of matzah for the evening, we are grateful for moments of silliness and happiness in our lives.

It is tradition at this point to say "Next year in Israel!"

What dreams do you hold for next year?