The Bread of Freedom
A Piece for Pesach/Passover
Often, we choose To stay in our own shackles More afraid of the unknown With an empty desert in front of us And the Promised Land not yet seen We hesitate to move Fear leads us to forget Everything we know And all that we have heard and seen So, we resort to worshiping Idols and aristocrats, money and power Greedily dancing around a golden calf We deny the holy in ourselves And in others And thus, we dance alone in a savage crowd Fear is a stake in the sand That holds us back Thirsty and hungry Fear, like a sword Is what we fall back on Yet its lingering pain will always be regret We are paralyzed and unwilling to move But then, with an outstretched hand We walk through sand and walk through water We will never go around Or above or underneath But through, always through, every battle, every test Saved by a holy pass over Yet, we must never pass over Those who need help to move through a barren land We wander and wake and wander and wake Until we are home Sitting around a communal table, finally free Though the chains have been broken We must strengthen the chains and bonds Of our people and the generations For history is never Only alive in the past It is our duty to create it in the present For the present is who we are Then, now and tomorrow Generation to generation, life to life We must share and transmit the story Our story From person to person, and parent to child, and so on For those here And those far away And those we have lost With faith and love With song and celebration With feast and freedom Moving through plagues and history Our history We partake of the fruit of the vine and the breaking of bread With the crumbs of freedom We make a feast And invite the stranger into our home We sit and recline and recall The story that has been told The story that is happening right now The same, continuing story Of exodus and redemption Of history and memory and faith For then, with a literal breaking in half The bread of affliction Becomes the bread of freedom