Passover Remembered

We had this poem read to us at YAV Orientation just about every day we were there. Sometimes multiple times in one day at various worship services. 

I found that I really connected with the words and found others a bit scary such as, " 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." But all in all, I found this poem to be very comforting and a very good explanation of what it felt/feels like to be doing a YAV year. 

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 tenderly, act justly and walk humbly with your God.

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 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 home to the 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 will 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 in 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 and unlikely faces, and old friends as faithful and true as the pillar of God’s flame.

Sing songs as you go, 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.
Touch each other and keep telling stories.
Make maps as you go, remembering the way back from before you were born.

So you will be only the first of many waves of deliverance on the desert seas.
It is the first of many beginnings – your Paschaltide.
Remain true to this mystery.

Pass on the whole story. Do not go back.
I am with you now and I am waiting for you.

-Passover Remembered by Alla Bozarth-Campbell