For Pesach (Passover)

They thought they were safe

that spring night; when they daubed

the doorways with sacrificial blood.

To be sure, the angel of death

passed them over, but for what?

Forty years in the desert

without a home, without a bed,

following new laws to an unknown land.

Easier to have died in Egypt

or stayed there a slave, pretending

there was safety in the old familiar.

But the promise, from those first

naked days outside the garden,

is that there is no safety,

only the terrible blessing

of the journey. You were born

through a doorway marked in blood.

We are, all of us, passed over,

brushed in the night by terrible wings.

Ask that fierce presence,

whose imagination you hold.

God did not promise that we shall live,

but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,

brilliant in the desert sky.

Lynn Ungar, 

(from Blessing the Bread)

This is the first day of Passover.  Happy Pesach to everyone!