It's the same story.
Every. Year.
But we don't get tired of it. Why not?
My children love to look at the family photo albums. They love to recall what they looked like, what they were wearing, what they were doing. I watch them, as they sit enthralled with their own images of their own history...and I marvel at how far they've come.
On the eve of Passover, we open up our family photo albums. We relive and retell the stories of what we looked like, what we were wearing, what we were eating, what we were feeling and believing and knowing and doing.
We refresh our memory of those days when we were slaves, and we recall what it was like to feel that first breath of freedom. In the remembering and the retelling, each time we find something new. Each time we notice a detail in the photographs that we hadn't seen before, or we hadn't noticed last year. Each time we come to the memory with the experiences of the past year. We are not the same people who told this story last year...so it is not the same story.
We retell and retell, and each time, we bring to life the ancient story.
The albums get a little stained, the pictures get a little bit faded.
But as we read through the story, as we tell our tales, they crisp up into focus, the tattered edges become whole again, and the story returns to life.
In the retelling, there is life.
on Seder night...
matzah crumbs
horseradish stains
wine drops
parsley blooms
salty tears
same old jokes
same old stories
like a well-worn sweater
not ready for Goodwill yet.
add a little flower and it's like new again.
on Seder night, we come home again each year...
(poem once posted here)
Want to play along? We're sharing #BlogExodus for the next 2 weeks. All you have to do is use the hashtag and there are suggested prompts on the graphic above (feel free to grab it). Maybe you just want to post on your Facebook or Twitter about these topics...or maybe you want to try #Exodusgram, a new idea to post photos related to these themes? I'll be posting my #blogExodus posts here, at this blog, my #Exodusgram pictures on my tumblr site, imabima.tumblr.com, and other miscellaneous Passover posts over at imabima.blogspot.com. It's going to be a busy fortnight!
