Shabbat Ha-Gadol, A Poem for Pesach

Some of our Sages taught that it is our ability to question, to wonder, to imagine a different way of being that marks the passage from slavery to freedom. Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav, great-grandson of the 18th century shaman mystic the Ba'al Shem Tov, described the essence of the hard service in Mitzrayim (Egypt)--that enslavement in the "place of narrowness" --as the people's capacity to "see the object in the light, but not the light in the object." As we prepare to enter this year's Passover journey, I'm opening myself to the questions, the musings, the visions that will guide me through the sea this year. What are yours?

Shabbat HaGadol, Third Meal

Day winds toward evening,
sinking gracefully into
the thick, billowy
mattress of sky.

Down by the water,
a bird brigade
wheels and loops,
gathering and dispersing--
a riff of
intersecting flight paths.

I walk against the
wind. Above the
Bay, shafts of
light pierce the
clouds, raining light.

Just in front of
me, at shoulder
height, a black
bird flies in
place, suspended in
the strong wind
gusting from the

sea. My life has
often felt like
that, flying furiously
in the face
of invisible opposing
forces, making no
apparent progress, but
in truth, supported
by the very
Force I’m fighting.

The black bird alights
on a rock,
facing the light
still fanning down
through rifts in
the clouds. She
is playing with the
wind, laughing her
silent bird laugh,
blessing the moment
with questions: isn’t

this light what we’re
made of? Isn’t
it who we
are? What we
forget to see?
what we decline
to be? And
when we agree
to play, to
delight in the
billowing grayness of
this very day--
isn’t this what
sets us free?

—Diane Elliot, Erev Pesach, 2014/5774