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PesachApril 20, 2008 I'm not Jewish, and it's been years since I last went to a seder, but I love Pesach. If the Episcopalianism I was born into had had anything like it, I might have stayed in the church. On the other hand -- maybe not. I'm no fan of patriarchal monotheism. The main reason it never got stuck in my craw is that I never swallowed it in the first place. (All my life I've thought "craw" meant "throat," but I just looked it up and it doesn't; it's a part of the stomach.) But I'm a big fan of good stories, and Pesach is the telling of a great story. It's an especially powerful story for people in bondage, any kind of bondage. It's no coincidence that Harriet Tubman was called Moses, or that songs coming out of slavery time had lines like "Pharaoh's army got drownded / O Mary don't you weep." One thing I love about the Pesach story is that it doesn't tell you to stand around waiting for a "second coming" (mind you, I don't think Jesus would have much patience with people who stand around waiting for him to show up). Another thing I love is its acknowledgment that even when you escape from Pharaoh's land, you've still got Pharaoh in your head. If you're wise, you'll at least consider the possibility that even after you've wandered in the wilderness for forty years, you may still have Pharaoh in your head. In fact, when you get to the promised land, new pharaohs may rise up among you -- this is easy to miss if you get too hung up on your chosenness and start believing that all pharaohs come from Egypt. We do indeed carry Pharaoh in our heads -- but let's not be lulled into thinking that Pharaoh is ALL in our heads. That's sloppy New Agey pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps thinking. Temporal power is real, and in our age it's a huge obstacle to change. Like I said, I'm not Jewish. I'm sometimes mistaken for Jewish, but you can tell I'm not Jewish because I made bread this morning and the bread has yeast in it. Over the long years, however, I've learned plenty from Judaism. The importance of community, for one thing, and the role of ritual in maintaining that community. (The Low Church Episcopalianism I grew up with was almost entirely lacking in that department.) The notion that the individual's practice and the health of the community are related. And, perhaps most of all, the importance of story -- the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we see ourselves as part of. Some stories help us survive in bondage. To escape from bondage, we usually need to start telling ourselves different stories. After Pharaoh's army gets drownded, the story has to morph again. If it doesn't, we tend to get stuck. I look at the U.S. of A., most powerful country in the history of the world, and marvel that so many USians are so sure that we're in imminent danger of being overrun. Pharaoh's army got drownded, but we don't believe it. We're stuck in an old story. Trouble with being stuck in an old story is that while you're fighting a continual rearguard action, you're probably missing whatever's trying to get your attention up front. What U.S. politics needs is a few good storytellers. We've been in the wilderness long enough. Tell us a story about how we escaped from bondage, and about how the Red Sea closed over Pharaoh's army, leaving Pharaoh on the far side. Tell us a story about people who stopped feeding Pharaoh and learned to live without him, and his army too.
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