Miracle Flowing Into Miracle

by Bruce Black (Sarasota, FL)

The vegetable stock for the soup is simmering on the stove. Onions, turnips, carrots, garlic, sweet potatoes, and leeks. Last night we searched for crumbs, but it’s only now that the house is beginning to smell like Passover.

It’s early, not yet 7 a.m., and I’m sitting on my yoga mat before beginning my practice, grateful for the start of the day, thinking about Passover and the way time unravels from year to year, each year flowing into the next like another asana pose… one pose, then another… each different, each the same.

Each year Passover arrives and reminds us that we are alive, still walking through miracles (like the parting of the Red Sea) every day, not just once a year–if only we open our eyes to see.

Each breath, another miracle. Each step, another miracle. Each life, another miracle. Our people’s story, another miracle.

Miracle flowing into miracle.

Pose flowing into pose: gathering crumbs, hiding the matzah, reciting the Four Questions, opening the door for Elijah, again and again, year after year.

Tonight we’ll savor the taste of freedom as we bite into the matzah.

Surrounded by those we love, we’ll raise our goblets of wine and recite the ancient words of the Hagaddah.

Now the soup is simmering on the stove, filling the house with the smell of Passover and so many memories, so many miracles.

Bruce Black, the founder of The Jewish Writing Project, is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Jewish publications such as The Jewish Week, The Jewish Exponent, Reform Judaism Magazine, and The Reconstructionist, and in secular publications such as The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Cricket and Cobblestone magazines. Online Education News ranked his blog on writing, Wordswimmer (http://wordswimmer.blogspot.com) , among the top 100 creative writing blogs of 2009. You can read more about Bruce and his new book, Writing Yoga, here: http://www.rodmellpress.com/writingyoga.html