A meditation by
Alla Renee Bozarth
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pack nothing.
Bring only your determination to serve
and your willingness
to be free.
Do not wait for the bread to rise
Take nourishment for the journey, but eat standing.
Be ready to move at a moment’s notice.
Do not hesitate to leave your old ways behind –
fear, silence, submission.
Only surrender to the need of the time –
to love justice and walk humbly with your God.
Do not take time to explain to the neighbors.
Tell only a few trusted friends and family members.
Then begin quickly, before you have time
to sink back into the old slavery.
Set out in the dark.
I will send fire to warm and encourage you.
I will be with you in the fire
and I will be with you in the cloud.
You will learn to eat new food
and find refuge in new places.
I will give you dreams in the desert,
to guide you safely home
to that place you have not seen.
The stories you tell one another
around your fires in the dark
will make you strong
and wise.
Outsiders will attack you,
and some who follow you,
and at times you will be weary
and turn on one another
from fear and fatigue and
blind forgetfulness.
You have been preparing for this for hundreds of years.
I am sending you into the wilderness
to make a way and to learn my ways more deeply.
Those who fight you will teach you.
Those who fear you will strengthen you.
Those who follow you may forget you.
Only be faithful.
This alone matters.
Some of you will die in the desert,
for the way is longer than anyone imagined.
Some of you will give birth.
Some will join other tribes along the way,
and some will simply stop
and create new families
in a welcoming oasis.
Some of you will be so changed by weather and wanderings
that even your closest friends will have to learn your features
as though for the first time.
Some of you will not change at all.
Some will be abandoned by your desert loves
and misunderstood by those who have known you since birth
and feel abandoned by you.
Some will find new friendship in unlikely faces,
and old friends
as faithful and true
as the pillar of God’s flame.
So you will be only the first of many waves of deliverance
on these desert seas.
It is the first of many beginnings –
your Paschal-tide
Remain true to this mystery.
Pass on the whole story.
I spare you all by calling you forth
from your chains.
Do not go back.
God is with us now
And God is waiting for us.