Nisan 5785: Pesach in the Narrow Place

🌒 Moon of Speaking 🌒 begins at sundown on March 29, 2025; when we are challenged to speak the truth so we may find freedom and take responsibility for our lives.

Mar 23, 2025

blue and red wallpaper — Photo by Ameer Basheer on Unsplash

Welcome to the Narrow Place

On the full moon of Nisan, we will retell and relive the story of the Exodus just as we in the USA are clearly moving into a time of mitzrayim. We keep telling the story so we can remember how to become free again in every generation. After last month’s newsletter a subscriber sent me a note saying I was “injecting (hysterical and exaggerated) opinion into a communication supposedly devoted to women’s spirituality.”

I know it’s hard enough to get through every day, but the in the Exodus story the Israelites weren’t sold into slavery they entered it willingly, although possibly not recognizing the ramifications of their capitulation. So yes, I will keep taking about this - probably swearing a fucking lot about it.

Now on the cusp of the Passover season, Staffan Lindberg, head of the Varieties of Democracy project, is saying this

"If it continues like this, the United States will not score as a democracy when we release [next year's] data. If it continues like this, democracy [there] will not last another six months."
U.S. could lose democracy status, says global watchdog; CBC.ca, March 18, 2025

The magick of the seder can be so powerful. It is a practice of spiritual resilience, reminding us that we can descend into, live in, and emerge from the narrow (and bad) places. I invite you to use the technology of our people this Pesach, and work the seder as a practice of spiritual resilience so we may find our way quickly from this generation’s mitzrayim.

Bearing Witness

Bearing witness is not just perceiving what is happening. It requires transforming what you witness in a way that allows others to perceive it as well.

As the fabulous Pam Grossman @phantasmaphile.bsky.social sky.social says, “art is magick and magick is real.”

Here is my definition of magick:

An interdisciplinary practice of creating catalysts for spiritual and material change.

That is why it is crucial that protest art take over our streets. It’s why witches, magicians, sorcerers, and generally magickal folks need to shift gears and witness what is happening.

So please. Make art. Make magick. That witnesses and shares what you are witnessing. Don’t turn away. Transform your own pain into something that can help others know they are not alone and can move others out of apathy or willful ingnorance.

We need you.

Join me.