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Oy: it’s Nisan. And that means Pesach is mere days away. And THAT, my friends, means.. well, actually, it means YET ANOTHER YEAR of slapdash, “do the best you can” preparations, really.

Once, about five years ago, now, we had the luck to move into a new flat erev Pesach, and I left all the chametz in a sealed box and somehow managed to get everything unpacked, if not entirely organised, and have seder on the table by sundown. The next year, we were still in the same place and a friend stored our chametz (which is to say: whiskey and sourdough starter) and we had a full table for both nights of seder. And that was the last year we managed to do much at all on Pesach, other than cleaning as best we can and reading labels to try to find a heat-n-eat meal that doesn’t have wheat (or corn, since I avoid kitniyot), and maybe a high-speed haggaddah read-through. One year, we propped the laptop on the table and read through the Facebook Exodus. One year, Mark accidentally grabbed one of the more traditional volumes off the shelf, and the reading was punctuated by my colourful editorial comments about why I refused to read certain passages.

This year? We’re moving in the MIDDLE of Passover. We get the keys to the new place on Good Friday. I am awesome at scheduling.

Which is by way of saying that, yes, I am still getting most of my spiritual life from the internet. And it’s Nisan, which means it is time for blogExodus (hat tip to The Velveteen Rabbi. Fourteen days of posts, which I am almost certainly not going to manage, but why let that stop me from trying?

This isn’t a lengthy prelude, by the way: today’s theme is believing, and you know what I believe? I believe that none of us are perfect. As a protest theologian, I believe that even includes God, who we hold to account and ask to do better even as God holds us to account and asks us to do better. I believe in failing, learning, and trying again. In fucking up as a spiritual discipline. I believe in planting the tree that won’t bear fruit in my lifetime, in the task that is not mine to complete but that I am not free to desist from.

Pesach is, in part, all about being in a rush and overwhelmed and doing the best you can with what you have: chucking whatever you can grab into a bag on the way out the door, not waiting for the bread to rise, trusting that the best you can do will somehow manage to be enough.

And if it’s not, then there’s always next year.