Friday Dispatch: A Spell Is Broken

The story is always unfolding

Midbar / Wilderness

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Friday greetings,

It’s already late morning. I’m finally cozying up to write something here. I’m sipping a cup of decaf. The windows are open; the cool air smells like rain. I hear birds chirping, gutters dripping. Cars pass through puddles, a steady rhythm of life happening outside. Chupie snores gently.

Earlier, I walked to a nearby conservation area. I melted at a gaggle of goslings pecking for breakfast while their parents stood by protectively. I listened to the Cranberries and remembered flying to Mexico City alone when I was 23, “Dreams” on my Discman, feeling so completely alive. I watched a reel about Shabbat and nodded at the line, “Time is our medium.”

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I spent much of this past week in California, about 40 miles north of L.A. The Brandeis-Bardin Campus reminded me of a kibbutz; needless to say, I felt right at home. The immersive beauty of the lush landscape also brought me back to when I lived and volunteered in San Miguel de Allende nearly 30 years ago.

The aliveness I experienced there filled me again as I walked up and up into the Simi Valley hills, listening to the birds, stopping to admire the flowers, and breathing in a deep sense of peace, abundance, alignment, and gratitude. Wow.

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As I arrived at the Jewish Studio Project network retreat and my cohort’s siyyum (completion/graduation) on the heels of withdrawing from rabbinical school, I realized I had given myself the gift of presence. Rather than checking off a box on my way to something else, I got to be there and experience the fullness of the moment.

So much of my life has been about dichotomies and integrating seemingly disparate parts of myself. Finding the Jewish Studio Project two years ago commenced a journey wherein my intellect and creativity, solitude and community, could coexist. I got to face, again and again, the parts of myself that continued to feel insufficient or incomplete.

Dichotomies and tensions and both/ands – in other words, the places where I tend to hang out – were welcomed and witnessed. In JSP parlance, “the page can hold it all.” I have often echoed this sentiment as it relates to writing; here, I found a practice where the same is true for other forms of creative expression.

The “rules” each stand alone, like trees, yet speak to each other, like roots, and dance together, like limbs. And though they sound simple, they offer profound teachings for life, relationships, work, and creativity that we can turn over and over and never exhaust. There is also more to see, to learn, to discover.

On Monday night, along with the rest of my wonderful “Un4gettable” cohort, I completed the two-year journey to becoming a Certified Creative Facilitator of the Jewish Studio Process. I am proud of this accomplishment and feel blessed to be stitched into a community that envisions “a future in which every person engages their inherent creativity to cultivate resilience, well-being, and spiritual vitality.” (Learn more in JSP’s gorgeous and inspiring new Strategic Plan.)

Aren’t we cute?

Photos by Julianne Schwartz, Jewish Studio Project

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Something dawned on me this week: Every major pivotal moment in my life, every big choice, has consisted of walking away from something more conventional or “known” and moving towards something more creative and (overtly) uncertain. Of course, nothing is ever certain. But some paths lend themselves more fully to the illusion of certainty, and somehow those are never the ones I stay on.

In the past, these choices have often had an excruciating quality. This time, something different happened. It’s as if a spell was broken – the spell of not-enoughness, of chasing something bigger, of feeding hungry ghosts.

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On Monday night, I made a little book. I used some “random” images, literally the ones closest to me on the table. And something extraordinary happened. My life unfolded right before my eyes. And I understood: I am an artist. What! Whoa!

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The story is always unfolding. You will turn it and turn it and sometimes feel lost in it, then look back and see the exquisite wholeness that was there all along.

Shabbat Shalom and love,

Jena

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