Friday Dispatch: An Unusual Summer

Musings from 30,000 feet

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Friday greetings,

I’m writing to you this morning on the first of two flights from Oakland to Bradley after six days in Berkeley.

This trip occurred halfway through my two-year Creative Facilitation Training with the Jewish Studio Project. Meeting in person for the first time led to deepening connections with my cohort and our incredible leaders, a more embodied experience of the JSP process, and a continued unfolding of the path. Now we’re moving into our practicum year, culminating in May with a second California trip for our siyyum (graduation). I’m so grateful to be part of this spacious, adaptable, inquisitive, and transformative work.

This summer has held an unusual concentration of intensive experiences – intellectual, spiritual, creative, geographic, sensory, and communal. These are slowly changing me by growing my capacity for the “and” places: simplicity and complexity, clarity and uncertainty, disconnect and discovery, stillness and movement, expansion and contraction, gratitude and grief, striving and enoughness, east and west.

Through it all, curiosity threads its steady needle.

Of course, there are also the details and tangibles of getting home and regrouping. Holding the many responsibilities, commitments, intentions, goals, and desires (on my calendar and my horizon) not as competing but as coexisting is helpful.

After all, balance is intermittent, and remembering that wobbling (and falling!) is human keeps me from getting bogged down by perfectionism. Knowing that everything is always in a state of ebb and flow gives me more ease and courage to show up to the best of my ability each day.

One practice I’d like to bring back from the California trip is that I got up at 6:00 every morning, showered, sipped some coffee, and walked three miles from our Airbnb to the JSP studio. Along the way, I listened to music, took pictures, texted, or talked with loved ones. Starting each full day this way was so grounding. Maintaining it without the novelty of being somewhere new could be a good experiment in seeing the newness each day offers…

Are you curious about creating a new relationship to the page?

There are a few remaining spots in Ebb and Flow. This warm, welcoming small group will meet on Tuesdays (on Zoom), offering you an entire “school year” of writing practice with a small, encouraging community of fellow travelers. Details are all here on my website.

Oh, we are starting our final descent into Chicago. Over and out, dear reader!

Shabbat Shalom and love,

Jena

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The question of finding the call has been first revealed, then covered by its answer: the star, the center, the wholeness, the cycles, the new moon, the new month, Av. No wholeness without brokenness first, no redemption with destruction first, no joy without knowing deep grief.

Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it.

The crown, the moon, the sliver and the circle, the king and the daughters, the coming out that takes as long as it takes. Morning and evening, light and darkness, jewel and heart and bejeweled heart and heart shine and hand shine and moonshine, and the way noticing everything can open us to what is most needed now.

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