Friday Dispatch: Read This If You're Rushed

Take your time learning how to take your time

Friday greetings,

It’s helpful to start every Friday Dispatch with those same two words. I liken them to the steps into the shallow end of a pool, where you can take your time, adjust to the temperature, and make friends with the water before heading towards the deep end.

I’m listening to Nick Mulvey as I ease into writing here. Spotify “recommended” his music to me back in September when I had Covid for the first (and blessedly only, as of now) time. His songs kept me company during the week (or was it two?) I spent in isolation, and I come back to it fairly frequently now. “The only way to hold on is to keep letting go…” Well if that ain’t the truth.

A fat robin on a rooftop. The cool breeze a welcome reprieve from the heat and humidity. Daylilies and daisies and hydrangeas. Sparrows on the fence line. Driving up winding roads named after the elements. Form and formlessness. Watercolors, letting it be messy, not fearing the darker parts, or at least turning towards them with more curiosity. Making room, making room.

Sometimes, a client will say to me, I have been writing about this same thing for [insert what feels to speaker like an insurmountable/unacceptable amount of time]. This is usually accompanied by an exasperated sigh.

I look up to see another bird on a branch, maybe the same bird, maybe the same branch. We return to the same themes and stories until we no longer need to. We return to them because they still have something to say that some part of us still can’t or won’t hear.

We turn them like stones in our hands until we don’t. Then, at some point, when we are ready, we open our hands and give them up. Maybe you’ve tasted this freedom, if only for a moment? A butterfly. A bloom.

I became aware of something this week, not a big revelation, but certainly a recurrent theme: Rushing. The feeling that I am holding someone up and need to quickly wrap it up, the project, the process, the painting, the meal, the meeting, the task at hand.

There is a lot of “next, next, next.” And something else is available, too. Eyes closed, hand on my heart, I turn my head towards this familiar, gentle voice:

Take your time.

Take your time.

These words whisper in my ear and I take them in through the breath, let them circulate through the body and seep into my soul.

I think of other clients, those who are writing books, say. And to a person, one thing is true: It takes longer than they expected. There can be frustration and impatience around this territory that’s particularly susceptible to the parts of ourselves that hiss, what is taking you so long?

To a person, I say, it takes as long as it takes.

In other words, I don’t tell anyone anything that I don’t also tell myself.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. But it does affirm that we need other people to help us hear these things, to offer back to us the wisdom we all carry innately, wisdom that gets entangled in stories and expectations of what “should” be.

I’m nearing the halfway point of my Creative Facilitator Training with the Jewish Studio Project. This first year has been all about establishing a relationship with the process ourselves, and year two will be an opportunity to create a practicum where we bring this process to the world. I’m eager to meet my cohort this summer at our first in-person retreat in Berkeley.

During our webinar this week, we discussed the question, “What gifts do you bring?”

Because our gifts and our needs are often interconnected, we talked about finding the sweet spot of teaching and facilitating from a place of meeting a need we ourselves have, while also having enough of a handle on that need that we can skillfully hold others in that space.

I don’t know what my practicum will be yet. But this week, I had an inkling that it might have something to do with slowness. I want to create spaces that invite us to turn towards those parts of us that feel rushed to begin to relax.

So far, knowing this is enough.

On a different, but I suspect related, note, I wanted to share these wonderful “2-3 words epiphanies” from Tzahi Moskovitz, a yoga teacher who writes in his latest newsletter about coaching 7-year-olds playing soccer. They are true gems:

“Same team” when two of my players would try to tackle the ball away from each other.
 

“Wrong way” when one of my players tried to score a goal in the wrong direction.
 

“Next time” for whenever something one of my players tried ended up failing miserably (the more bereft the player the more cheerful my “next time” became).

Sometimes we need a friend/teacher/coach/companion who will remind us, in the simplest of terms, of what matters most.

The intensity scale of the world is high and shows no signs of letting up. Be sure to seek out and tune into people, places, and things that remind you it’s safe to slow down, to let feelings flow through you, and to appreciate the blessings in your everyday life. There are so many.

And remember: Whatever gifts you are bringing, let them take the time they need to find form.

Shabbat Shalom and love,

Jena

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