Friday Dispatch: The Space Is There, Waiting
Maybe even today
Friday greetings,
Last night, participants in the Solstice Edition of the Sound of Real Life Happening group gathered on Zoom to write 11s "in “real-time.” Connecting in this way after 10 days of writing together on Facebook is, well… let’s just say the word “magic” came up several times during our 90-ish minutes together!
I came away from our call sweaty (no a/c), sated, and moved.
Faces and voices. Cross-pollination. Safety and courage. Connection and realness. Curiosity and presence.
These are the ingredients of community and creativity.
Spaces where these ingredients can mingle and blend are sacred.
When we can show up as we are, knowing that what we contribute will be more than enough, something new becomes possible.
We get to release, if only for a time, the fears, judgments, and defenses that gird us throughout our days in a world harsh with criticism, rife with comparison, and built on competition. We get to experience the softening power of acceptance.
Wait, you mean it’s ok that I’m cranky or forgetful, nervous or scattered.
Yes, it’s ok.
In fact, I noticed that variations of this message – “that’s ok and “it’s ok” – came up in several people’s writings last night. We are talking to ourselves when we write. And the beauty of groups like this is that we also get to talk to each other.
I’m currently listening to Rabbi Sharon Brous read her new book, The Amen Effect. At one point in one of the early chapters, she discusses the science of mirror neurons, and how when we witness and share in another’s joy, it’s as if we’re experiencing it ourselves.
Similarly, being witnessed and seen helps us weather and survive moments of grief and hardship, because they remind us of an essential truth: That we are not alone. This truth gets battered in a world of disconnection, social media, busyness, and isolation.
Last night, I shared with the group that our new house has three bedrooms. One is my office. One is our actual bedroom. And the third is a yoga/meditation room. This room is nearly empty, except for the recumbent bike we took from my parents’ house and a basket of yoga mats. In the closet, you’ll find bolsters, blocks, and blankets.
And guess what? So far, I have only walked past this room. Sunlight falls across the wood floor. But I have not yet rolled out my mat. As a matter of fact, I have not so much as touched my toes, it seems, in months.
But the room is there, the space is there, waiting to welcome me.
Maybe even today.
My point? I can now point to decades of yoga and meditation practices that you could deem erratic from one perspective or wildly consistent from another. Erratic because I often fall into an “all or nothing” relationship to showing up on the mat or cushion, and wildly consistent because, at some point, I always come back.
Same is true for writing.
The page is there, the space is there, waiting to welcome you. Maybe even today.
Showing up – in community and to ourselves – is also a practice. It may be erratic or it may be wildly inconsistent. That’s ok. It’s ok. The important thing is to keep circling back. Keep returning and beginning again. And keep being good to yourself.
My 11s last night turned into a poem, inspired by – and borrowing its first line from – Tess Taylor’s lovely poem, Solstice, which I used as a prompt. I don’t know Tess Taylor but am grateful to her for the beautiful springboard onto the page.
My poem is below.
Now it’s your turn. How and where will you show up today?
Shabbat Shalom and love,
Jena
* * *
In other starlight,
something shifts –
A body in a bed in a room,
dreaming
blossoms, light, chirps, the long
kiss of summer only just beginning.
Can you content yourself
like a frog on a lilypad,
a baby bunny hoppity-hopping
in the unmown grass,
a cardinal jetéing mid-air?
What are you waiting for?
Kiss me. Remind me this body
exists and pleasure
is permitted, even blessed,
as necessary as starlight –
the sun’s and the moon’s
yours, mine, ours.
Starlight that has witnessed
our quaking losses
and ecstatic unions,
the way sugar dissolves
in water for the hummingbird
that is my mother’s spirit
and how today she woke
from a sunlit dream
where I’d been kneeling
at her bedside, stroking her head.
We dress and undress our whole lives
until finally our earthly form
no longer serves.
And where does the light go then, you ask?
All that bound-up starlight released
from the labyrinth of the body, free,
boundless, everywhere,
everywhere.