Friday Dispatch: This Little Light of Ours
Thoughts before Solstice
Friday greetings,
Here in the Northern hemisphere, it’s the last Friday before the summer Solstice. I love Solstice. I love the lushness of this season, the ease of movement, and the open windows. I just watched two little birds feeding each other right before my eyes on the roof outside my home office. How lucky!
It’s not hard at all for me to marvel, to fill my days with utterances of praise and wonder. And lately, I’ve been experiencing a surge of aliveness that I can only welcome, like hitting an air current that accelerates and supports my journey through this life.
All of this is true against a backdrop of other streams of reality.
There is the global catastrophe of climate change that spares no one; we are collectively failing our beloved, beautiful, fragile planet, despite how deeply and wildly many of us love and want to protect it, its inhabitants, ecosystems, and staggering miracles of existence.
There is the harmony and inner peace I experience alone in the woods, the sun beginning its long, slow descent, winking like a playful God through the pines.
There is the singular body, the very body I was born into and have inhabited for 52 years, a body that hated running the mile in middle school but dreamed last night about running a marathon, a body that has grown and birthed two humans who are now fully fledged adults, a body that has stifled and shuddered and sprung to life and surprised me with its clarity. This body loves to swim and snuggle, dance and delight, and relishes the rhythms of waking and sleeping that create contours to these long days.
And then there is writing.
What accounts for this need to sit here, mind alert, body breathing, coffee steaming, as I listen for the words? What accounts for you sitting there, wherever it is you are sitting, reading them? What am I trying to accomplish? What are you hoping to receive?
I was talking with a client after she read a paragraph of her writing aloud during a Zoom call. I pointed out a single sentence. From other parts of the family story she’s working on, I knew it carried more than it revealed.
Let me try to think of an example. I could say, “My mother is a dancer.” But that alone would tell you very little about my mother’s story and what being a dancer has meant to her, how dance has comprised so much more than a career for her. It is, for her, a raison d'être. It is her essence, her voice. Her gift. Her light.
Writing, for me, is an unstoppable quest to convey what it’s like to be here, here on the planet, here in the room, here in the body, here in my solitude, and here among my fellow beings, birds and humans alike.
It’s a primal urge to describe experiences that defy logic, like how I can witness so much degradation, corruption, and violence and simultaneously hold so much reverence, faith, and optimism.
Writing is the best way I know how to squeeze the last drop from the lemon, to make lemonade, to pitch a tent in a storm, to hold out my hand, to say thank you, to express my bewilderment and aching love and awe and curiosity.
It’s how I clear space in my own crowded mind to touch a clear stream of consciousness, if only for a moment. It’s a way of remembering what matters, and coming home, again and again, to something quiet, ever-present, and capable of contributing to the protection of what I hold dear.
Writing is a cord that tethers me to myself, to other humans, to the more-than-human world, to the past, to the future, to the present moment.
I’m reminded of a passage from ORBITAL: A Novel by Samantha Harvey.
“Maybe human civilisation is like a single life – we grow out of the royalty of childhood into supreme normality; we find out about our own unspecialness and in a flush of innocence we feel quite glad – if we’re not special we might not be alone.”
Maybe this is why I resisted the label of “gifted” as a child.
To be “gifted” is to be set apart, and to be set apart is to be lonely. What I continue learning is that, ironically, it is through the wide-armed embrace of my unique gifts, the things that might set me apart, that I connect most meaningfully with others.
None of this is accidental. You there, me here, us apart, us together.
Keep standing under open skies, listening to the old stories the trees whisper at dusk, and tuning into your true voice, your essence. The world needs it. The sun blesses it. The moon watches us all.
Coda
Two serendipitous things occurred after I finished writing today’s Dispatch.
Unbeknownst to me, M.J. and I were writing about writing at the same time! They are offering on July 20. Sit. Breathe. Write: A Mindfulness Workshop. Highly recommend :)
My mom and I watched the two-hour Obama Presidential Center Opening Ceremony. In a knockout speech that made her husband’s lip quiver, Michelle Obama reminded us that “hope is a choice.” Later, Barack Obama said he is not immune to anger and doubt, but intoned, “When we lose hope in each other… then we give away our power to decide our own futures.” He spoke about the “sacred stories full of courage, humor, and grace” that the Center is dedicated to uplifting and celebrating, and also how it is intended not to invoke nostalgia but to be a living, breathing place for community, for democracy, for the People. (That’s us.)
May we keep inviting, writing, and listening to each other’s sacred stories, choosing hope, and sharing our gifts on these longest days of the year.
Shabbat Shalom and love,
Jena
Opportunities to Write & Learn Together
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That was lovely. Shabbat Shalom.