Change Happens in the Moment Before

CHANGE HAPPENS IN THE MOMENT BEFORE

Presentation for Wilderness Torah’s 5782 Elul Shofar Cohort, Elul 26

Eva Peskin, evapeskin@protonmail.com

sing: “Eva’s Song” by Meredith Monk

My name is Eva Peskin, and my zoom screen shows a round-faced white settler ashkenazi jew wearing clear plastic glasses and a bright yellow sweatshirt with “There Are No Prisons In Olam Haba” written in blue letters, sitting in front of a big window looking out over trees and a little bay. Thanks to Matir Asurim and the Jewish Zine Archive for creating this amazing sweatshirt. The text for what I am about to share is available at this link: shorturl.at/aFGU7. I will be speaking for about 10 minutes, including a brief somatic practice, so if you need to make any adjustments to your space or situation now to be as fully present as possible, I invite you to do so. I believe belonging, as a foundation for return, is intimately connected to access, and I welcome suggestions and recommendations for how to make this zoom experience more accessible for disabled and neurodivergent participants at any time. You can use the chat or direct message me, or email me afterwards so I know for next time — my email is in the text document.

I’m broadcasting from a watershed called WENNANEC by SENĆOŦEN speaking people, Xwaaqw’um by HUL'Q'UMI'NUM' speaking people, and Saltspring Island by the state of Canada. If you feel comfortable, I would love to know where you are all tuning in from, if you want to put a description or a place name in the chat—I love imagining everyone beaming like little bursts of light from different pinpoints all over the map, like that ocarina iphone app (if you know you know/shoutout to my mom). It also helps to give me a sense of the diasporic dreamscape we are co-creating today, at the end of this month of Elul!

So, speaking of Elul, I’m here to share with you some ideas I have about teshuva, this particular quality of return for which we spend the month preparing ourselves, as both vessel and spark. I have been experiencing teshuva as an arrival into presence with a felt connection to my integrity, and which rests on a contradiction: in order to return, I must acknowledge separation. And separation always involves fleeing, fighting, freezing in combinations of willful and unknowing breakage. No matter the inciting factors, the quality of return from a traumatized state determines the possibilities for transformation. If I have fled, or gotten caught up in fighting, or was unable to act when the moment called for it and I am trying to find my way back to a sense of self-acceptance (a precondition for belonging) and I am met with a reinforcement of the circumstances and commitments that produced the rupture, I will learn to repeat the behavior and the pathway to separation will grow. If I am met instead with a capacity to care for the rupture and nurture its healing, either the rupture will close or something new will emerge in the space between. Because the world as it is provides ample and ubiquitous reinforcements for the pathway to separation, if I want something different, I have to practice with myself first. I have to be ready to meet myself with care when I have done wrong, betrayed my values, caused harm, intentionally or unintentionally, so that I do not retread that pathway to separation from myself. Meeting myself with care involves building resilience for staying with discomfort, finding ways to communicate when I feel shut down, allowing feelings to take the time they take, accepting what I am able to do in this moment as enough—those are some main things I’m working with right now. I’m curious to know: what does it feel like to you when you meet yourself with care? What do you/can you do to cultivate self-acceptance?

I am reminded of a quote from Ursula Le Guin’s novel, The Dispossessed: “You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place you have never been.” The Dispossessed is one of the most profound meditations on return I have ever read, a story which has shaped me and reshaped me. Shevek, a physicist, is on the cusp of completing the General Temporal Theory, a bit of physics which resolves the fundamental contradiction of simultaneity (time as a container where things happen all at once) and sequency (time as an unfolding of relational events, one after another). Seven generations prior, Shevek’s people left a planet dominated by border wars and resource hoarding to live on the moon in a society that has no concept of prison and rejects private property—all people share what resources they have, and all people contribute to collective wellbeing. They conceive of themselves to be truly free, as opposed to the egoizing propertarians on the planet their ancestors fled. Shevek tests this notion: he wants to return to the planet to share his knowledge. I won’t go into more detail because I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t read it already, but suffice it to say, Shevek’s willingness and capacity to hold both uncertainty and certainty at once ignite a complex adventure. As the story is told, “He would always be one for whom the return was as important as the voyage out. To go was not enough for him, only half enough; he must come back. In such a tendency was already foreshadowed, perhaps, the nature of the immense exploration he was to undertake into the extremes of the comprehensible.” What allows Shevek to go out into the unknown is a deep-seated confidence that return is always possible and an awareness that he is never returning to the same place he left.

So, as we ready ourselves to listen to the shofar, to be animated in its vibrations, I invite us all to pause in this moment before and consider: in a world that is so often so inadequately resourced to take care of the most vulnerable beings, what nurtures my capacity to meet myself with acceptance? How can I practice that nurturance with myself so I may be more ready to meet the world with the skillful care required to facilitate transformational return? What allows me to continue returning to my desire and commitment to care? One thing that always helps me is to intentionally come into presence with my senses in my body, so as a final preparatory gesture for listening, I invite everyone to close your eyes if that is comfortable, or let your gaze fall at the end of your nose so your visual field softens, and notice what color the light is under your eyelids – for me, it is red, maybe for you it is green, or blue black. Notice how the shade changes as you move your head gently, exploring what movements bring ease to the back of your neck. If your jaw is clenched, can you relax it? As you move your head, how do you perceive the different qualities of light around you? Maybe as sensations of temperature, maybe as some other unnameable quality of energy that alerts you to the textures of the field around you. When you’re ready, gently blink your eyes open and take in your visual field anew, which may feel totally different than it did just a moment ago.

And so we have returned to where we started — with attention to access as a precondition for belonging, naming of place and position as ways to connect across difference, and respect for self-determination within a relational field. These are the values to which I am continually returning, always learning something new in the journey home. Thank you for your time and attention! I would love to receive responses to this offering in the chat or by email later!

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