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| ISSUE NO. 675 |
| I DON'T REMEMBER WHERE . . . the above quote came from, the pages of which book I found it between. (Maybe someone reading this newsletter will know and tell us...And for anyone who cannot see the image above, the quote reads: "I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth; and truth rewarded me." - Simone de Beauvoir, All Said and Done) Often times when I am reading in bed by lamplight, I am too tired or absorbed to stop and take notes, so I take a quick photo on my phone instead. And because I try not to look at my phone that often (which means I still look at it for at least two hours a day, if not more) these notes to self float like leaves on the stream of daily life, waiting to be noticed. When the quote resurfaced today, it made space for the pause I was looking for in end-of-year pressure. Whether it's pressure to make the most of something, pressure to be in a certain place at a certain time, pressure to maximize joy, pressure to show up the way that others expect you to, pressure to survive the cycles imposed on us, or pressure to ignore someone or something we've lost, the particular pressure I'm noticing right now is the pressure to reflect, to digest, and to process an entire year on a certain timeline (i.e. by January 1, 2024). 'Truth' is a word that automatically centers me, and reminds me of the slowness and stillness that is my active resistance to pressure of all kinds. I also appreciate that de Beauvior named 'the safe comfort of certainties', those elusive fantasies that are sold to us under pressure from one source or another, because belief in certainty makes us more malleable to playing by the rules of capitalism and the white supremacy delusion. So much of the power of certainty lies in its ability to reference itself, i.e. we can be certain of what happened in the past, so to be smart and successful, let's bet on the certainty that it will happen again. This is a pressure we struggle against, personally and professionally, as students of the imagination, students of the school of 'what might be', 'if only', and 'perhaps with a little shift in the wind...' When I apply resistance to certainty as a filter to relationships, I think of Toi Marie and Renee Barreto's concept of 'relational gardening', which they shared through this past year's cohort of Project Bloom, a self-paced learning opportunity that will be offered again throughout 2024. 'Relational gardening' is an "expansion of our concepts and practice of relationship", as Prentis Hemphill and Mia Birdsong discuss in the Finding Our Way podcast. It is an alternative to the pressure to define family as blood relations, and the further pressure to find and receive everything that you need from blood relations (please replace 'blood' with legal, traditional, nuclear, or any other word that signifies such types of bond, in your life). In Birdsong's words, "family is not about a structure, but a network of relationships." The cruel thing about narrowing our view of relationships, is that it leaves us more isolated and alone when that particular relationship doesn't happen to serve us, every minute of every day. All of this is enough to sit with for a very long time...but what I have been finding particularly vital about the idea of a 'relational garden' is that everything in the garden is useful, meaningful, beautiful, and serves a purpose. That means that even those relationships that are not 'ideal' or 'my style', even those relationships that are lying fallow or pulled up by the roots, are part of the garden. That even relationships that appear to be gone forever, have been absorbed into the ground to nourish other growth. And it means that conflict exists for a reason, and - as observed recently through Project Bloom - we don't have to be close to everyone that we love. (My sense is that the reverse is true, as well - that we can be in close relationship with someone that we don't love, except in the most basic human-to-human kind of way.) Since I took in the concept of 'relational gardening' and applied it to my own network of family, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, people I recognize because I see them all the time but I've never met, people I've never met who make me really mad on a daily basis...you get the idea...as I apply that to my own garden, I feel a sense of truth that has very little to do with certainty, and everything to do with the meaning in the mess of things. What Mark Nepo calls, 'How to stay connected and tethered to the truth that outlasts all argument." My question for today is, if you let up on the pressure around your own relational garden, what might you notice? We are going to be taking a two-week break from showing up in your inbox. Over the last couple of months, we've had important, imaginative conversation around the How to Apply process of job seeking and hiring. We're resisting the pressure to wrap that all up at the end of this calendar year, and will be continuing the conversation in 2024 with alternatives to resumes, requests for unpaid labor, and the limitations of requirements, references, and rolling applications. If 'relational gardening' speaks to you, you can support Marie's work in a multitude of ways and learn more about Barreto's work here. Last but not least, as you may have heard in a recent newsletter, GFJ is raising its job posting prices for the first time in 14 years. Individual job posts will go up to $75, but you can get them for $65 each with a 5-job package, $55 each with a 10-job package, and $45 each with a 15-job package. If you are inclined to take advantage of current rates and snatch up some job packages, we will honor them throughout the whole of 2024. And, as always, there will be an option to Pay What You Can. Thanks for sticking with us, please reach out if you have any questions, and we'll 'see' you on January 9, 2024. Tay + Dor |
tidbits...resources on anti-racism, environmentalism and food culture AKA stuff we're reading / listening to / watching / noticing / thinking about / captivated by this Tuesday . . . |
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