Making Sense of this Shmita Year
Finding, Being, and Doing Enough
I grew up with a very compartmentalized view of my identity learning about who I was in fractions and parts. Along with calculating the amount I was of each ancestral group that people found interesting I was never going to be enough of any one of those fractions to come out a whole number.
That feeling of not being enough would follow me - it would follow each line of heritage and social identity.
Not skinny enough to shop in stores
Not fat enough to call myself fat and find community
Not Latino enough to call myself Chicano
Not white enough to go undetected and avoid “where are you really from”
Not Jewish looking enough to ever be assumed I belonged
Not traditional in family size, color, or makeup enough to relate to anyone else’s family story
It wasn't until my twenties that true identity synthesis came into the picture. Where I realized I didn’t have to check one identity at the door in order to belong to another. Up until that point I thought to be a feminist I had to ignore race, class, and sexuality, to be a Chicano I needed to know how to speak Spanish, to be a good skinny person I better be in pursuit of continual weight loss, I thought I could show up in the LGBTQ spaces and hope that no one would find out my sexuality and gender identity was way more complex than anyone letter could ever hold but I still wanted to go out dancing and fight for our humanity.
I was always working to prove I was just enough to make me acceptable to each social group I joined. I was a chameleon of code-switching and saying the things I thought others wanted me to say or would assume of me. I was a pleaser, an optimist, and avoided my own needs to meet the needs of others around me.
It took years of education, community building, incredible deepening of friendships and family connections, committing to work in intersectional social justice-focused spaces, devoting my energy to learning about my own cultures and cultures around the world. It took deep dives into the complexity of ethno-national-religious-ancestral conflict to get my head above water and learn how to swim upstream against the current. I learned how to build the very spaces I craved, those spaces that no longer asked ‘what are you?’ but honored everything I brought to the table.
What does this back story of not enough-ness have to do with how I’m observing the Shmita year? Well, it was on one of my long walks during pandemic times that I was listening to a @Judiasm Unbound podcast that started to learn what the Shmita year meant to so many others. Exploring what this 7th year of rest, sabbatical, and radical reimagination could mean (especially for those of us who aren’t directly linked to farming or tending to land). I was delighted and excited to learn I didn't have to have it all figured out. I could spend this year really diving into what kind of meaning-making I needed to better understand how I would observe a Shimita year now, 7 years from now, and see what life was like 7 years prior to where I currently sit.
I hemmed and hawed over what would set this year apart from so many other years. What would make this year different? How could I allow for anything to go fallow or rest in a time when it feels like the world both needs all the healing and action we can give and yet, I’m also reminded that the constant actions and need to do do do is deeply fueled by a culture of white supremacy that we are all swimming in. I could feel myself drawn to a year of getting rid of things, setting arbitrary boundaries or limits on spending, or even trying to tell myself to stop signing up for so many online courses and learning - could what you know be enough for now? I was ready to commit to one simple thing that I could cut out - but my loving partner reminded me that I was applying some of my favorite 40 days lent rules (I love an opportunity to try an experiment for 40 days) to this Shmita year. And then, I had an experience that would change me forever.
It was on a Saturday morning on a camping trip. My partner and I took a walk along a dirt road that led us to take a seat beneath a gorgeous grove of three ancient and tall pine trees. The pine trees were tucked away on a hillside that overlooked a craggy shoreline where we could hear the waves crash against cliffs and the seals bark from a farther off rock where they rested amongst the birds also taking respite from flight. Beneath these trees the temperature was warm, but not too warm, it was shady and yet the light still shone through, the breeze brought warm scents of ocean currents and dry summer sage. Once in a while a car would slowly pass by on the dirt road we had walked in on and I would smell the dirt kicked up by the four tires of that car passing by on its way into the wilderness. I had water to quench my thirst and I didn’t feel or want for anything else. As an avid hiker and someone who is a snacker, I wondered to myself is this what it feels like to be sated? As I lay down beneath the trees and looked up, I listened to the birds, felt the pine needles creating the soft and bouncy earth below me, I felt something I don’t know if I had ever felt before. Enough. The sound was enough, the temperature was enough, my body had enough, my love was enough, who I was in that moment was enough. My eyes water as I write this because it took me well into my third decade to get in touch with what it would feel like to exist and simply ‘be enough’. To truly take in the world around me and allow myself to exist in the same moment and feel enough. I didn’t need or want anything else at that moment. In the presence of my love, the earth, these trees, and the air, it was and I was enough.
That feeling of ‘enough’ now lives within reach. While I experience many a day, workshop, and moment of wanting for something outside of myself or feeling doubt, frustration, or in need. What I was able to access that day can never be taken away and I can transport myself closer to that feeling of enough more than I ever have before. And that’s what this year of rest/fallow and sabbatical is taking on for me.
This Shimita year is one of allowing what is - and where I am - and how I feel - and who is here with me -- to simply -- be enough. Whenever I get the feeling of urgency, self-doubt, fear of conflict, or any other of the tenets of white supremacy that often show up in moving through the day, I have a new place to ground into. A new way to resource from. This Shmita year is about allowing for a sabbatical from seeking something outside of me to help support me. It’s about resourcing inward - allowing for my mind, body, and soul to find a practice that hangs out in that place of “enoughness.” This Shmita year is about not needing to get something new to support my self-care, but a new way to realign and allow myself to experience that feeling of enough amidst great uncertainty and challenges. It aligns with giving the earth rest (not seeking to extract any further resources to meet my needs) and allows for a sense of rest, creating a practice of resourcing what is “enough” in this moment and can I do anything to just be a bit closer and a bit more at ease.
So I invite you to join me in seeking, feeling, sensing what you need in this Shmita year. What is a radical way to reimagine a sabbatical year for your body, this earth, and your wellbeing?
