Ep 112: All vibes are welcome

As we reflect on the high holidays, we delve into lessons we can glean from this past season and the moment we’re in now (and all the heaviness many of us are feeling). How can we align ourselves with the future we want by being aware of ALL of our vibes and nurturing and holding ourselves in whatever we’re feeling?

Join our mailing list at https://joyousjustice.com

Check out our offerings and join one of our programs! https://joyousjustice.com/courses

Find April’s TikTok videos here: https://www.tiktok.com/@aprilavivabaskin

Find April and Tracie's full bios and submit topic suggestions for the show at www.JewsTalkRacialJustice.com

Learn more about Joyous Justice and join our mailing list: https://joyousjustice.com/

Support the work our Jewish Black & Cherokee woman-led vision for collective liberation here: https://joyousjustice.com/support-our-work

Discussion and reflection questions:

What in this episode is new for you? What have you learned and how does it land?
What is resonating? What is sticking with you and why?
What feels hard? What is challenging or on the edge for you?
What feelings and sensations are arising and where in your body do you feel them?

Tracie: 0:00

In what is for us a relatively short conversation, we look back at the high holiday season that just wrapped and think about lessons for life. And for right now.

April Baskin: 0:12

This is Jews talk racial justice with April and Tracie,

Tracie: 0:16

a weekly show hosted by April Baskin and Tracie Guy Decker.

April Baskin: 0:20

in a complex world change takes courage,

Tracie: 0:23

wholehearted relationships can keep us accountable.

April Baskin: 0:26

Oh, right. We are what a week or two after the high holiday season. So sad, perhaps a sad time. For some of us who really love the High Holidays and a huge Kol Hakavod, toda rabah. I hope you are getting rest to our beloved Jewish clergy and Jewish synagogue and Jewish community staff. Hmm. I think even though it's approaching two weeks ish, after our sacred hugging or sacred High Holidays, I know that a number of our beloved colleagues are likely still catching their breath, even as the fall season is likely picking up. And I just want to say, along with you, Tracy, that to our beloved folks who have been doing tremendous amount of labor of love and love and maybe not labor of love, maybe maybe labor of obligation and commitment. But hopefully labor of love, I think for many meant both. And depending upon how your community treated you it might feel one way or the other, that you are loved and appreciated. And I wanted to say this because Tracy, you mentioned a similar theme that you've been sensing happening in the broader ether and I thought a perfect entry point. Given core themes of our beloved Jews talk racial justice podcast, I wanted to give a shout out to our Jewish clergy and everything that they navigate in general, and specifically, especially during this holiday season, at this moment in time with everything that's happening politically and communally. And sociologically, there's so much shift, that was a lot to hold for clergy, as well as community staff and other lay leaders who were just pouring there all over the past few weeks. And so in the in recent days, and also in the coming days and weeks and even months, to a certain extent, I, I hope you are paying as much as you can special attention to nourishing yourself in ways that makes sense and taking great breaks and setting up boundaries as needed to recoup and recover and replenish after giving so much.

Tracie: 2:54

Yeah, same same. You know, sometimes I think about the holiday, like the calendar as a wheel. In fact, the behind me, for those of you watching the video, there's like the that circle is the Jewish calendar. And it's like, it's like it's unbated on excuse me, it's on it's unweighted. No, that's not what it's unbalanced, right? Because there's this, this heavyweight, they're in, in, in Tishrei. And, and then there are other little weights around but there's like so many. And I used to think that that was somehow a mistake, or like poor planning. But I've come to really start to appreciate the sequence of all of the hugging in the way that they come which I want to offer, especially for those of us who were like you just named April, the weight of the world right now just feels really really heavy. I mean, it has for a couple years now, like since the start a pandemic at least before or

April Baskin: 3:59

like a pandemic, people thought it was rough before that hit right

Tracie: 4:02

right like and then I just added like weight on top of weight on top of weight and it just it just keeps coming. It's like whack a mole or something. But one of the things I'm thinking about now as I'm looking backward on this most recent high holiday season is the way we sort of start the season in like kind of grounding and reflection in the past. And then we end enjoy with some Haftorah and some Haftorah. Lesson of you know that we're always in process like not even for a week. Do Are we finished with Torah with with you know, our lessons and our joy and our you know, like the the sort of core that holds us all together. Not even for a week. As soon as we finish that final paragraph then we you know, we say chazak, chazak Can you because I can go straight into the next one and back into Reishi Because of the beginning, again, and there's something just so profound, profound and and also simple in that not pausing at the end, but going right back in that feels really instructive, especially now, with all of the weight that we're managing the weights not quite the right word, but there's there's just intensity. Yeah. And like there's a sadness, and I'm feeling fear.

April Baskin: 5:37

I know that there's a lot of fear in the color. And right now,

Tracie: 5:43

there's a sense of powerlessness, which I don't think is accurate. Like, I don't think that we are, in fact, powerless. Yeah, and for me, there is comfort in that, in the reminder of you know, that, yeah, and we just, and we keep reading, and there's joy in it, even as we started this whole season in that backward reflection in, you know, the beating of our chests on Yom Kippur war. And so there's room for all of it, you know, the gratitude of the soup, the Sukkot, the, the booths in the, in the wilderness, you know, there's this the Sukkot, comprehensiveness that we go through in that series of hugging him and that series of festivals and holidays. At now, I feel much less like it's an unbalanced Wait, an unbalanced wheel rather, and more like, there's work that we need to do. And without all of it, it's incomplete. And so I'm sensing.

April Baskin: 6:49

Yeah, love them. Yeah. You know, I love that perspective. Yeah,

Tracie: 6:53

a much greater feeling of gratitude and wholeness actually moved from the what feels like

April Baskin: 7:03

a lot. And even more further clarity that a friend just

Tracie: 7:07

gave a shout out to have all these hugging in in Tishrei.

April Baskin: 7:13

And I want to say something about this that may come off as annoying. I'm not quite sure how to say it. So in a way, that won't be annoying. And one of my liberatory practices right now is focusing less on caretaking for other people emotionally, even though I can't ever fully let it go, because I care about humans. But is to say, I also want to be clear, just in case it's helpful for anyone if it's not the worry about it, that I'm not feeling that way. I mean, that actually isn't fully true. But it doesn't feel like it's necessarily related to external circumstances more about specific things or a hero's journey, I am navigating in my own leadership and with my team with our team, you know, so because I think there's a way at times were a part of the collective consciousness that at times people who don't feel aligned, whether someone whether you are feeling sad when the collective consciousness is happy, or you are happy, like I just want to make a case for I guess what we say at the beginning of all of our programs, most of the time that all lives are welcome. But I think it's I think it's helpful to at times, particularly as it relates to co creation with the Divine and comrades and engaging in resilience, that a key part of that is awareness, right that with a culture or an even I think, honestly, there's more resistance, I'm not sure if there are maybe it's equal, I'm not sure if it's a ubiquitous culture of toxic positivity and or that the pushback about it is so big that it makes it seem bigger than it actually is, like I questioned that at times. But that, that to in the spirit of being in alignment with mindfully countering that dynamic, something that enables me to consistently engage in joyous justice is that whenever I'm not feeling joyful, I'm not feeling joyful, like I don't I take the time to be like I'm terrified or I am, I am deeply sorrowful, I am in grief, right? Like I am grieving, I am mourning, I am experiencing all these different things. And the key that is a part of one of the lessons that you teach in our leadership and coaching programs, is as we acknowledge our different feelings and practice awareness of them that a key part of that process is to nurture ourselves is to nurture and hold that feeling and to nurture and hold ourselves. And so we're making this quick episode because we're recording right as we're running into an other commitments we have as you might be, as you're listening in, or perhaps you're washing dishes or doing some other lovely thing that I like to do when I'm listening to my podcasts, that yes, the wheel keeps turning, we are a spiral I'm hearing because you're talking with him the song that's sung in Kohenet like Rav Kohenet Taya Ma, "We are a spiral, we are a spiral. Coming home." that as this wheel keeps turning, and we just had this heavy thing, and we are navigating heavy things. But there's a way in which that is the perfect case for me to in the ways that make sense for all of us. And each of us in distinct and collective ways for us to prioritize rest and self care that because it is complex. And so it's all the more important that we weave in moments of noticing and nourishment or release, and, and rest. And that that punctuation or those longer notes of that. Lately, I found for me, personally, I'm often horizontal for much of the weekend. Lately, even if I'm reading or doing work, I find like my body is just wanted deep rest, like I will socialize another time I will go out to the beach, I live only a mile from the ocean. But right now my body just wants to be flat. And so I've given myself space to do that. And it's a little weird in a certain way. But I'm able to go into the week feeling rested. And so whatever that is for you, we wanted to let you know that we see you and we hear you whether you are an oddball at the moment like me and are feeling excited and joyful or taking moments to feel the terror and move through it more quickly because you process it fully and then keep going. Or if you're in more of a static feeling of fear or fatigue or pain that we are in this together. And we love you and in our space in our podcasts for the rear directly talking about it or not. Please know that all lives are always welcome. And, and we love you. And we have a whole year ahead. For me this Shmita year was a year of lots of learning lots of tough love. So I'm really excited about this coming year. And to take on a number of next steps in growth. And we're really excited to share that with you all as we move forward. Tracy, anything else you want to add?

Tracie: 12:44

I just want to reiterate what you just said about you know, please, we're in this together. I think that that, for me. Those especially when I'm not in the same vibe as folks around me. Or if I'm in low vibration, as you call it sadness or grief or even anger sometimes I can feel very lonely. And I think that remembering that I am not in fact alone, even if I'm not fully aligned. Is has been really really important. In however that shows up. During the holidays, I sat in a sukkah and sang songs with some comrades in the in the, in the work here in Baltimore or in Maryland. And it was amazing. And I wasn't in exactly the same place like we sang about to leave Levine's we rise, which I love that song. And I started to get a little bit teary as we were singing and I mean, there was joy in this in the sukkah, and I and I loved it. And that's part of why I was emotional. But also, you know, I'm you know, we're all processing things that aren't showing at all times. And so anyway if if you also feel some loneliness fleeting or otherwise just me too, and you're not alone.

April Baskin: 14:11

Me three. I didn't sleep well last night. I've been feeling some low vibes today. But in general, I don't I don't want to let oppressive dynamics determine my energy. But that doesn't still mean that at times they do and or that just things in my day can remind me of, you know, I do a lot of trauma healing work in my personal life. And so I'm very conscious of when my trauma is triggered, and it's an opportunity for me to do that work and so I can have intense old feelings that are surfacing that I'm working through and today is one of those days but um, all of the vibes across the spectrum all of the emotions have sacred and important roles to play in our awareness individually and collectively and in our co creative work together. And the more we can embrace that, I think, the more we can have access to our collective power and choice over time. Much love. Thanks for tuning in our shows theme music was composed by Elliot hammer. You can find this track and other beats on Instagram at @elliothammer. If this episode resonated with you, please share it and subscribe. To join the conversation visit us jewstalkracialjustice.com where you can send us a question or suggestion, access our show notes and learn more about our team. Take care until next time and stay humble and keep going.

The Joyous Justice Podcast

Ep 112: All vibes are welcome

Listen to this podcast on