Patience and Parks

It has been a momentous week, yet with no fanfares or fireworks. We have begun teaching the children face to face outside in gardens and in parks. The mood is both a bit apprehensive but also exhilarating, the students enjoying the energy you only get when seated next to someone else. So far, despite the distractions of being outdoors (“look at the cat!”, “uh a swing/slide/flowers” etc) it has been joyous, and wonderful. We have been fortunate this week to welcome Josh from LJY-Netzer (the youth movement) who has been running some wonderfully creative sessions with us, from guerilla gardening to modern slavery; calculating how many slaves we ‘have’ through our consumption was a big eye opener for the oldest bnei mitzvah group.

So it’s back to normal and yet not. Masks inside, none outside, no sharing of food, lots of hand sanitizer, but also laughs, teamwork and discovery. Our first ramble in a while where we did not have to worry about being more than six people. Friday night together outside. It feels like we have arrived, and yet, underlying this wonderful sense of normality, there’s also apprehension, and a sense that things are going a bit too fast. And then there’s the waiting; we have been waiting for so long to know where we are at, and what the next steps will be, and yet, it seems as if restrictions and carefulness will have to continue to make us all safe. It is easy to feel frustrated, angry or so fed up that we willfully ignore the rules. 

Now, more than ever we need savlanut. This Hebrew word is normally translated as patience, but the Hebrew highlights that it is not about being calm. The word shares the same root as sivlot or burden or sabal meaning porter. Patience, in this light, means the ability to carry a burden. I find this view of patience very helpful, as this past year has been about carrying many heavy burdens. To have savlanut, does then not have to mean chasing inner calm (though that is also important) or to not be angered or deflated by our experiences, but rather that we have the ability to endure uncomfortable situations or experiences, and potentially continued restrictions.

Mussar wisdom teachers like to use the image of our emotions as being a heavy suitcase and we are the porter, able to carry them. I find that it helps adding imaginary wheels to the bottom of my emotional suitcase, when I’m feeling impatient, so that the burden is easier to bear. Savlanut, then, is the ability for us to realise our burdens and add any wheels or other images to help us when the burdens feel very heavy.