Time Is All We Have
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Time Is All We Have
Fertile Friday Love Note
Listen to the Fertile Friday love note. Story of the photo is below.
By mother mother binahkaye joy
3-5 June 2022
The evolution of my abundance consciousness has led me to cultivate a softer, more generative relationship with time. The Garden gives me the space to experiment with articulations of these expanding time theories. One of my core mantras as Mother Mother, as a superconductor of divine creation intelligence, as a fertility priestess celebrating 6 years since my initiation began, is the seed scripture for Time. It nourishes me everyday: Time is all I have. I have all the time I need.
Rooting my frequencies in this knowing and breathing into it as a daily life practice sustains me through the multitude of creation labors that I am called to do. When mamas ask me “how do you have time to…do what you love, do what brings you joy, do so much with so many kids…” I come back to my liberated relationship with time, and to the everpresent labors of radically centering my fertility in all things.
I am still finding my way into fully unpacking the layers of all I mean. I am working with the same 24 hours in a day as everyone else, but I do see that my embracing of slowness, my devotion to softness, my keen awareness of the vastness of every now—all of this shifts the way I speak and engage with time.
Italicized words defined and expanded on in the glossary
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From the outside looking in, it might sometimes seem as if I’m doing magic tricks with time—and maybe I am. But my actual journey of arriving to this capacity to extract the most fertile possibility from every moment has been, in many ways, unremarkable. I follow the unhurried brilliance of creation, as do most living entities on our planet. I witness myself. I honor what the moment, what my body, what my heart, can hold, and I act from there. I call this way of living and laboring “creating at the pace of possibility.” This pace is different for every creator, for every creation.
The Garden is a softhouse where creators can discover the authentic fertility codes for their heart creations, away from the relentless pressure and artificial acceleration of the world’s machinery. In this congregation for creators, in this sanctuary for mothers, we practice experiencing time as another form of abundance.
Many of us have been taught that time is something to manage and control, and that if you don’t your time will be limited, strained, tight, fleeting, or wasted. In choosing to consider softer, more fluid, more elastic applications of time, the Garden has become a vibrant laboratory for reframing our language about time, and developing processes for communing together in ways that matter everyone’s sovereignty. Through this intentional labor, we discover again and again that engaging time as a resource is an elemental practice of cultivating abundance consciousness.
“I follow the unhurried brilliance of creation, as do most living entities on our planet. I witness myself. I honor what the moment, what my body, what my heart, can hold, and I act from there. I call this way of living and laboring “creating at the pace of possibility.” This pace is different for every creator, for every creation.”
Explore the Daily Dancer practice below.
In our first 26 months of Garden living, I have identified different kinds of time that we experience in our day to day moments. These discoveries are continuously unfolding. It is all a slow and organic learning, largely initiated by the long labors of helping creators understand that they are truly free to come as they are.
I came to see that it wasn’t always enough to simply tell a creator that she is welcome to be here if she feels the Yes. For many creators they are arriving to the Garden after years, lifetimes, of living in formatted time frequencies, where external forces dictate large portions (or maybe all) of their time. Acclimating to life in the Garden, a world where those mandates don’t apply, can at times be confusing and uncomfortable for people just beginning to find their way here. Giving gentle reminders to everyone that they are welcome to really engage with the majesties of the Garden on their own terms, in their own time, is an essential part of the culture here.
Some creators don’t initially trust the invitation, fearing that joining the Garden will become another stress point in the wearying race to keep up with everything, another place to administer assorted apologies for why they can’t be more deeply involved. As Mother Mother it has been, and continues to be, a necessary witnessing of diverse creators’ needs and a powerful learning about what all we’ve seeded and activated in this magical home called the Garden.
In the Garden there is no falling behind, or needing to catch up. There is no late. Ever. We’re serious! You can not be late in the Garden! There is nothing that can’t be reengaged with at a more mutually nourishing time in the future if the group’s meeting time didn’t align with your life this week. If you start something and don’t finish it by the time you said you would, there is no judgment or punishment. If you say you’re going to do something and life happens and your labors redirect in unexpected ways, if your passion dips in another practice, if your heart isn’t excited by it anymore—whatever the reason—we honor your right to change your mind. You don’t owe us your intentions. You don’t have to defend your intuition. Your time is not ours to demand. It is a gift, one that we cherish in all ways. Your time is precious. Your time is holy. You get to decide how you share your time.
Explore the practice
Soundtrack: Alice Coltrane Stopover Bombay (feat. Pharaoh Sanders) | Miles Davis Aida | Nina Simone Westwind (Organica Remix) | Lansine Kouyate & Sissokho Yakhouba Aïda
About this practice: Spiral Mother invites dancers to experience the brilliance and organic expansion of their movement creations along the sacred pathway of the spiral.
So, how did we grow to this consciousness around time? We didn’t start off here when the Garden opened the first Monday in April of 2020. Gradually, awkwardly, comically, we found our way here, through months and seasons of experimentation, of questioning and feedback, of pushback and transparency. Identifying specific time patterns has been a pivotal labor in activating more emancipated experiences with time. This is what we have named so far.
Fluid TIME PATTERNS IN The Garden
The Garden participates in these time patterns.
Divine-time
Divine-time is when moments happen in alignment with your heart’s joy, without you laboring to make something happen.
Examples of divine-time:
A mother goes into labor when the baby is ready to come.
You lost touch with a dear friend years ago, and unexpectedly run into them at the grocery store.
Your heart is heavy and tears are falling, and someone you love calls you because you were on their mind and they just felt to reach out.
Soft-time
Soft-time is having the opportunity to engage with something in your own time.
Examples of soft-time:
You enroll in a self-paced, online course and can take as much time as you need to work through the material.
An event that you really wanted to attend but weren’t able to is recorded, so you can experience it that way.
The Garden has a shared diary that gives creators the chance to write stories, make comments, and ask questions without ever having to meet-up to exchange our ideas.
Collaborative-time
Collaborative-time is when you have the option to engage with others in a live setting, either virtually or in-person, on your own terms. You are always free to attend or not. You are free to come whenever the moment is good for you. You are free to leave when you need to.
Examples of collaborative-time:
Every Monday at 6pm ET the Garden gathers for our Soils Lab practice. Some creators attend the labs; some do not. Some people come for an hour; some creators stay for several hours.
Your sorority hosts a street festival from 10am-4pm with a changing line-up of vendors and performers. You are free to come and go as you please.
You plan a work-along on Zoom with your friends for Sunday mornings at 8am. You commit to holding the space for at least two hours every week, for whoever shows up, for however long they show up.
Natural-time
Natural-time is time that flows in alignment with the natural creative forces of our world
Examples of natural-time:
The Earth spins around itself 365 times to make one turn around the sun.
Certain flowers bloom every spring.
Your sacred bleeding time comes every month after so many days in your cycle, unless there is a starseed growing in your womb.
Parallel-time
Parallel-time is the spiritually synchronized phenomenon of being in conscious communion with someone else, or with another entity, that may be physically distanced from you.
Examples of parallel-time:
Two creators in the Garden both wanted to honor two different ancestors in their families on the same day. Instead of meeting up to have a joint celebration, they mapped out a series of sacred activities to do on this special day, each creator in her own space and acting in her own time.
Because of the pandemic, your family decides that instead of everyone traveling to one location for the family reunion, different family groups will simultaneously host smaller, local family reunion events in their city. Your aunt sends out a book of recipes to every family member. Each local group decides on the recipes they’ll prepare for their reunion events. Everyone is essentially cooking “together,” even though the cooking and gathering is happening in different places.
When you are dancing a ringshout, you travel across time parallels to commune with one of your ancestral mothers.
Story behind the cover photo: This weekend I am celebrating 6 years on my path as a fertility priestess and Mother Mother. This picture was take the week before my initiation began. I am standing at the sea’s edge, having just communed with the starseed who will be born as a my daughter a year later.
Formatted TIME PATTERNS in the world
The Garden does not participate in these time patterns.
Locational-time
Locational-time is when your voluntary engagement in an activity is solely dependent on your physical presence being at a certain location at a certain time.
Examples of locational-time:
Church service begins at 11am every Sunday. The entire service happens inside the sanctuary at the church. The only way to experience the full service is to be there at 11am.
The annual fireworks show happens from 9-9:30 pm every 4th of July. It is not recorded or streamed online.
Tickets for the popular concert are only sold at this store. If you want tickets you have to camp out at this store to have a chance to get tickets because they will sell out fast.
Mandated-time
Mandated-time is time that you are required to comply with in order to receive compensation, have access to instruction, or engage with exclusive resources.
Examples of mandated-time:
In order to maintain your employment you have to work the exact hours dictated by the schedule.
The school keeps track of everyone’s attendance, including tardiness and unexcused absences.
Each section of the exam is timed and there are no extensions if you don’t complete all the questions in the allotted time.
Consequential-time
Consequential-time is when you have to do something by a certain time to avoid a consequence of noncompliance.
Examples of consequential-time:
You have to check-in an hour before your flight or you won’t be allowed to board the plane.
If you don’t renew your driver’s license by the expiration date, you won’t be able to legally drive anywhere.
To apply for the grant, your application must be submitted by 11:59pm on the due date or you will be ineligible for the award.
Static-time
Static-time is a time structure that has been normalized through generations of human behavior. It is oftentimes accepted as the only way something can be experienced. Static time does not accommodate individual needs or situational variations.
Examples of static-time:
In this country a typical school year is September to June, with school days determined as Monday through Friday from 8am-4pm.
The average workday is 8 hours long, and full time employees generally work 40 hours a week.
Mothers who grow beyond the medically standardized 40 weeks of gestation are frequently pressured to induce labor.
“We didn’t start off here when the Garden opened... Gradually, awkwardly, comically, we found our way here, through months and seasons of experimentation, of questioning and feedback, of pushback and transparency. Identifying specific time patterns has been a pivotal labor in activating more emancipated experiences with time.”
One of the core labors we do in the Garden is bring greater visibility to the diverse nature of time patterns, and our power to choose which time patterns we engage with for our lives. In developing our own language, and in experimenting with our own time patterns, we have uncovered more generative ways of living and being. These ways support us in pouring more deeply into our creations, in communing more intimately with our sistership, and in enjoying more moments in every single day.
Time is all I have. I have all the time I need.
Changing our relationship to time opens up more possibilities in how we can experience our own creativity and fertility. Realizing that we do have time, that the time we have is ours to shape, and that every moment is full of creative potential—all of this liberates us and gives us more space to dream more boldly into whatever it is we are creating.
I offer these emerging ideas as soft invitations to anyone seeking to reimagine their time patterns. The Garden is continuously growing, learning, evolving. This is a constant becoming. Time is a massive thing to consider. We will be in these labors for a while. So, what time do you have? What will you do with the time you have?
where do you share your stories?
Ask a question + share your story with us. The Fertility Abundance Garden is a congregation for creators, a sanctuary for mothers, a dreamscape for sacred storytellers. To learn more and to join the Garden, visit the Fertility Abundance Garden Welcome Center.
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