Having Margin

Time is flying by.  It is hard to believe that I have already lived in Kensington for over a month.

By now, I really feel in the routine of my life here.  It is nice to walk through the neighborhood and know where I am going, take public transportation with confidence, and see familiar faces throughout my day, like our neighbor, Don, who is often sitting on our stoop when I come back from work.

The week started off with a restful Sabbath.  In the afternoon, I walked to Campbell Square, which is a little park that is about fifteen minutes away, where I set up my hammock and read for awhile.  It is interesting spending time in these parks that are right in the middle of the chaos and noise of the city.  While it certainly was not quiet at Campbell Square, it was peaceful to find rest in my hammock in the midst of it all.  I also checked out a different church in the evening, called Liberti.  Liberti is a network of churches in Philadelphia, and there is one location in Harrisburg, so I was familiar with them.  It is hard to find churches here that are meeting in person.  Liberti is doing small in-person evening services.  I really enjoyed connecting with people there, as well as after the service, when we walked to a park and ate dinner together (socially distanced, of course).  

My work started to pick up a little this week, with a few oddball tasks that I was given.  While my work does not feel incredibly purposeful (making lots of phone calls each day can be quite monotonous), it is good to have tasks to do.  And I found myself less anxious about the spaces in between these tasks this week.  There were a few times this week where I did not have anything that I was supposed to be doing.  Over the past two weeks, I found this to be stressful.  I felt that I needed to fill my time in a "productive," "worthwhile," and "service-oriented" way.  But I found a lot of freedom from these thought patterns this week.  My life has not been at this slow of a pace for a sustained period of time in as long as I can remember (elementary school, maybe?).  Rather than feeling guilty about this, can I consider what a blessing this is?  What a gift it is to have margin in my life, for once!  Where I have space to breathe, to be attentive to myself, and to not always have to rush from one thing to the next.  I don't know how long this will last (if school transitions back to in-person, I am sure my life will become much busier), but for now, I can enjoy this.

Hammocking in Campbell Square