I woke up on the floor of my 5th Street apartment.
Humidity had glued my face to its wooden floor.

I didn’t know what time it was.

Wait,
I didn’t know what part of the day it was.
Then I realized, I didn’t know what day it was.

Everything hurt.

I knew I could never get up.

I got up.

It wasn’t me who got me up.
Left to my own devices, my own desires, I would have kept lying there
In that pool of sweat,
My sweat.

Something else moved me.
The power of that empty pain?
The force of that hideous despair?

Something moved me
Up
Toward the telephone,
To the hotline.

Something moved me
Up,
To find keys, 
Birkenstocks,
To open heavy, heavy New York door,
To walk into street.

Humidity oppressive like a wet-heavy-hot-blanket
Surrounded me.

New York summer grit biting my face.

Something moved me
Up,
To walk across the noisy churning trafficked street,
To the church that was always there
Waiting,

To the people
That were always there 
Waiting.

One block away,
Starting in a few minutes,
I walked past the church.

No.

I am different.
Not going in.
Not going in.

I went in.

Everything they said about themselves 
That day
Were things about me,
I hardly knew.

Things I had yet
To meet
In
Myself.

Everything changed.

They called themselves “grateful alcoholics.”
I snickered.
Grateful?
For that despair?
For that pain?

They said, as the day begins, 
Be grateful for everything in that upcoming day,
For
It was all
A gift.

I thought,
A gift?
What if shit happens?
Shit will happen.

They were right.
Shit happened.

They were right.
The shit did compost.

They were right.

Eventually
Grace
Unfolded.

Eventually
The
Miracles
Revealed.

Now
Everything continues to change.

As I continue to go
To those churches,

I continue to say
In the mornings
Yes, I’m grateful,
No matter what happens,
I’m in,
As best I can.

I am grateful.

I wake today 
In my bedroom
Most resembling
A comfortable treehouse.
Branches all around
Supporting me
Holding me
In their arms.

A morning storm lights the sky.
Thunder rumbles in the throat
Of the morning’s darkness.

For every single part of this day
That has not yet happened,

For every single moment of my life
Especially the heartbreaks

For whatever I am given,

I am grateful.

Eventually.

Eventually.

As I outlive the pain,
As I breathe into and through
The despair,
The gifts await me.

I am grateful for August 27, 1986.

I am grateful for August 27, 2019.

For the pain and the joy,
For the fear and the pleasure,
For the despair and for the hope.

It is all grace.
It is all inevitable.
It is all sacred.

Dear Friends,

It’s a hard one, this “gratitude for the difficulties, the unknowns, the heartbreaks.”  I am here to remind us: gratitude changes the chemistry of the brain. As we outlive the feelings, so much becomes possible, all eventually relaxes into perfection and ease.

Do you have something in your life you did not choose?  Something that, as it approached, you railed against, fist to the sky.  You tried to halt its arrival. Let me guess—it happened, anyway. With hindsight, can you look to that situation, can you see the gifts that emerged?

I do not write this to take away the pain.  I do not write this to eject ourselves from the human experience, the inevitability of the pain of living.

Pain is mandatory.

I write this to remind us, to give our hearts courage, to give us the strength—to keep going.

Suffering is optional.

Please send on your leap of faith, your situations that eventually opened into the next gift, the next iteration, the next unfold-mend of your life.

All voices welcomed!  And experiences, beyond sacred.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings

*Thanks to Ed P. for his extraordinary pix of his first Kelvin Floodlight dinnerplate dahlia of the season.

I’ve been thinking about writing it weekly, the lessons, the gifts, in the writing, the lessons, the gifts in the releasing it into this, our shared world.

I’ve been thinking about you, about me.

I’ve been thinking about the gifts of sharing.

From the I-to-the-we, how everything becomes easier, lighter, maybe even possible.

Dear Folks, to you, all.  

You who are faceless to my eyes; yet you who live deep inside my heart.  

You who greet me in the halls of Kripalu with big, conspiratorial grins.  

You who reach out to me with sweet, shy emails. 

You who reach out to me proclaiming the bridges of connection between our experiences.

You who reach out to me in silence. 

You who simply delete the email.

Every single one of you. 

Every single one of us.

We’re in this thing, this moment, this journey together, whether we know it or not.

And that’s the good news.

This last year of my life has been filled with such transition, so many gifts, so much loss, propelling me into the most fiery, most urgent of practices of my life.  I have chosen to share some of the more tender details of my transition with you (see last few blogs below), because I believe in this practice.

I believe in the yoga of faith.

That’s my practice.

Not faith, like this religion or that religion.

Faith, like, I am equipped to step forward.

Faith, like, evidence-based data that tells me, I can outlive this and blossom.

Faith, like, If it’s happening, no matter how heart-wrenching, no matter how belly-shaking, no matter how terrifying it lands on and in and around our skin, it must be life giving us more life.

To grow.

To become more of who we really are.

I believe that if we dare to step toward life, life will meet us.

If we dare to step toward truth, we will be supported.

If we dare to step toward parts of ourselves that we have run from, more wholeness and authenticity will emerge.

And here is the good, good news; we are in it together.

And here is the good, good news; we share it together.

In the sharing, in the bridges built between our hearts, everybody wins.

As I claim my resilience in this fantastic moment in my life, as I declare that I am finding my way, as I share it with you, everybody gets healed.

As I choose life and vitality and truth, so do you.

From the “I” to the “we.”

That is the so much of the journey.

In this time of such cultural and national split, it is imperative that we find each other, that, from the platform, the home of our-selves, we find others, to make this world the place we want to offer our children.

Nobody says this better than the poet, Naomi Shihab Nye.  Please join her as she reads her poem, 4-A:

 

 

 

 

 

As Naomi affirms:

This is the world I want to live in.
This can happen anywhere.
Not everything is lost.

Dear Friends, what would a shared world look like to you?  What elements would be in place? Where did this blog land in you? 

Please, share your thoughts, your heart, with me.

All voices welcome; all experiences sacred.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings, 
Aruni

At their awesome concert this weekend, Sweet Honey in the Rock reminded me.

They reminded me of something so helpful, so right.

They reminded me of my parents.  

No, my parents are not an all-woman, African American a cappella ensemble, with a forty-five-year history of performing history.

Sweet Honey reminded me of my parents’ love.

Sweet Honey reminded me of my parents’ caring.

I come from two ordinary yet remarkable people.  

Their lives and the family they together built weren’t perfect; of course, there was dysfunction.  Of course.

They passed on what they received; silence, assumption, and unresolved pain.

Of course, they did.

And they passed on love.  Yes, it was, smothering love; it was merged-and-morphed-into-one-unit-of Jewish-family-blob-of- love, but love, nevertheless.

It counts.

My dad used to say, “When you’re happy, I’m happy.  When you’re sad, I’m sad.”

Ouch.

That was a pretty big burden to carry.

Yet he was the guy, upon whose lap I sat, as a pretty traumatized and frightened little girl, who said to me (a direct Sidney-quote), “Honey, you can do anything you decide to do.  You can.”

He was right.  Sixty-five years later, this morning, right here and now, his message is beyond-relevant.

Sixty-five years after being spoken, his words are a blessing, guiding me forward.

Almost twenty-years after his dying, my dad continues to breathe life into me.

It’s all true; dysfunction walks hand-in-hand with blessings, benign neglect travels together, woven into lovingkindness.

My mom was silent.  Her job was—well, everything.  She ran the Entire Futuronsky Show, indeed, working in my dad’s neighborhood grocery store next to him, six days a week to his seven, feeding us, managing the house, and most significantly, taking care of him, her primary focus for living.

My mom was eighty years old when my dad died.  We had no idea who she was, who she might be, if she would jump into the grave after him.

Her whole life literally had been in service to him.

She came alive.

For the five remaining years of her life, she chose to create her life anew.

She created herself anew.  

She manifested a dear little apartment in a new state, started an arts and crafts club in her senior citizen home, organized the regular knitting of hats for the Ronald McDonald House, went on every trip, every foray offered, was present in our lives with a silent depth, with a deep resiliency, in a new and different way.

She became a voracious reader, swallowing books whole.

“Daddy didn’t like it when I read,” she confessed to me that first year post-dad.

She read.

She came forth.  

She chose to rebuild her life.

She continues to breathe life into me, fourteen years after her dying.

As my life events these past months conspire to blow my heart into smithereens, banishing me from familiar architecture, FOR MY GROWTH, FOR MY EVOLUTION, FOR THE HEALING OF MY BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT, for upgrade of my usefulness on the planet (I fully believe all of this), I must say:

I feel my parents’ strongest qualities buoying me up and guiding me forward.  

I am my father’s soft, kind connectedness.

He gave me that capacity.

I am my mother’s steely, grounded resiliency.

She gave me that capacity.

They live inside of me.

Their prayers live inside of me.

This is the magical song Sweet Honey sang that opened me to this gift of this claiming, this remembrance. 

Check it out, perhaps with a tissue nearby:

 

 

 

 

 

My folks weren’t the type “to pray.” They were too busy, too stressed, too focused on keeping it together.  They went to temple on the big holidays, they did their best to be good people, good parents, good Jews.

Most importantly, they loved.  

They loved me and my sister, wildly, fully, unconditionally, as best they could.

And their love became their prayers.

And their actions became their blessings.

And their legacy became their best qualities, 

His gentle tenderness

And 

Her strong deep resilience.    

And I got them.

I got them

Both

Deep

Inside of me.

I am them.

And that will get me through.

Somebody did pray for us.

Dear Folks, who thought about you?  

Who prayed for you?  Who cared for you enough to get you through? 

Did this song touch you?  What message can you take from it?

I believe my life instructs me and informs me.  The people, places and things I encounter are the path of my healing.  I’m looking around, calling in the blessings, to get me through.

They are right here, breath after breath.

Please let me know—how are you?  How did this week’s post land? I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings
In all forms,
Aruni