August 27, 1986

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.