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Yes, It Would Help Immensely

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Yes, It Would Help Immensely

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once,

but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.

Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul,

To assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.

-Clarissa Pinkola Este

My heart softens every time I read this. And I have read this quote many times during this past week.

It always has the same impact on me:

A soft sigh,

An easy breath,

And effortless remembering:

Here’s another moment.

 

Just one moment at a time.

 

Being released from fixing climate change today,

Being released from ending wars today,

From righting injustice today,

I can be freed up and I can be present

To practice

Being there for another,

As best I can.

 

And that is all this quote invites us to do:

To mend our part of the world.

 

What’s my part of the world?

That would be, for me, the people I come in touch with.

Those I know, those I don’t.

People passing in cars, those walking down the grocery store aisle,

The Spectrum guy on the other end of the call….

The people I come in touch with.

They are impeccably curated by the universe to give me exactly what I need to practice.

I do believe the universe works in that way.

My day is specifically My Day.

The universe gives me what I need to heal,

And to practice being there for others.

 

Then Clarissa reminds us of any small, calm thing.

What small, calm thing might I have to offer?

 

In a good moment—

I can offer a smile.

It works.

A hello, totally works.

A nod.

Letting a car yield ahead of me—

(Where am I rushing, exactly?)

 

The universe gives me exactly the people I need, with whom to practice.

My laboratory exists in the world.

My practice is being requested, moment after moment.

It all counts—it’s all perfect.

From soul to soul, as we exchange kindness.

 

I love that Clarissa says these actions will help “immensely.”

Like, To a great extent

Vast in extent

 

We can touch each other immensely.

We can make a huge difference to each other, immensely.

Such damage is being done around us, so consistently, so repeatedly,

I vote for IMMENSE IMPACT,

Here and now

With kindness.

Yes, I do.

 

Just by being there,

Being present

With ourselves

And with each other.

 

Everybody wins.

 

Where does Clarissa’s quote land for you?

 

How might you practice this?

What might it look like?

~~~

I heard this song way back yesteryear, in the earlier days of the Pandemic. Remember those times? Way long ago. I do remember being really moved by their message in this song. I remember some tears then.

When I listened yesterday, I cried more tears. I find this song, their invitation profoundly relevant today. Here are the Bengsons, an indie-folk-duo-team, with their song, The Keep Going Song

~~~

Dear Folks,

 

Right here,

Right now.

 

Give us the courage

And the strength

To practice kindness.

 

First with ourselves

And then,

With every

Single

Other

Body,

As best we are able.

 

When we cannot,

So be it.

When we are able,

Blessed be.

 

Let’s practice with gentle commitment,

Let’s practice with easy relaxation,

Let’s practice

With kindness.

 

May all beings benefit from our time together.

 

Stay blessed,

Aruni

“Love is the Lens”*

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“Love is the Lens”*

Why does it feel hard to write today?
Oh, and yesterday, too?
Wait, let me think.
Yep,
Maybe
Even
The day before that.

I don’t want to be “too down”.
Too bleak.

Nor do I want to be
Frivolous,
Ridiculously
Detached
From the reality
Of our moment.

Okay! I’m going for it—
Here’s my moment:
~~~
How do I feel
My moral outrage
About the injustices
That plague our planet

WHILE…

Still seeing the softness
Of the morning light,
Creeping over the mountain,
Blossoming into yet another
Delicious day?
~~~
How do I continue
Witnessing the great unraveling
Of institutions around us,

WHILE…

Waking into Niki’s
Furry little dog body
Cuddling into me?
~~~
How do I stay abreast
Of the national changes
Which I need to do,

WHILE…

Delighting in the
Bluest of blue
Winter skies,
Alive
With
Sunshine?
~~
How?
I practice.

I just practice.

Coming back to kindness.
Coming back to kindness.
Coming back
To
Kindness.
~~~
Here’s Swami Kripalu, that brilliant saint of a fella (literally and figuratively):

“Love is the lens we return to again and again
to true our alignment when we wobble
in our pursuits toward right action.”

Let’s talk about love.
I don’t know.
Love is feeling a tad
Above my pay grade
These days.

I’m going for kindness.
Can I just not be an asshole
When I drive?

Can I not rush around
The grocery store,
On some wild
Hunting and gathering
Survival
Mission?

Kind.
Can I keep coming back
To kind?

First to myself.
Then to us.
All.

If love is too much of a reach,
Fill in the blank for yourself.
What works for you?

Love?
Kindness?
Compassion?
Empathy?

Swami Kripalu would not mind.
He would want us to make it work,
Each in our own way.

I so appreciate his saying, “…again and again”. That is just the damn truth about practice, again and again and yet another again.

Like Rumi says, “…. Whether you have broken your vow 100 times, come, the door is round and open.” That is just simply PRACTICE.

We practice.
You practice.
I practice.
We do not get it right
And graduate
From
Something.

Damn it.

I love his use of “wobble”.
Wobble = to move unsteadily from side to side.
I don’t know about you…
But I have been feeling
A tad wobbly
These days.

Yes,
A bit wobbly
In my pursuits.

The days themselves
Seem to be
Wobbling.

And “right action”.
To practice aligning our intentions with our actions.
To take right action
And to
Let go
Of the outcome
Of our actions!

Swami’s quote calls us to a place of return,
Of renewal,
A turning point.
A tether.
A landing zone.

To land there.
To breathe in
Our commitment.

And from that commitment,
To take a step forward.
To just practice.
To just practice,
“Truing our alignment.”

Bapuji is giving us a formula for living.
And what a time it is,
What a time
For living.
~~~
Someone recommended this song to me. Intrigued by the title, I checked it out. Realizing it was a country song by Tim McGraw, obviously a big country dude, my very on-the-surface bias roared awake. I was sure the song and the video would be too—too—what? Too American? Is that the word? Too limited? Too church-y? Too exclusive?

I was wrong. Here is the most remarkably inclusive video, Tim McGraw and Humble and Kind:

 

~~~
Dear Friends,

Centimeter by centimeter,
May we find our way home.

May we practice
Returning to
Radical kindness for ourselves.

May we offer our kindness
To others,
To all,

Here
And
There
And
Everywhere.

We are all just
Pilgrims,
Finding
Our way home.

May all beings benefit from these shared words.

Blessings, all—
Aruni

 

Invitations—
From My Heart to Yours:

Grief, Loss and Renewal—
Savoring Life’s Lessons

So much is happening, so quickly. Transitions, loss and uncertainty abound. Things that appeared permanent seem to evaporate before our eyes. In this program we will honor our heartbreak, befriend the uncertainty, while creating a plan for reentering our lives, post-program, with “strong back, soft front”.**

Please consider joining this healing workshop. Thanks for sending this link to your people.

February 28-March 2
Kripalu Center
https://kripalu.org/presenters-programs/grief-loss-and-renewal-savoring-lifes-lessons
Scholarships are available.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Want to Dive Deeper?

Do certain topics interest you? My blog is now organized into easy-to-navigate categories! Whether you’re interested in Grace, Gratitude, Spiritual Connection or Surrender (the list goes on), you can easily find the articles most relevant to you.

Here is the link to my blog: https://coacharuni.com/blog/
The category drop-down menu is on the right side of your screen.

*Quote from Swami Kripalu, also known as Bapuji

**Quote from Roshi Joan Halifax, Upaya Zen Center

 

Pop

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Pop

 

It’s been a Dad-Day for me.  For absolutely no particular reason, I find my dad, dead 24 years, all around me today.

His name is Sidney.  Sidney Futuronsky.  One of the kindest men in America, he had no boundaries.  His people-pleasing could fill every AlAnon meeting on the Planet and still need more containment.  He was obsessed with his health, having had his first heart attack when I was in fourth grade.  He spent the rest of his days, and there were many, fearful of dying, poor guy.

Cosmic joke?  He lived to be 84.

His heart was massive; although blocked and defective, his was the heart of a love-bug.  

Pop owned a small neighborhood grocery store that was his father’s.  He grew up in the store, driving the truck at age eight, delivering orders, weaving through the alleys.  My sister and I grew up in the store, too, which was two blocks from our house and one block from our elementary school.

No truck driving for us.  I thought the green boxy-square Colfax Market truck was cool and, but in certain situations, I was ashamed of it.  Picking me up after bowling at the Jewish Community Center, I felt anxious and scared that the cooler kids, whose parents did not drive smelly trucks, might see me.   

My parents worked side by side in the store, my mom for six days a week, my dad, six-and-a-half.  

I come by my worker bee status righteously.  

My days were filled with the silent fear that this day, this particular day, any and every particular day, would be his last.  Nobody talked about it.  It was simply the air we breathed.  Fear of his dying was the backdrop of the first fifty years of my life.

There are two memories of Pop-Conversations I want to share with you today.  
~~~
The first took place in super comfy chair in our living room.  It might have been a wingback, with lots of room behind us and around us, so good for snuggling with my daddy.  I might have been six years old?  Eight years old?  Snuggling on his lap, our evening ritual, finding my spot, my home base, we were having a conversation, as we did, about life.  My memory zooms in, crystal clarity of the conversation emerges, as follows:

Me/Little Nan, expressing some hurt or fear about school.  Being a stutterer offered a hard road for my tender heart.  Being a stutterer who wanted to kiss girls?  In 1956?  Scary.  Silence.

He listened.  He held me.  He cuddled with me.  And he said:

 “Nan,” he said, snuggling me even closer into his gentle arms, 

“Nan, you can be anything, absolutely anything that you choose to be in this world.”

I remember the texture of the air, the specificity of the chair’s patterned texture, the feel of his arms around me.

I remember the words, specifically and exactly.

Somehow, through his kind, kind love, (this is Phase #1 of The Miracle), he was able to tell me that.  He was able to know that, somehow, that would be true for me.

These words didn’t immediately change me.  It wasn’t that kind of miracle.  But I tucked them close and deep inside my heart and struggled onward, through the stuttering, through the wanting-to-kiss-Susie-Garber-who-was-a-year-ahead-of-me-in-school.

Through all of it.  All of the separateness I felt.  All of the fear of talking.  All of the loneliness.

And you know what?

The Miracle, Phase #2:
His words were like a beacon.  Somehow, they brought light to my road.  No matter the amount of fear and separateness I felt for the next thirty years, somehow, I was guided.

The Miracle, Phase #3:
My pop’s pronouncement? 
He was right, absolutely right.
He was absolutely and totally right.

I have been carried and I have been blessed to continue to become exactly who I am, to offer myself to others, to be available for the sacredness of the moment.  Imperfectly, of course.

He was absolutely and totally right.
And I continue to be blessed by his words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~~~

Conversation #2.

Fast forward fifty+ years for this next Pop conversation.

My Pop now is at the end of his life.  For a man so afraid of pain and death, for a man who had so many physical issues, he lived a long damn time.  But now, it was his time.  This was the end.  We all knew it.  That which we forever dreaded hovered nearby.

Ras, my spouse, was, of course, with me in Florida, with my family.  We had been married in the Kripalu community a few years before, the first same-sex couple to be acknowledged by the Kripalu community.  The Guru, who was opposed to same-sex relationships had left via disgrace that fall, making it possible.

My parents knew Ras.  She was becoming part of our family.

My dad was in his bed.  Mom kept him out of the hospital, making her life harder.  But his fear of hospitals was massive and debilitating for him.  

My sister, her kids, everybody had left the bedroom for some reason.  We sat alone with him, Ras sitting on the bed holding his left hand.  I sat on the other side, holding his right hand.

He was in and he was out.  Conscious, not conscious.  External, internal.  We just sat and breathed and held his hands.

Time passed.

Then—his eyes fluttered open.  He looked dazed for a moment, then focused, caught, first my gaze, then Rasmani’s.  He looked again at me, and then, back to Ras.  There he paused for a long, full moment.

He looked at her again even more deeply, and gave her the ultimate of blessings:

“My daughter-in-law,” my Pop said to her.

“My daughter-in-law.”

It was a breathtaking moment that lasted and echoed around us.  Dazed, we both were, by his extraordinary acknowledgement and naming.  

In a few days he was gone from this earth.

His blessing lives on.

His Sidney-Kindness offers me access to my own.

His memory will always be a blessing.

My pop.  Sidney.

 

~~~

And you, dear reader?  Is any conversation from yesteryear alive in your heart?  Any blessings living deep inside?

Any words, spoken or unspoken, received or offered, that live as a lamppost, shinning light on yesterday, today, tomorrow?

~~~
Mumurations!  What a word.  Rather than talking about it, here is a 2-minute video that offers it.  Check this out.  It’s—miraculous.

~~~
Give us the courage and the willingness
To keep showing up.

Give us a strong back,
A soft front,
And the willingness
To live between
The two.

Help us to be present
Right here,
Right now.

Help us to see the
Grace around us,
No matter what
Is happening.

May all beings benefit from the words we share.

Stay blessed,
Aruni

 

Inward Tenderness*

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Inward Tenderness*

When inward tenderness finds
The secret hurt,
Pain itself will crack the rock
And
Let the healed soul
Emerge.
By Rumi

In this wacky and wonderful life of mine,
Time continues to take time.

Simply said, dear friends, 
The good news?
I’m too old to push in the same ways.

My wild tap-dance of co-dependence—

Do you love me yet?
Do you?  
Do you? 
Now?
Do you love me NOW?

She has slowed her steps down.

Phew
And
Hallelujah.  

Slowing down.
Stopping.
Over time.
With practice.

What practice?

The practice of
Allowing
The
Forgetting.

Returning 
With kindness 
To the
Remembering…

The slowing down cracks open the door
Oh, so slightly,
For that inward tenderness 
So slowly to peak out.  

For no reason but through Mr./Ms. Rumi’s invitation,
 I see myself young today.

I see myself the child
That I was,
That I still am.

And I say to her:

My dear one,
Oh!  It will.  It will be hard.
Life will hurt, truly hurt.
And you will run
And
Run
And run some more.

Until one day when the running will stop.
And slow by slow
Day after day after decade after day
Slow by slow
That secret pain,

(The voice that screams in silence—
“OH!  Don’t ever let anybody ever know.”)

That secret pain will soften.
Miraculous relief
Will reveal herself.

Not always.
Not forever.
Not done.

But gradually,

In snippets,
In tiny breathes,

A softening,
A freedom,
A welcoming home.

Oh, Mr./Ms. Rumi
As always,
You take
Me home.

~~~
The child that I was, that I am, was saved, absolutely rescued and given life at Girl Scout Camp Archbald.
The freedom to be me, to actually be my self.
Wait, that doesn’t say it fully.

The freedom to play.
The freedom to be strong.
To paddle a canoe.
OHHHH.

Our paddles keen and bright flashing like silver.

To gather the wood, 
Tinder, kindling, fuel–
To light a fire!
To be competent.
To be part of a unit.

To be in love with counselors.
OH.

The entire experience held me so dearly,
So deeply.

The sweet lake, softened by decades of girl scout pee.
The soft hills.
The paths back to the unit, no flashlight needed,
Follow the line of the trees.

The counselors.
Our college-student-Madonnas.

They saw me.
They saw me.

Did I begin to see myself?
Perhaps just a peak?
A tiny beginning.

I was born there.
~~~

And here is a song!
A tender song, one that our counselors actually
 used to sing to us.  
And we would sing it to us, too.
Judy Collins is here to sing it to us today.  
Now that is a miracle.
Here’s Judy, who could do no wrong in my world, ever and always:

~~~
Dear Friends,

Don’t give up before the miracle.

Give us the courage
And the strength

To do the next, best thing.

To respond to life’s stimulations,
To life’s inevitable aggravations
With a softening,
A gentle
Kindness.

As best we can.

And when we cannot,
May we bless ourselves,
May we relax into ourselves,
And, with such kindness,
Keep coming back home.

May all beings benefit from our words shared today.

With blessings,
Aruni

 

*Quote from a Rumi poem.

 

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