god of exhausted amusements

My dark cloud morning was enhanced by the beauty I knew was all around me, but I could barely see.

With spirit shut down from overwork, there was little I could do to find anything beyond my own grouchiness. I wondered why each of my grand plans over the years turned into a brutally unfulfilling regime. Why do I imagine there will be any pleasure in working a fulltime job with midnight shifts, while moving stuff yet again, while hauling wood and arranging goat care in my time off?

I dragged my creaky posture up the trail on aching feet one more time, with one more box to put in the already overcrowded yurt. Screeching tree-bird barely catches my attention, but offers at least a moment of distraction, which is more than I can say for my morning attempts at the chanting. Was it re-reading Sensei's harsh appraisal of what it will take to save this civilization that got me in such a funk? It has been known to in the past.

Was it trying to go a day without coffee? Was it the email I sent to a Nicaraguan farmer, and the subsequent dread of getting stuck in some barely disguised labor camp in a foreign country? Who knows--just get to the now, somehow! Finally the last box is moved, and I sit in the car, grateful for a moment of rest in this life. Maybe that is all I get now, at 48 summers-passed. But it is enough, and my spirit begins to return.

Whose handwriting is that? On top of a box of journals is a list of notes from someone to me, apparently organizing my appointments. When did I ever have a personal assistant? And why do I need to keep these things? I tell the boxes this is the last time they will be moved. My twenty years of journals will be either be stored on this land, or they will be burned here. I will not move them again.

I imagine it is like everything else. We shlep around our stuff, this body, trying to get this or that done, and then it all gets burned in the end. And we hope some god is amused. I start to feel lighter, reconnecting to the nothingness of all this sturm-und-drang of the mind.

On the way into town, I notice the lush greenness that has taken over the hills overnight with the rains. I glance at the driveways where friends' homes are or were. My all-wheel-drive welcomes the mudslides that have temporarily reclaimed much of Old Santa Fe Trail.

Realistically, I will help out with land-based work as I can. The right amount of such physical work is deeply enjoyable. But look at this body: I am no ox. My calling is more to the monastery, where I can help revive the world with a different sort of effort. And to the social world, where I can serve the love that is our nature.

Arriving at the cafe, I receive an unexpected message on my phone. My young friend Alex reports he has two even-younger friends eager to help out with the hoop house, gardens, and otherwise working to set up the land.

I could almost laugh out loud.