The time on the porch with the tools

One day during our usual silent breakfast, which we held as a ceremony and formal practice period, a great crash was heard. Everyone looked towards the front door as it had come from that direction, but no one made a move to find out what it was.

Later, during breakfast cleanup, I went outside to make our offering to the land, and heard the front door being opened and hitting an object over and over. Soryu was trying to open it and said, “What’s going on?” I turned and saw that a ladder which had been propped up against the building had fallen over in the high winds that morning, and was blocking the door. I moved it and he came out and we inspected it together. Moving to the porch, Soryu told me how the wind also knocked over the shovels and other items people propped against the wall there, and that every morning they were laying scattered over the porch blocking the path to the zendo for the morning chanting and sitting. He said he cleaned them up each day at 4:30 am.

As I picked up the shovels and leaned them back against the wall, thinking I was helping the situation by putting them “back”, he proceeded to take them with his hands and knock them right back down as he continued, “...people leave them here, and they fall over, like THIS! Every morning…”

It took me two or three cycles of picking up the shovels he was knocking over only to have him knock them down again right in front of me, to realize that putting them back in that same way was not going to help.