Welcome, dear readers, to another month of taking metta off the meditation cushion and out into the world.

Last month found me generating “Down-to-Earth Metta” for the actual ground beneath our feet that supports all sentient life. This month, that same solid ground unexpectedly crumbled into shifting sands.

The first sign was an increasing unspoken hostility at the sound-healing retreat center where I have been volunteering: my elderly host often snapped at me when his memory lapsed and, after returning from a two-month hike, his daughter seemed even more frustrated by life than before she’d left. I kept my head down and my hands busy with growing and gardening, quietly generating metta for us all.

A volunteer in his twenties arrived for a few weeks, seeking to take a breather from his own family tensions, little knowing what he was walking into. While working with me to prepare the woodshed for winter, he unexpectedly burst into tears. I led him to the nearby outdoor eating area for a break, and went to the kitchen to make him a comforting hot drink.

As I waited for the kettle to boil, I noticed that a nail from the woodshed had worked its way through the sole of my sandal. I pulled the nail out of my shoe before it actually pierced my foot without giving the matter another thought.

Before my fellow volunteer had a chance to tell me what was weighing on his mind, our host appeared with a face like thunder. Thinking that he might assume we were taking liberties, I stood up again to explain the situation.

Instead of the quick exchange I was expecting, I was met with accusations that his daughter had made against me. I listened as he got it all off his chest, worried for his weak heart and wondering why his daughter was lying, and also keen to return to comforting my new friend.

When we finally went back to the woodshed, totally confused, it was my turn to be comforted: “You are sane, none of that was yours.” I thanked him for the unexpected sanity check, a term used in computer science for simple run-through tests to see if produced material is rational and that the material’s creator was thinking rationally. I also like to apply it to reassurance that the storms of others are just that.

Before he left, he very sweetly called me “Christ-like,” and I jokingly gestured to my sandals. He shook his head with a grin and explained that it wasn’t because of them but rather from witnessing me be crucified every day of his stay and responding only with love.

A few days later, my host had an even stranger turn and began randomly blaming me for everything under the sun. Apparently, his daughter was moving out because I was so mean! His face actually went red and he rolled his eyes and made cruel comments for hours as I continued to try to finish routine tasks without engaging in his storm. I genuinely worried that he might have a heart attack there and then, so I walked away as peacefully as I could at lunchtime.

Walking the five kilometers to the nearest village—which coincidentally used to be home to a psychiatric hospital and the main employer in the area—I had to laugh remembering all that I described in “Metta Stands Out:” maybe I was graduating from standing aside from others’ storms to walking away from them altogether?

I arrived at the village café only to find it shut due to staff shortages. Nowhere else was open and I felt it unwise to return to the retreat center immediately, so I wandered over to the local library to wait out my host family’s storm.

To my surprise, I found myself the only reader, outnumbered by several librarians and the local councilor putting their village to rights. Still feeling too shaken by that morning, I simply listened over tea and biscuits. One librarian offered to give me a lift back when an actual storm broke out, and during the drive I discovered that she had lived in the area some 40 years and knew the family where I was staying all too well. Another sanity check followed, and a new friend was made.

It was saddening and sobering to discover that I was one of possibly dozens of former volunteers discarded by this family, after I had offered them my best efforts for months. It was only too fitting that before I left the area a week later, my new librarian friend and I attended a local open-air theater made of living willow trees for a performance of the ultimate family feud: Romeo and Juliet.

I reached out to friends, guests of the retreat center over the past summer, and locals for ideas for my next step. Dozens of suggestions were offered, alongside unexpected sweet “thank yous” for my support and inspiration over the summer, which were a sanity check of sorts that my good intentions and hard work had not been completely in vain.

For my next destination, I picked an off-grid eco-build project that sounded fun, and exited stage left.

Imagine my surprise when my new hostess tried to pick a fight on my arrival at the train station. Looking down at my sandals reminded me to give her the benefit of the doubt and respond only with love. However, later that evening, she sat me down with a cigarette and a beer to talk through the work to be done while casually adding she couldn’t afford to feed me.

This was definitely not what we had agreed over the phone, and there were no shops close enough for me to reach on foot and only so much that I could forage. After a sleepless night, I went for a walk early the next morning to think through yet more next steps. I returned for the agreed start time to uphold my end of the work exchange agreement, and my hostess actually yelled at me for going offsite after she had decided to beat the heat by starting an hour early that morning.

I took a deep breath and didn’t argue as it was clear that she was not in her right mind. I completed the mowing we’d agreed on and promised myself to leave as soon as possible. When I pondered in last month’s article whether land work damages people or if damaged people are drawn to land work, I had yet to experience my previous host’s temper and my current hostess’s volatility. Now, scorched by both, I decided that it was clearly time to stop pondering and just start walking.

As I mowed walking paths through the rewilding meadows, the sweat lodge Dance Chief whom I described in “Metta Stands Out” drove up unannounced. It was beyond heartening to see her warm smile as she asked if I was faring well. I shared my plans to move on shortly, and she invited me for dinner to catch-up before I left.

Over a delicious and very welcome meal (after three hungry days!), I tentatively shared my reasons for leaving again so soon. Another sanity check followed that confirmed my hunch about a serious alcohol problem.

After turning the page on the Vipassana center that I’d attended my first 10-day sit some 15 years ago last May, I was now surprised when sitting with all these storms, sanity checks, and reaching my absolute limit with volunteering to find that the Dharma was nudging me to return to serve at a center to which I’d never before been. Wheels within Dharma wheels, the site pioneered the UK organic farming movement and later served as the Soil Association’s head office.

I sent an email and my offer was accepted, so I hopped on a bus the following day to help on a 10-day course that was already in progress.

Arriving on the third day gave me the objectivity to spot yet more storms brewing—this time in the center’s kitchen. One of the short-term servers had the whole team revolving around her mood swings and cutting remarks.

Another fellow short-term server with additional needs—including walking with a crutch—confided with me on day nine just how exhausted she was feeling. I had a private laugh as the wheel of Dharma turned to allow me to give a sanity check for a change and I assured her that she wasn’t imagining any of what was upsetting her and that none of it had anything to do with her, and so I gave her permission to walk away early.

She laughed out loud in relief, thanked me for my honesty, and rang her partner to pick her up the following morning. We then discussed other ways that she could serve that would be more fun and rewarding for her than being target practice for the storms of others.

The day after the course ended, I was exploring the local town for the first time and bumped into one of the students who had completed her first course the day before. She normally lives in a camper van, and was feeling too overwhelmed by her experience to simply drive away afterward and so had parked at a nearby campsite to digest all she’d unearthed. It turned out that the unstable server had used her for target practice too!

I issued another sanity check, reassured her that the server had her own crosses to bear, and I helped her plan a journey to visit relatives in the north of England.

Once the short-term server storm blew away on day 11, a calmer long-term server team appeared from behind the course’s clouds, and it felt like maybe I was in the right room for the first time in a very long time.

And so, dear readers, whatever storms you may be surrounded by in your own lives, please accept this sanity check that they may not be yours to weather or even understand. If standing aside with metta isn’t enough, consider walking away altogether from what no longer serves you toward somewhere that will welcome and value your service.

Or, to metta-morphose the song “Let Go” by Frou Frou:

Drink up, baby, down
Mmm, are you in or are you out?
Leave your things behind
‘Cause it’s all going off without you

So let go, so let go, hmm, jump in
Oh, well, whatcha waiting for? It’s alright
’Cause there’s beauty in the breakdown

Metta gains the more it gives
And then it rises with the fall
So hand me that remote
Can’t you see that all thus stuff’s a sideshow

Such boundless pleasure
We’ve no time for later now
You can’t await your own arrival

See more

Dhamma Sukhakari
Soil Association
The Willow Globe

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