I returned home from walking the dogs and, turning to go up the front steps, I saw the above picture. Monday is my laundry day, and I love hanging up laundry on the outdoors lines rather than on those in the basement. The colors were gay and proud under the afternoon sun and there was just enough of a breeze to wave the sheets and t-shirts like flags in the air. Laundry loves to dance.

On the side is mountain laurel, with its pentagonal, delicate, pink and white flowers. You can find it this year in the midst of the densest forests. I stood there and thought to myself: Why exactly am I leaving?

Indeed, I plan to leave early tomorrow, Wednesday, to New York, and then on to Tel Aviv in Israel. Yes, the Holy Land that is currently filled with hope, terror, ambivalence, destruction, and confusion. Is that endemic to holy lands? The wild mountain laurel, flowering everywhere with such abandon, and the laundry on the lines dancing in the breeze remind me of the sweetness of domesticity, and I thought: Why go, when you have this?

I often think of Sido, the mother of French writer Colette, who wouldn’t come to visit her daughter in Paris because the rare night-blooming cereus was about to flower in her garden and she couldn’t give it a miss. There’s the world of connections (I haven’t seen my siblings in 10 months), community, and yes, even adventure, and there’s the world of the rare blooming cactus, the fledgling robins in their nest in dense shrubs in front of the house, and the leaves now full of light that, at the end of this coming 12-day trip, will have darkened into their full summer greenness.

What’s to be gained by going here and there to practice when the dharma is right under your feet, asked Dogen. I’m torn this way each time I travel because, slow learner that I am, it’s taken me a long time to appreciate the mundanities of life.

On Sunday, making good use of the money you all sent, I gave the last of three checks to send 15 children to camp for 6 weeks this summer, camp time that provides not just swimming and other activities for 7 hours five days a week, but also relief and ease for parents working in the hot farms this summer. I received this by text:

“Dear Eve: Through these words we want to express our deepest gratitude for all the help you and your friends have given us. Your generosity, kindness, and willingness to extend a hand to us in important moments have been of great value to our family. We are very grateful for every gesture of affection from people. May God bless you and your friends greatly, fill you with health, peace, and happiness, and reward you with abundant blessings for the good you have all sown in our lives. Please receive our respect, affection, and sincere gratitude.”

It was signed by — and her family, the same woman who suffered a nervous breakdown trying to deal with three small children with no family around. I wish I didn’t have to use two dashes in lieu of her name in order to protect her identity. I have told those who receive your gifts of the many people, not just Americans, who donate to help them. I try to explain that you come from Europe, Latin America, and even the Middle East, and they look at me with disbelief and confusion: Why should people so far away, who don’t know me at all, wish to help me?

What a good question that is. Why indeed should strangers take care of strangers?

I’m reminded of what Bernie used to tell me so many times over the years, which I’ve repeated here before: “Eve, we have all the wealth of the Buddha at our feet,’ he would say, even as once I checked our bank account and found that we had all of $3.00 there.

How was this possible, I would wonder. What did he see that I didn’t? How did he experience life in a way I did not even as we struggled together through hard times? The look on my face when I heard that is probably similar to the looks on immigrants’ faces when they hear that strangers in Switzerland, Brazil, Israel, Canada, Germany, and in so many states of this country give money to help them.

It reminds me once again of how narrowly we perceive life, of how our human six senses are just not up to the task of grokking infinite possibilities.

“So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information,” said George Orwell, writer of Animal Farm and 1984. Because the irony, or incredibleness of it all, is that the way to perceive magic and mystery is through the most mundane objects of life: the grooves of tree bark, changing sheets on laundry day, the ritual of making an Italian cup of coffee.

All this I’ll take with me to Israel, where I land Thursday early morning and take the train up to Jerusalem. Up to, is how they say it over there, as if that city hovers over the earth. Already I feel some anxiety. What will I say to people who ask me what I think of the matzav, the situation? Especially when, sometimes said and sometimes not, is the accusation that I live a fortunate life, that no one north or south sends missiles or drones towards our home here in the Happy Valley, that I don’t have to raise children to be soldiers. So, what does a person like me have to contribute to the conversation?

And still, they ask. They want to know. The next morning, Friday morning, four nephews and nieces are hosting me for breakfast. We’ll joke around, exchange information about our respective lives. And they just may come out and ask their weird American Buddhist aunt what she thinks.

I know a couple of easy answers. One is: “I Just want to listen.” Since my first time doing council practice in 1997 and realizing what a lousy listener I was, I have made listening a lifetime practice.

“You don’t have to answer anything right away,” a Zen teacher friend of mine said yesterday morning, “take a few minutes. Take your time.” Excellent suggestion, except that folks there are always in a hurry. But in the end, there’s no preparing for those moments, I will have to reply in that moment, not this one as I type this in my office 3 days earlier. I will look around where we’re gathered, see a little child, desert hills dotted by olive trees, or a multicolored tablecloth, and all that will be in the answer.

Like the koan of the man hanging by his mouth from the tree branch and someone comes along, looks up, and asks him the meaning of life. If he uses his mouth to answer he’ll fall and die. If he doesn’t answer he’s betrayed his vow to be of service to all beings. How does he answer?

Yes, we’re fortunate, someone said this morning in a Zoom meeting. Or privileged, as the vocabulary goes nowadays. And instead of feeling guilty or ashamed of our life, the question is how to use it to serve those less fortunate, those less privileged. How, rather than identifying with that privilege, we make it just another tool in the toolbox for fulfilling out vows.

There’s more to say on the subject of fear and transformation. It’s a conversation I’ll try to pick up in another post because it takes more thought than I could freely give now, on packing day.

I’ll walk a lot there, even in the heat, because sage and rosemary will still flower there, as will wild thyme and oregano. Too late for desert hillsides covered in wildflowers, so it’s good I have a personal yen for the barrenness of desert landscapes, like some vast paper still to be written (or drawn) on.

I’m glad for the latest US-Iran truce, if only because it minimizes (though doesn’t eliminate) the chance of missiles coming over Jerusalem or of closing all airspace, making it impossible for me to return home. When I’m there, I’m fully there. But when I board the plane to return home I’m aware of a whole other set of mundanities: green and red hummingbirds, basil leaves in our small spice corner, never-ending walks of the dogs, sitting down to a blank screen.

Will I blog from there? I don’t know. Maybe the conversation already pirouetting in my mind about fear and transformation. Maybe some short items, and maybe nothing. Just take time off, look out towards a horizon blocked by city buildings, stare and stare.

Will see lots of World Cup games.