Cleaning Up Rat Poop In The Guru's Garage

Amma is hard to sum up; you can check her web site. She is a Hindu guru, dubbed by Western reporters as the "Hugging Saint." My wife has been a devotee for years. Amma's hugged me a few times, and I am still on the fence about her divinity, but there is no question she does good work in this world, so I have helped out in her soup kitchen for years without hesitation. For the last five years, I have done seva (selfless service) during her visits to the San Ramon ashram near our home. This year, when I asked Vicki what she wanted for Mothers' Day, she said she wanted dinner on Sunday and "five hours of seva on Saturday."

Which is how I came to the lovely hilltop retreat in which Amma will live during her two weeks in Northern California. Tops on the list of seva opportunities on Saturday was the chance to clean out the garage. I wasn't shoveling rat s*** for two reasons: first, I didn’t need a shovel, as a broom would do, and secondly, as the cognoscenti know, inside a house they're actually mice, not rats. Anyway, Vicki and I worked together for hours, cleaning, sweeping and re-arranging the physical objects in the space Amma will pass through twice a day during he visit. It was hard and boring work, but not as hard and boring as I expected. I must say I was flattered when the other women volunteering there told Vicki they thought I was funny and sweet. Still, the chances of my choosing this form of seva voluntarily, on a day which isn't the day before Mothers' Day, seems unlikely, at least until I become way more convinced about Amma as opposed to her good works.