The Sisters of Mercy and World Peace

The whole 4 hour journey by boat to the private island where my brother lives in the ashram is pretty rough. It's best to sit or lie with your eyes closed and not look at the swaying horizon.

We are so welcomed by the retreat manager as Robin's relatives. It is unusual to be allowed on the island unless you are a devotee already. 

 But we have been given special permission to do a service retreat, working on

the farm which my brother manages. He and his team grow a lot of the vegetables and fruit  - organically - on two separate sites, supplying the kitchen which feeds about 60 people in the community.

This is the road we walk every morning to the farm - not far from our sleeping quarters - 

we are very lucky to have a large ensuite room with 3 beds and a kitchenette instead of sharing in the female dormitory.

My brother goes everywhere by bicycle....

rain or shine.

Our main project is about seed saving and the first job is to clear out the cold storage room where the seeds are kept.....

sort and wash the bottles - dark brown glass to protect the seeds from the light....

remove and paint all the shelves....

paint the walls and floor...which takes days to dry...

sort and catalogue the seeds in the farm office..

and return everything to the new clean space.

Another job is to extract the tiny seeds from last year's dried sunflowers, and make compost blocks to plant them in,

they look rather like trays of chocolate brownies with holes in the centres.

We also plant marigold seedings and hibiscus trees in the garden borders,

and sort out and re-fold bundles of old shade cloths in an out-house, so they can be used again.

The shade cloths are desperately needed or everything would just shrivel in the heat.

 At first we are known as The Sisters of Robin but later we're dubbed The Sisters of Mercy as everyone - including us  - is very impressed by how hard we work considering the heat and the flies and the mosquitoes.... and how old we are! 

However we are also fed magnificently 3 times a day with a huge variety of soups and salads and cooked vegetables and always an abundance of my favourite tropical fruits. I find I don't miss chocolate brownies even once.

Today

 I buy sweetcorn and golden beetroot in the market this morning. I chop and grate them and make them into little patties with roasted walnuts, spring onions, ginger, garlic, oatmeal and a bundle of chopped herbs. I bake them in the oven brushed with olive oil, and whizz up a tahini soy and lemon dressing to serve with them. 

They are my contribution to a shared supper before our mediation this evening to mark and celebrate World Peace Day....which is also the autumn Equinox....the beginning of the return of the darkness.

As we sit in the circle in a lovely house in Exeter in Devon and pray for peace in the world I remember an early morning dawn a few weeks ago in Fiji, sitting in a different circle on a green jungly hillside, the sun coming up over the sea, over the palm trees, a log fire burning in a pit, set into a beautifully decorated and painted dais in red and blue and gold, incense burning, bells ringing, flowers being offered, prayers being offered. To the Divine. Prayers for tolerance and co-operation and peace.

Different words but with the same meaning ....that before we were separate we were all one.... As we still are....we just forgot.....and remain in the darkness.