When we woke up this morning we were a community of seven, but by coffee time there were just Adam and I left. Elja, Naomi and two guests left for Netherlands, and another en route for Hawaii. It is quite a contrast and it feels a little strange havi
Read more…Apremont sur Allier is beautiful even in the rain
When I moved here I was very small, but now that I'm getting a bit bigger I can do all sorts of things that were impossible before. My big project recently has been climbing. There are lots of things to climb on here and today I made a great step for
Read more…Hoi,
Ik ben Naomi, ik ben hier op vakantie in Frankrijk, bij mijn pleegmoeder, voor drie weken.
Ik ben hier voor het eerst. Ik ben met het vliegtuig gekomen, het was voor het eerst dat ik ging vliegen en ik ging helemaal alleen. Dat was wel een beet
Read more…Hi
My name is Naomi. I am on a holiday here in France with my foster mother Elja. I will stay for three weeks. This is my first time here at Eleusis. I came by plane. It was also my first time in a plane and I went all by myself. That was quite exci
Read more…The storm is approaching from the East. It’s taking a long time to reach us and we all send our prayers out for rain to enliven the dusty landscape. It is a magnificent mélange of a dark angry wall and swirling, multi-layered white, lightning both ho
Read more…Everything slows down in August. Looking back, I see that the Daily is getting to be less than 'daily'. Today, after service, our party all wanted to go to the beach. The weather is exceedingly hot and has been so for some time now. I took a book on
Read more…Medical
Yesterday I went to the doctor. I was not able to see my own as she was on holiday. The locum was quite thorough and evidently more worried about my heart than my lungs. She gave me a renewed prescription and a letter to cover if I need to go
Read more…TUESDAY 9 Aug; My Pilgrimage
Eleven days ago I arrived at Eleusis, after 15 days of cycling 1100 kilometers on my bike. A lot happened on my journey from Den Bosch to Eleusis. My original plan had been to ride on my bike from Den Bosch in Netherlands
Read more…Today, Elja went to Clermont ferrand to collect her foster daughter. I drove her to the station in our neighbouring small city of Moulins and spent the day there until they returned.
As I spent time in Welland, a very small city in the Niagara Region, Ontario.... I realized that all places have history, and no matter what, there will be a museum showing what has happened a long long time ago in the place. The Welland museum is a
Read more…Fridays we go to Oasis. This morning Patrick had placed a lovely magnolia flower on the table beside where I sit in the meditation hall, so when it came time to give my Dharma talk, I talked about beauty, impermanence and the fragility of life and a
Read more…Wildlife
'Our' hedgehogs have all three disappeared. We are hoping that this means that they have moved on and not that they have come to grief. I can imagine that they might well have decided that there are better places than our garden since here t
Read more…We have a lot of forest paths at La Ville au Roi. Keeping them open can be a big job.
The forest is at different stages of growth in different areas of the terrain
Sometimes there is a complete canopy giving the path the feel of a tunnel
Sometimes it
Today Adam and I were once again working in the Aphrodite Field clearing thorn bushes while the three women were all working together in the kitchen making chutneys. Thus we had an old fashioned gender role system in action. When one lives in a place
Read more…Lama Wangmo, Cedric and their daughter came to visit us at Eleusis. It was nice to show them round and then all to meet for a sumptuous dinner. A good deal of work has been done since Cedric's last visit and this was Lama Wangmo's first time to see a
Read more…This morning we went to Oasis. Normally, on Sundays, we have a service here at La Ville au Roi (Eleusis) and sometimes people from Oasis come here, but today we went there as they were having a special day. Lama Wangmo gave a Dharma talk in the hall.
Read more…Adam and I spent much of today mowing half of the Aphrodite Field. It is a beautiful spot and something of a suntrap. The weather recently has been hot so the usually lush grass has all turned yellow. There is a perennial problem in this field of inv
Read more…This morning we went to Oasis and it was a very nice gathering with four people from Oasis and four from Eleusis and, between us, French, British, Russian, Dutch and Hawaiian. As usual we had a service and then sat outside drinking coffee, chatting a
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