Black and grey lotus mandala on chest

The floor of the Sailors' Chapel at Porthleven is finished at last, and you would not believe the fuss the vicar made over the centre piece. I laid the lotus on Tuesday with the tide out and the gulls shouting over the slip. Every petal is cut from grey Cornish slate, and the dots I put in for shading I did with a nail and a steady hand, thousands of them, the way Mr Tregenza taught us before his eyes went. Each one must sit exactly where the light from the east window will catch it.

The trouble came with the middle. The vicar wanted a cross there, the usual thing, and I told him a cross is only two lines, whereas a lotus is a promise that something opens from the centre outwards. He did not like that. Then Dorothy Penhale brought me her late husband's compass, the brass one with the cracked hinge, and asked if it could go under the stone like a keel. I said it could. We set it in mortar on Tuesday morning, and I drew the rings around it with the compass point, which is how the old mandalas were drawn, Mr Tregenza said, from a single point outwards until the whole pattern can be walked.

Last night I sat alone in the empty chapel and walked it, heel to toe, from the compass to the last petal. It took eleven minutes. Halfway round, the sea went quiet, and I thought I heard the harbour bell, though it was only the halyard knocking against the mast of the Lowenna.

Come at Easter and stand on it with me. You will see the dots catch the light and seem to move, which I have never managed to explain to the vicar.

Love, Jenny