Huliau - The Return Voyage

It did not feel good,” Maxine Hong Kingston wrote in Hawai‘i One Summer, “To be a writer in a place that is not a writing culture, where written language is only a few hundred years old.”

The rich oral traditions are lost to our Western world. We’ve made false idols of the written word. We assumed that what was written carried a weight, that what was spoken did not.

I am a writer. I massage, pleasure in, and lavish affection on the written word—but I do not idealize or idolize it. It is not my god. I do not believe that which is bound in leather (or cardboard) is therefore true or authentic. I know better.

I know, too, what has been lost from the rich subtle shadings of the spoken word. It is as if we have broken a leg—we limp to one side. Academics: At the cost of our own knowing. Words on the page: At the cost of the words written on our soul. When we hear, “Oral tradition,” we think, “Unreliable.” But the indigenous Hawaiians knew another way. The oral transmission was anything but haphazard. It was exact.

In every family, and to every generation, there was a child born to be the carrier of the chants–the history. They were those ordained to remember–and repeat–the genealogy. It took that child half a lifetime to acquire the transmission; the remainder of his or her life, to pass it on. She embraced the skills of memory and the gifts of living oratory.

‘Iokepa said: “When the written word came, the aboriginal culture ended. The aboriginals saw it for what it was: In ‘black and white’—hard and fast—it no longer changed in a breath. It was no longer alive, and true in this moment.”

It marked the devaluation of living experience. We no longer depended on community for transmission. We could be alone with our book–we no longer needed our grandmothers.

In deifying the written word, we give ourselves away to others—to their greater knowing. We make gods of human invention, so as to take God away from our own human heart.

We spent a titillating evening at Poets House in New York City. These rooms, in downtown Manhattan, have served as a gathering, reading, and writing space for three generations of America’s most talented.

This night, the Spring Street address was packed with celebrity writers reading their work aloud, eating, and drinking among some 45,000 volumes of poetry–in celebration of the end of an era. Poets House is giving up its home.

I’ve been a writer all my adult life. Words have always been important to me. But words are important to a much larger audience than professional writers.

“Language,” cognitive philosophers say, “Is the mapping of a culture.”

To know a people, you must know the authentic meaning of their words. To know that, it helps to be standing where they stood when they spoke those words. Hence in Hawaiian: There are 160 words for the wind, 138 for the rain. Each speaks to a subtle shade of meaning that makes an enormous difference. La’amaumau, for instance, is the sacred feminine wind, and ‘Iokepa says, “It does not blow against you, it blows through you.”

So perhaps it is not so surprising that when ‘Iokepa is asked to recommend books about his people or his culture, he begins here: The Hawaiian Dictionary (in hardcover edition), by Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel Elbert. It’s the definitive study of Hawaiian language, and it carefully distinguishes the authentic, from the anglicized. He also recommends, ‘Olelo No’eau: Hawaiian Proverbs and Poetical Sayings, again by the remarkable Mary Kawena Pukui. This is a collection of Hawaiian wisdom phrases: Translated to both their literal and metaphoric meanings.

And this brings me full circle to the Poets House gathering. The Hawaiian people spoke only in poetry. The authentic language sings with symbolism and metaphor. Translation from Hawaiian to English turns a simple sentence into a paragraph. A Hawaiian paragraph takes an English page to explain.

I’m reminded of Chief Joseph Seattle saying: “It does not require many words to speak the truth.”

I say none of this to intimidate non-speakers. The overwhelming majority of indigenous Hawaiians no longer speak their language, because for 150 years it was mandated that their language not be spoken in public. For several generations (until 1972), parents even forbade children from speaking Hawaiian at home–lest they slip in public, and be shamed or punished.

I ask that we think about this for a single moment. When we refuse a person his or her own language, we remove his ability to express, not only his ideas–but his feelings as well. For just a moment, imagine what that means.

We have been in New York City for the past week, and we are loving the concentration and intensity of creative energy on this other Island.

A new friend, in casual conversation, brought up the historic and current plight of the South African people. Her intention was to gently mitigate the seriousness of the aboriginal Hawaiian losses.

‘Iokepa said: “I refuse to compare one person’s pain with another’s.”

But I ask now:

Which is more destructive? To live in a dominant culture that segregates and denies all rights of that culture to the oppressed minority: (As in South African apartheid, or Jewish shtetl life in Eastern Europe). Or, is it more soul crunching to live in a dominant culture that outlaws every identifying ritual or trait of your own culture (the Native Hawaiians, for 150 years).

In the first: You know who you are. You are not them! They are the oppressors–you are denied that privilege. In the second case, however: You are mandated to abandon every identifying, comforting, familiar piece of who you are.

Again, I don’t have an answer. I am an old journalist by training, experience and temperament. Questions are my comfort zone.

However, I hear, on our Islands and elsewhere: A recurring tendency to belittle one people’s pain and suffering by comparing it to others–or accepting that pain, by declaring that oppression of one people by another, is an enduring element of life on Earth, and therefore inevitable.

Our individual responses are:

‘Iokepa says: “I come from a people who believe in change. Because something has always been one way does not mean it will always be that way. Anything and everything can change in a breath. I have to believe that, because I’ve lived it.” (Re: The ‘Iokepa and Inette bio page on this website.)

I say: When we compare the degree of oppression between peoples–or we speak of oppression as a permanent condition of human life–we are rationalizing the status quo. We are throwing up our hands and saying we personally can do nothing to change it. I believe the opposite to be true.

This Return Voyage celebrates change–every soul’s ability to move that mountain.

Give us a break.

We know full well you are out there because our wonderful son, Sam, in Baltimore (he’s our computer-savvy guide through these techno jungles) has added a statistic counter to our website and to this Ever Changing Page.

So we know that you (by the hundreds) are reading us and following Return Voyage across the United States. Mahalo, we are grateful.

But we are lacking a dialogue. We want this site to be interactive. We want your words ito bounce off our words. We want the Return Voyage conversation, to be a conversation–not only at the retreats, but here on-line.

Perhaps, nine years ago now, we were camping (actually, living in a tent) at Kaheka–the Salt Pans Park– on Kaua’i, when we met Lou.

Over these past ten years, we have met hundreds of visitors to the Island, at that particular park. Some were there for a quick swim by day, others were camping for a week. They were vacationing from Germany, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Japan, and every part of the United States.

But Lou Pignolet and his wife Inger, struck up a potentially provocative conversation that continues to this day.  Lou, was then the head of the Chemistry Department at the University of Minnesota.  He is a low-key, soft-spoken, brilliant scientist–and an extraordinary teacher, still.

I don’t remember who engaged whom first: But neither ‘Iokepa nor Lou would have shirked the challenge of passionate, thoughtful exchange.

‘Iokepa spoke, as he does always, from that deep place of culture.  At one point, he said to Lou: “If you look it up in the dictionary, ho’okalakupua means, ‘Magic’ or ‘Miracles.’ But if you study the word carefully, what it actually says is, ‘In the light of the ancestors.’”

I remember Lou being respectful.  I remember him being full of important questions.  Clearly, in his annual month-long visits to the Islands he’d developed an unquenchable thirst for the truth of the indigenous culture.

I remember this:  At one point, ‘Iokepa launched forth (as he does) about the power of our ancestral connection.  He held up his arms , spread wide over his head, and he said: “Everything your ancestors lived and were, now comes down to you,” and he drew his hands down into a funnel shape and held them over Lou’s heart. “You carry all that they lived and were in your DNA.”

I remember this too:  At that moment, I cringed. “No, ‘Iokepa!” I thought, but did not say.  “You don’t talk DNA to a scientist…a chemist…an academic…” And I looked up at Lou with trepidation.  He answered with a big grin: “That makes perfect sense.”

That was the beginning of our nine year friendship. This year, Lou weighed in by mail: “I’m recommending this book, even though it’s everything ‘Iokepa already knows and lives. But this one’s written in the language I speak.”

It’s called, “The Field” by Lynne McTaggart. She’s a British science writer. It is pure science, and it explores (in the laboratory) the spiritual paths that ‘Iokepa and I walk every day.

I feel no need to convince anyone of anything. Each of us is fully capable of discerning our own measure of what is true. What I love about ‘Iokepa and Lou’s friendship is that neither of them looks at the other as an “other.” Neither believes that it is a matter of science or the aboriginal wisdom. Both know that what the ancients lived (because they were so connected to all the elements) scientists try to replicate in the controlled setting of a laboratory.

I say: Blessings on both their endeavors.

I continue to be amazed by the unforeseen sources of support for Return Voyage. I could not have predicted the non-Hawaiian hearts that ‘Iokepa’s message–the native Hawaiian cultural and spiritual message–would touch. But I should have.

After all, the authenticity of aboriginal experience: The powerful sense of community (human, animal, and element), and the responsibility assumed by these people for every part of Creation, touches my Jewish heart profoundly.

First, we experienced an enormous outpouring of kindred spirit among the American Indians in the Northwest. Here in Baltimore there are African American hearts and souls that seem to resonate. With both ethnic groups, there has been so little need to explain or define. There has simply been a shared medium of conversation.

So, I ask myself: Is that shared medium oppression? Or is that shared medium spiritual? Do they recognize one another for the shared consequences of the colonial experience–their occupation by a dominant culture? Or do they recognize one another because each of their cultures are deeply connected to the Earth, deeply responsible for all living parts of Creation, and closely tied to the Source of life.

I have no single answer. But I am proud and excited to be a part of this awakening among deeply diverse, and yet incredibly harmonious peoples.

The heart of the thousand year old, Hawaiian prophecy that ‘Iokepa represents spoke thus: “What will happen on the Hawaiian Islands will be a beacon for people around the world to emulate.” Return Voyage asks all people to huliau–to return to that which we are all born knowing, but so many of us have abandoned.

Clearly, many cultures recognize and respond to that message.