Don’t get me wrong. We are grateful for the loud, echoing voices of genuine friendship and loving support we’re hearing from across that big continent. They say: “I can imagine the joy you’re feeling, home on your beloved Islands.” And from those from within our tiny Island: “I’ve missed you. Welcome home!” I fear my response might be too ambivalent for their loving expectations.
So, the Return Voyage metaphor turns literal today. This enormous expanse of continental United States lay now between 'Iokepa, me--and home. Two twelve-hour days of driving--from Baltimore to Urbana, Illinois, and from there to Mitchell, South Dakota--are under our belts and we are exhausted. But three more days of strenuous drive lay ahead of us.
I wonder aloud: "Is ritual, removed from the context of community, a distortion of the purpose of ritual?" Jews require a minyon--a community of ten--for most prayer and ritual. Kanaka Maoli gather into a communal circle for ho'oponopono.
I am feeling - on this mid-summer early morning - the refreshingly cool, crisp air in what a bit later will feel like a wall of heat and humidity. I'm loving that breeze on my skin. It evokes, in a cellular way, childhood memory - summer mornings on the urban sidewalks of Baltimore. From that deep reservoir these thoughts emerge. We - materially-privileged Americans - have very recently reached the extreme limits of confidence in our ability to control both the political world and the natural one.
This heading is more than a lovely Hawaiian word that rolls off the tongue like music. It is an even lovelier – or rather, a more potent – life-changing cultural mindset, by which the kanaka maoli, the aboriginal Hawaiians, will potentially instruct the world. It is the means by which these people refused the possibility of war for more than 12,000 years. Ours is a world sorely in need of some guidance. By its smallest measure, ho‘oponopono has been labeled an ancient Hawaiian mediation technique.
Within the next week, 'Iokepa and I are heading to Nashville, Tennessee - with a purpose. That purpose is the celebration of the marriage of our son, Sam and our new daughter, Elizabeth. In many ways, this takes me into new territory - breaks new ground. This is my first-born son taking on the responsibility and commitment of a new family - or rather extending the tentacles of several existing ones. It is happening in the home of Country Music, another unfamiliar cultural venue. We are enormously enthusiastic on all counts.
I realized, when Yiddish words began to creep unconsciously onto our website, that the time has come to declare myself front and center. To answer the implicit (and often explicit) question: Why is a decidedly Jewish woman speaking on behalf of the Native Hawaiian people? Let me be very clear on this one. I met ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Īmaikalani on a vacation. I knew nothing about his aboriginal culture – I didn’t know that there was one. I went to Hawai’i, as many do, for a respite from the stresses of a modern life. I went to Hawai’i to lie on the beach, get a tan, swim, and do almost nothing else.
'Iokepa and I have mothers on each coast of the American continent. They were both born in 1912. You do the math. (My mother still lies about her age--and she can easily get away with it.) We've called them the bookends: Tiny women who've held their own in this lifetime--forces to be reckoned with; with full lives and distinct opinions, who've cared for and about other than themselves all of their adult days.
The Hawaiian Islands are overwhelmingly populated by folks who followed their dreams to the tropics. It's hard to blame them. Rainbows are are an hourly fact of life; sunsets against the Pacific take away words and breath. Pristine white sand beaches are ubiquitous. Hot lava pours into blue water. This is the stuff of fantasy. The number of movies filmed on the Islands attest to it. Largely, the new settlers come from the western half of the United States: from California, of course, and Colorado, Oregon and New Mexico.
Last night, 'Iokepa's daughter gave birth to her second son. We got the phone call from Honolulu at this motel in Oklahoma City. It was a quick and easy birth. The baby is strong and well. But we know that our new grandson is much more than just that.
We call these past eleven years our, walk of faith. On the tropical Hawaiian Islands, that has meant sleeping on beaches in tents (thirteen tents and eleven air mattresses); eating oranges, avocados, and mangoes that fell from tree to ground (on the street side of the fences)--and being led, always, by the ancestors.
We are nestled, this week, under the brilliantly watermelon-colored Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Nearby, we discovered the weathered lava fields resplendent with American Indian petroglyphs – remarkable symbolic stories that indigenous peoples etched in stone thousands of years ago. The symbols took us by surprise. Many are identical to those at the mouth of the Wailua River on Kaua’i. These indigenous narratives have certain things in common, but I won’t overstate their similarities. This is the desert; our Islands are surrounded by ocean. The stories share common threads, but they are not the same.
It appears that, as a culture, we rear our children to fit in. And it breaks our parental hearts at the first sign that they do not. We attempt to protect them from being the last chosen for team kickball; from a lunchbox full of food that no other child would trade up for; from visible orthopedic shoes instead of Adidas; from finding their Valentine box empty. We live in a culture that has very narrow parameters for difference. Most of us grow up feeling marginal in some way – by virtue of the narrow boundaries of conventional acceptance and the harsh social judgment around those differences.
Return Voyage spent the last week visiting, at the edge of the Everglades, in southernmost Florida. We were privileged to hike throughout this remarkable and exotic landscape, for the first time in our longish lives. In these past days, we saw all manner of bird life: Cormorant, Grey Heron, Peacock in the wild, Anhinga (a species I'd neither sighted, nor pronounced before then). I was pecked by a Pelican--nothing personal--he was after the fish in my bucket. For the nature-absorbed and absorbing Hawaiian by my side: There were all manner of mangrove, fern, and unusual growing trees and plants to commune with.
“It’s not that we have a right to life, but rather we have a responsibility for life.”
Several months ago, ‘Iokepa and tall, imposing Tiokasin GhostHorse shared a conversation across the radio waves in New York City, on Tiokasin’s First Voices: Indigenous Radio. This morning, after a particularly intimate and probing gathering, I am remembering the prominent Lakota’s words.
I will not belabor this. I will simply try to explain. This promised, "Ever Changing Page" has been unchanging for more than two full weeks. And like a kid who has missed the deadline for her term paper--"The dog ate it." "It was lost in the mail."--I feel more than a bit chagrined to be offering excuses. There really are none.
It was a beautiful, crisp day on the North Shore of Minnesota. Our Swedish hosts led us up one hill and down again. We hiked through the thick white stuff on the ground, and through the flimsy flakes in the air. Because these were exemplary hosts, they had warned us well: “Watch your step; there are ice patches under the snow.” We heeded them well: up the hill, then down it again. But within twenty feet of their front door, clutching a few Lake Superior stones in my left hand, I carelessly placed my booted foot – and the solid Earth slid out from under me. I fell hard on the open palm of my straight right arm.
Our road atlas has two full-page maps of Minnesota: one south and one north. But the top of that northern map stops short of a chunk of Minnesota that wraps still further north and east around the largest lake on Earth, Lake Superior. Tucked elsewhere on the atlas page, we located an insert that continued the job up to Canada. That is where we’ve spent this past week – about a quarter of a map inch from the Canadian border, in the winter wonderland of Hovland. Imagine a Native Hawaiian experiencing nightly saunas followed by dips in the icy January waters of Lake Superior, and you begin to picture how powerfully different – yet remarkably the same – this week has been.
Say the word spiritual, and a deathlike solemnity settles over a crowd. Watch a gathering of good folks work overtime to know, feel, or say the right thing. I have watched triathlon competitors swim, bike, and run, and look no less intense or competitive than when I watch spiritual seekers attack their goal.
The place: Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The setting: a huge table topped with clams casino, prosciutto, Grandma Antoinette’s incredible pasta sauce, a beautiful feta-topped salad, and champagne. The gathering: one old friend, and many strangers. They are scientists, medical researchers, writers, and accomplished artists. The time: one night after the Iowa presidential caucus. In sum: this was a group of serious intellectuals of a decidedly Democratic Party bent. Wiry, intense Sally began the conversation with: “Is Return Voyage political?”
