'Iokepa and I have spent the last week in the Florida home of a bright, sweet, and talented young man. ("Young," now defined, as somewhere between the ages of our four children.) He was a stranger, and he opened his home to us.
There are whole categories of assumptions Americans make. One of them – especially post 9/11 – is this. All air travelers must carry government-issued identification. For so many years now ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Īmaikalani has traveled the length and breadth of the United States, by air and by car, without one. It has not been an oversight on his part; he didn’t leave his state or federally-issued ID card at home in a drawer.
‘Iokepa’s mother died yesterday. The only way we know to honor that momentous passage is a reprieve from doing – a seizing of “still.” The Return Voyage has slowed to a crawl. In our lives on Earth, it is absolutely required that we honor the pauses. That we stop in our tracks – permit, at times, what feels like a loss of momentum. Within our industrial world, there is an addiction to motion – and a consequent avoidance of still.
We have been driving down the road of civil disobedience. The place names flash up at me with the increasing vagueness of an aging memory: Birmingham, Alabama; Meridian and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. For 'Iokepa and me, these are fleeting interstate highway signs--a quick stop for gas or food on our way to Baton Rouge. But they tickle memory, and memory is nothing if not the instructor of this present moment.
'Iokepa and I know, quite well, that it is a very fine line that straddles messages that are purely "Spiritual" from those that are somehow tinged with the "Political." Theancestral Grandmothers have been adamant over these years. The movement that 'Iokepa Hanalei 'Imaikalani represents is not a political one. It is simply a return to the cultural values of the ancients, the wisdom of his kanaka maoli ancestors.
President Elect Barack Obama, 'Iokepa, and I shared a couple vacation nights together on the Island of O'ahu, on our way back to Washington state for the start of the second Return Voyage outreach; on his way back to an Inauguration. To be exact, we shared the 'aina (land) and nalu (ocean waves) on the same small Island in the middle of the Pacific. Our paths did not cross.
We - every last one of of us - build walls that we hope, pray, and assume, will protect us from life's vicissitudes - from the winds of change. We call them: career, family, home, reputation, insurance policies (health, house, automobile... more). We'veheard about folks who were terminated from jobs they'd held for a lifetime. We know that divorce happens, and that children disappoint. We've read that people's houses are foreclosed, that they declared bankruptcy. We have seen respectable people exposed for shameful behavior. We realize that human bodies get sick and (Don't speak of it!) die.
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.