Hawai'i wandering...
Everything living is going through difference
I have been wondering for months now when a topic to write about would come up and allow me to use the image above. Given the difference in location and season, it might seem odd at first thought for this post, but…
I’ve recently returned from a summer vacation in Hawai’i (my first visit), and find myself reflecting on moments from the trip.
The beauty of the land, frozen passion fruit cocktails by the water, good times with my partner’s family, deliciously fresh poke and poi, discovering POG juice, finding an incredibly meaningful piece of jewelry, enjoying opportunities to view traditional dance, delight in learning about the Ahupua’a roadsigns project to help connect contemporary Hawai’ian communities back to traditional systems of land distribution and stewardship… and so much more.
Recognizing that perception happens through contrast, the something and something else rubbing up against one another, the difference that makes a difference, allowing for the generation of new kinds of information… I’m also reflecting on the moments of contrast.
Seeing the large numbers of houseless people on the streets of downtown Waikīkī, living in domed pup tents, side-by-side with luxury tourist resorts; fielding a fourteen-year-old’s question about why a houseless couple with a dog would live under a highway overpass when beautiful beaches were just a stone’s throw away, and how sad for the dog to have to live that life… (When folks speak about how important the tourist economy is to Hawai’i, the same question always comes up for me: ”Whose economy is it?”)
Feeling uneasy about the fact that Hawai’i’s number one tourist attraction (according to the official Hawai’i Tourist Authority), is the Polynesian Cultural Center—which in addition to educating about the cultures of Hawai’i, Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, Aotearoa (New Zealand), and Tonga, is a 42-acre complex owned and operated by Brigham Young University and the LDS Church, with its proselytizing missionary program…
Wondering at how beautiful orchids grow so close to the crater of Kīlauea, how individual flowering plants are able to find their way up through obsidian black lava fields, where once the flow of molten magma literally wiped the surface clear of all other life…
In reflecting on the orchid I see just steps away from the barren and steaming volcano crater, it would be easy to say this perception of contrast is of an entirely different level from the contrast of tent cities amongst the resorts. It would be easy for judgment to come in.
This is not to make any kind of argument against critical thought! But the move to judgment quickly shuts off the tap of curiosity and empathy, reduces the unknown and emergent possibilities for change. And so I begin to reflect more on the moments when my knowledge of the contexts is too limited. The moments when I too quickly rush to pass judgment, on others as well as on myself.
Or how easily frustrated I became during the trip when chaos and bad attitudes erupted (sometimes silently) from my partner’s niece and nephew, throwing plans and timings and general dispositions of everyone into a mosaic of discombobulation.
It brings me back (again, so many times again) to a poem by Nora Bateson, from her nourishing book Combining:
Symmathesy
Each one of us is a crooked tree,
Reaching for water and light,
Bending ourselves around obstacles,
Scary thoughts, hurtful moments,
darkness & thirst,
Finding a way to breathe in the sun and hold the soil,
Our branches are kinked and twisted,
Because that is what it took to be here,
The ways of learning to be in our worlds,
Have shaped responses,
Our many experiences are speaking through every gesture.
Our loves, and broken paths, a tenderness, a criticism,
Learning always,
Yearning always,
In crooked beauty...
To be a home for those who may find comfort
In the asymmetry of our belonging,
A nest cradling new life,
Tucked into an old log teeming with creatures,
learning to be in each other's reshaping.
(Yes, there are no photos from Hawai’i here. If you’re looking for those, I am easily findable on social media.)