We March

A  L  O  H  A !

"Opportunities multiply 

as they are seized." 

              Sun Tzu

“Treat everyone you meet 

like God in drag.” 

     Ram Dass

“I prayed for twenty years. 

Nothing happened until

I got off my knees and 

started marching with my feet.” 

            Jay Coles

Our World Tuesday

๑๑๑๑๑๑๑๑๑๑๑๑๑๑๑๑๒

Thank YOU

Friend!

             Fondly, cloudia

Spy in the House of Psychiatry

It's

ALOHA FRIDAY!

Welcome Back to Waikiki

photos, click on the-" Goin` up the country, got to get away. . . "
Country Joe Mcdonald

"Truth is not introduced into the individual from without,

but was within him (sic) all the time."

Kierkegaard

These ladies are public health outreach workers.
They bring help and information to those who need it the most.
They may have offices, but their real workplace is the streets,
and the heart.

<><

One night many years ago, in a city far away, a much younger me was spontaneously initiated into front-line street outreach.

Returning from New York on the train late one night, I arrived at a dozing 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. (Go Phillies!)

This is the huge, echoing sepulcher that steals the key opening scenes of the film "Witness."

Who knows why we notice the previously un-noticed?

Who knows why our lives are marked and changed forever simply as a result of walking left, or right?

That night I noticed an old man and a young boy sitting on one of the hard, wooden benches under the spooky, extreme bas-relief that depicts the history of transportation where the Amish mom and child sat in the film.

Somehow I knew that they were not necessarily waiting for a train. You might laugh at me, but I think that sometimes angels whisper in our ears. Most of the time, I only realize it afterwards. But that night I felt a surge of impersonal decisiveness that propelled me across the vast space to the all-night McDonald's.

There were 14 desultory hamburgers and cheeseburgers under the orange heating lamp. They looked as listless and purposeless as the late shift counter-person in the empty, over lit, late night oasis.

"Please give me all of those hamburgers."

"Is that to go?"

"No, I'm gonna eat them here while you watch! Just put them in a bag please."

What happened next was an out-of-body experience.

As you can tell from the interchange above, I was an impatient jerk who didn't suffer "fools" wisely back then. Thinking about it now, I realize that THIS night I'm telling you about marked my embarkation on another path.

Walking across the giant space, I understood that there are people everywhere with nowhere to go, people who are hungry and cold. They had just been part of the city-scape before. Now I wondered why someone didn't just do some simple thing. It was SO obvious!

Approaching the old man and the boy, I instantly understood that this was not about me; this was bigger than me in a mysterious way. I was not to taint this with my personality or ideas. I was simply there to offer food simply.

"Want a hamburger?"

The old man looked at the warm bag, then at me.

"Who are you?!"

"No one, just take a sandwich.

They did.

That was the first time.

It was the time of Reagan, and there were more people on the streets. I could not shake the feeling, a feeling hard to describe, that this was what I wanted to do.

No bullshit. Just food.

So I bought bread, jelly and peanut butter from my meagre earnings, and made nightly forays through the streets and alleys of Philadelphia giving away the sandwiches that I made; doing it all as simply as possible. Matter of fact: "Here it is."

The only thing that I knew was the satisfaction of doing something worth-while. It was OBVIOUS: this is what you do. The only mistake as I saw it, was to do it "for the feeling."

All my self-doubt, confusion, and future-fear were quiet when I walked those streets. There was at least one reason for me to exist.

Well, long story short, I got involved with non-profit organizations. I saw how a good idea gets mired in "professionalism" and "boundaries" and "training" and measurable change, statistics and funders reports.

I noticed how the word "client" creates a judgement and a separation.

Anyway, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatrists is meeting here in Waikiki. I used to provide medical education around issues of stigma and risk, and have been invited to speak to the shrinks about after school groups for at-risk Isle kids that I launched and facilitated a few years back. A study was published, and re-published, and so I will be the only mere BA to instruct the MD experts.

They will want to know about recruiting the participants, about the curriculum and structure of the sessions. They will enjoy the numerical data generated and published.

But what I want them to understand is that it's not all about professionalism and prescriptions. I want them to understand that it IS all about simply being there with the right attitude. It's really Aloha, unconditional positive regard, that made measurable, positive changes in the lives of the kids who participated. Mine too.

A psychiatrist or other professional is very full.

I have learned to serve others by being empty, by listening without agenda.

So I will be a spy in the house of psychiatry.

And though my presentations have always been well received, it's been a few years since I was really doing that work. I'm grateful that they asked, and hope that my information will help them serve kids better.

But I'll be glad when it's over.

A L O H A! Cloudia

Carp, Curry, Leaves & Idols

A L O H A!

It's Sunday in Waikiki

and YOU are invited!

click on images to enhance "Tutu ("grandmother") give me a penny to throw."

"So say it loud and let it ring. We are all a part of everything.
The future, present and the past.

Fly on proud bird.
You're free at last."

Charlie Daniels

MMM! Chicken Katsu ("Cutlet") Curry Saimin... ONO! ("Yummy")

"Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power,
has that ability to comfort."
Norman Kolpas

"Lazy Laugh Hand Out"


"If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in the water."
Loren Eisley

From time immemorial

God was the mystery

beyond comprehension.

Not to be controlled or contained

by mere definition.

But once the church fathers

indulged lofty explanation

in the style and rhetoric

of

Greek philosophy

They unwittingly debased

the Most Magnificent Mystery

into a mere logic-compelling

argument.

But mysteries

are mysteriously "known"

not dissected.

And it is just this

"dissected god"

that has morphed into an

idol.

As the Cloud of Unknowing

drifts above on a

smile.




A L O H A :]

cloudia

A Hero's Day

A L O H A

How Are YOU today, Friend?

click to enter photos

"All men whilst they are awake are in one common world:

but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own."

Plutarch

Father Damien & Choir

"His cassock was worn and faded, his hair tumbled like a school-boy’s, his hands stained and hardened by toil; but the glow of health was in his face, the buoyancy of youth in his manner; while his ringing laugh, his ready sympathy, and his inspiring magnetism told of one who in any sphere might do a noble work, and who in that which he has chosen is doing the noblest of all works. This was Father Damien."

Charles Warren Stoddard, who visited Kalawao in 1884

“Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground."
Oscar Wilde

Damien Statue outside Hawaii State Capitol

“Sainthood emerges when you can listen to someone's tale of woe and not respond with a description of your own.”
Andrew V. Mason

“The saints are the sinners who keep on going”
Robert Louis Stevenson

He was born at Tremelo in Belgium, January 3rd, 1840, the son of a farmer-merchant. When his oldest brother entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, it was decided that he, Joseph, would take charge of the family business. But nineteen year old Joseph had other plans, entering the same religious house as his brother at Louvain, in 1859. It was there he took the name of Damien.

In 1863, his brother was to leave for mission work in the Hawaiian Islands, but became ill. Damien obtained permission from the Superior General, to take his brother's place, arriving here in our Honolulu on March 19th, 1864 after a four month voyage. He was ordained to the priesthood the following May 21st at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace. Considered a bit "green" he was sent to rural Kaneohe on Oahu's windward side to study and pray, riding his horse over the historic Pali. Eventually, he served 10 years as a "country missionary" on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Around this time, the Royal Hawaiian Government enacted a very harsh law aimed at stopping the spread of "leprosy," or "Mai Pake," (the "Chinese Disease) as the Hawaiians called it. Those so diagnosed were summarily deported to the Kalawao settlement on Moloka'i's remote Kalaupapa Peninsula. Backed by sheer cliffs, Kalawao had been an isolated Hawaiian village. Now her residents were forced to relocate, and soon the mournful voyages from Honolulu commenced. To separate a Hawaiian from his family, from his community, was itself a grave punishment. To send him into exile with only a few meagre possessions, to order him to swim ashore from the ship as it wallowed offshore, there to fall into the hands of other desperate outcasts, must have been a descent into hell. Imagine that you have lost everyone and everything you ever knew because of a red, itchy patch on your skin. And at the end of your sad journey, to see the ravaged faces taking your measure, to feel the fingerless hands reach out - not to help you ashore, but to grab desperately for the few possessions and mementos you have managed to bring so far. What you saw was your own hideous future; this was a place to die. New wahine (women) were mobbed and claimed. Some folks survived only a few days, succumbing to despair, the elements, or violence. A few brave people called Kokua ("Helpers") accompanied an afflicted friend or family member to this hell. But it was mostly survival of every person for himself.

Church people were concerned about the abandoned "lepers" but the Catholic Bishop, Louis Maigret ss.cc., did not want to send anyone "in the name of obedience," such an order meaning certain death. Nevertheless, four Brothers volunteered to take turns visiting and assisting the "lepers" in their distress. Damien was the first to leave on May 10th, 1873. At his own request and that of the lepers, he was permitted to remain permanently on Molokai. With no shelter, Damian first slept in the sand under a Hala tree. This was not "camping!" More than 1,000 people had been sent to Kalawao by the 1870s. The average life span of someone exiled to the peninsula was four years. Damien used his skills as a carpenter to create new structures out of supplies he demanded from health officials in Honolulu. The chapel he built had holes in her floor for the patients to expectorate into. He cleansed their wounds, listened to them, prayed with them, and gave them back their dignity. He built their coffins, and he buried them.

Ultimately, Damien and the patients built themselves an authentic community. He spent 16 years at Kalaupapa. Sadly, he could not escape the disease that afflicted his flock, and died "one of us" in 1889.

By the time of his death, Damien was being assisted by others, including Mother Marianne Cope, a Franciscan nun from upstate New York who spent 30 years on the peninsula and was also buried there.

In 1915, Alice Ball, a young student at the University of Hawai'i, contributed groundbreaking research toward treatment of the disease. A chemist, she identified compounds in the oil of the chaulmoogra tree that were used to develop a treatment that was relied upon until sulfone drugs rendered the disease non-contagious in the 1940s. Despite sulfone, people were still exiled in Kalaupapa until 1969. These days, fewer than 25 elderly patients live in the settlement. They choose to remain in the only community they have ever known. Their memories, and the graves of their fellows are there.

Today, 11 of the remaining, elderly patients are among the 528 Hawaii residents in Vatican City for the elevation to Sainthood of our friend Damien.

Audrey Toguchi, 81-year-old high school teacher from Aiea, Oahu is among them. Her spontaneous elimination of aggressive lung cancer, after praying for Damien's intercession, was one of the miracles attributed to him by the church, clearing the way to sainthood. Several of the traveling group are non-catholics, including husband Mr. Toguchi, a Buddhist. In Hawaii we are more than tolerant, we celebrate and even worship together. I don't think one needs be a catholic to be moved by Damien's example.

My heart is full as my eyes.

So let us extend our Aloha to those we have exiled from our hearts,

the "others" the "different"

whose fearsome visage threatens our comfort.

When we embrace the unlovely in others,

it is our own ugliness that softens

into heavenly beauty.

Alan Brenert's wonderful novel, Molokai is set in the amazing community discussed in this post. Read my review at:

http://comfortspiral.blogspot.com/2008/12/fiction-nonfiction.html

A L O H A to all of us, my Friend!

Cloudia

Notes:

http://www.nps.gov/kala/historyculture/damien.htm

Fr. Damien died on April 15th, 1889, having served sixteen years among the lepers. His mortal remains were transferred in 1936 to Belgium where he was interred in the crypt of the church of the Congregation of Sacred Hearts at Louvain. In 1938 the process for his beatification was introduced at Malines (Belgium): Pope Paul VI signed the Decree on the "heroicity of his virtues" on July 7th 1977. In 1995, Father Damien was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Brussels.

How Many Gods?

Click on photos to enlarge!

A rarely seen image: Diamond Head under cloudy skies. Alert the tourism police!







"Art washes away the dust of everyday life."
Pablo Picasso


It's not enough to glory in the moment. We need to buy the t-shirt too!

"There's a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me."

John Erskine

Sally Field, TVs Gidget in the 1960's, has a new TV show in which we can watch as "Gidget Goes Senile."

"I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate."
George Burns


Nature, red in tooth, claw, and leaf!

Recently we have been hearing more "New Age" talk about angels, and animating nature-spirits like faeries, gnomes, nymphs and naiads. Any glimpse at shamanism immediately introduces us to a well populated invisible realm. . . We think of this merely as the childlike explanatory stories of immature humanity - never guessing the distilled wisdom behind it. We admire these artifacts, and pass the traditional stories on to our children as markers of ethnic identity, or multi-cultural enrichment.

For us moderns raised up in the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism ("The Lord Our God is ONE") Islam ("No God But Allah") and Christianity ("One Name, One Faith, One Lord") these mythologies of multiplicity can actually stir a vestigial anxiety: Idolatry. Just look at the parents who want to ban the Harry Potter books from their school's library! We must go, they remind us, to God (big "G") ONLY. Appeal to any other agency, or any exploration of the animate traits and personalities underlying worldly phenomena, feels like abomination. Jesus may have spoken of "powers & principalities" and confronted spirit beings, but western religion explains that the Age of Miracles has long since ended. Our world is now made up of "processes" and "rules" that we have largely discovered (Electricity!) and manipulate at our pleasure. Only very recently have mainstream churches advocated for stewardship, rather than domination of the formerly despised "natural" world. We don't care to be in harmony with the personalities of nature. God supersedes them and makes of them our mere servants . And so our world becomes more static and lifeless everyday. Our pets are the only place outside of ourselves where we routinely see companion hearts returning our gaze and regard. No wonder they are so dear to us. All of our relationship with "other" is now borne on their furred and feathered shoulders!

The ancients' discovery of Monotheism grew from their intuition of a Unity underlying, overriding, and running all through the world's sporting multiplicity. Their myriad animating nature-divinities were then revealed as more than capricious free agents; They too served a higher intelligence.

Today, the ancient small "g" gods have been further demoted. We have reduced them to mere "processes," and "explanations." We leave them to the mediation of calculating experts. Our seasonal celebrations bring only tourism dollars - not unity, collective catharsis, or bountiful crops at harvest time. We no longer claim friendship with a lovely water goddess, a loved and lively bringer of music, satiety, joy and life. We turn the tap expecting only a mundane commodity, and that's all that we get anymore. Nature seems listless because WE have bored her with our greed and pedestrian gracelessness.

We have journeyed from the glory of One Majestic God behind nature's dazzling animate multiplicity, to a distant God dogmatically locked behind a gate-keeping priesthood, to an abstract "God" who is more concept than threat or promise. Then, for a while, God was regarded as "Providence," a watchmaker who set all this in motion and then went out to a billion year lunch. Next we heard of God's demise. Then we ceased to think of God at all, except in the operating room, courtroom, or battlefield. Prayer became a public duty, or something to DO with our fear and pleading: holy chewing gum for our anxiety, more debased than any Shaman's familiar spirit . . . . Your thoughts? A L O H A! Cloudia