Muse-Day / Tuesday

A L O H A

to YOU

&

Welcome to Waikiki!

click if you pick on the photo-rotos

“Good friends are like stars.... You don't always see them,

but you know they are always there”

Anonymous

(And sometimes they leave comments :)

“The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears."
John Vance Cheney

“I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.”
Little Bird (above; quoting the bible)

“And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,

And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart.”
Edward Lear

Whimsy
or whining?

Fasting
or dining?

Despoiler
or refining?

Closed
or opining?

Falling
or climbing?

Wondering
or defining?

Losing
or finding?

Straightforward
or winding?

Forgetting
or reminding?

Leading
or behinding?

For today,
I have chosen
never-minding.

ALOHA, YOU LOVELY PERSON! Cloudia

Leaving the Beach

A L O H A, to YOU

and Welcome to. . .

Where is this?!

click on photos, doo dah

This bleakness has always been a place apart.

Scientists have sampled changes in the world's atmosphere from this

unique spot since 1951. Tropical splendor?

"Beautiful! Beautiful! Magnificent desolation."
Buzz Aldrin

(as he stepped out of the Eagle to join Neil Armstrong

on the first moon walk)

It is the summit of Mauna Loa, on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Our islands are the very tops of sea floor volcanoes.
Mauna Loa's Big Isle sister, Mauna Kea, is
(from the sea bed to it's peak)
the tallest feature on the face of the Earth.



"Two voices are there: one is of the sea,

One of the mountains,-each a mighty voice."

William Wordsworth

Mauna Kea means White Mountain.

Here (from Hilo Bay)
you can see her mantle of snow, the home of the goddess Poliahu;
also home to. . .

World-Class Astronomical Observatories.

“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mauna Kea is arguably the BEST place to observe the heavens because the thin atmosphere creates no optical barrier.
Ancient Kahuna made their observations here hundreds
of years before the invention of the telescope.
There is an uneasy truce between the scientists,the University of Hawaii,
and native Hawaiian cultural practitioners who decry "desecration" of this unique place. Others feel that it fulfills & honors the ancient ways to
use this place in the same questing spirit.



In 1913 the US Army was still a segregated institution. Stationed here on Oahu, at Schofield Barracks (of From Here To Eternity fame) were a group of African American "Buffalo Soldiers." That name was given with respect to earlier units of such troops by Native Americans who faced them in battle.


These troops were sent to the Big Island to build trails, horse stables, and a summit cabin atop Mauna Loa (the place in the top photo) so scientists from the nascent Hawaii
Volcanoes National Park could study the eruptions of the day.

It takes a village to "do" science. And we have come to expect science to
repay us handsomely. Well, the Big Isle's peaks have not disappointed.

Just recently oxygen deprived astronomers discovered a giant galaxy surrounding the most distant, super-massive black hole ever found!
"It is surprising that such a large galaxy existed when the universe was
only one-sixteenth of it's present age, and that it hosted a black hole 1 billion times more massive than the sun," said UH Astronomer Tomotsugu Goto.

Then Rolf-Peter Kudritzki, director of the UH Institute for Astronomy, was awarded the 2009 Schwartzchild Prize by the German Astronomical Society.


And just last week the UH star gazers downgraded the odds of a 885-foot asteroid called Apophis slamming into our home planet on April 13, 2036 to one in 250,000. Apophis, the size of two American football fields, will make a preliminary visit passing within a mere 18,300 miles of our surface in 2029.
Details are being worked out, but the asteroid is rumored to be sponsored by Coca Cola.

The Big Island is the only place where you can snow board, see lava flowing, and relax on a tropic beach, all in one day!

A L O H A & Thank YOU

for your visit today! Cloudia

"People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering."
Saint Augustine of Hippo

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.

In This Life

A L O H A

and Welcome to A Nice Beach Day here at Waikiki

click on photos for free sunblock

"One of the advantages of being disorderly

is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries."

A. A. Milne

Not much going on today....we're listening to a song...

Thanks for visiting. Please look in tomorrow

for something special!

Go with Aloha, Friend Cloudia

Come, Let's Fly

A L O H A,

Friend!

YOU are welcome, Come In

photos on the click!

Would YOU rather be an immortal, imposing image of a bird

or a tiny, tremulous, burbling, living, bird?

"Hear how the birds, on ev'ry blooming spray,

With joyous musick wake the dawning day."

Alexander Pope

Pretty - Poised - Patient

"Birdes of a feather will flocke togither."

Marcus Valerius Martial

One Little Boy in a Crowd

“The God to whom little boys say their prayers

has a face very like their mother's"
James Matthew Barrie

Do you still dream of flying?

Do you still consider strapping on some wings,

or a cape,

and running full speed

down the leaf-covered hill?

Are the birds your friends

whisperings secrets

of love

just to you?

Does your heart soar

and plunge

while whily wind

whoops

promising freedom

and speed?

To swim, to fly, to dance;

casting your fancy to capricious Gyre's chance.

Something it is - called the essential

"You"

that longs

not to leave this earth

but to kiss it from the

Blue. cloudia

Inspired by one of my favourite Poets:

Flying
by Richard Wilbur

Treetops are not so high
Nor I so low
That I don’t instinctively know
How it would be to fly

Through gaps that the wind makes, when
The leaves arouse
And there is a lifting of boughs
That settle and lift again.

Whatever my kind may be,
It is not absurd
To confuse myself with a bird
For the space of a reverie:

My species never flew,
But I somehow know
It is something that long ago
I almost adapted to.

Aloha.

You & I are birds of a feather! Cloudia

Never Say "Aloha"

A l o h a

to Each of

Y O U!

click on photos for pleasure

Indigenous Taiwanese Dancers TWIRL!

“Let us read and let us dance - two amusements

that will never do any harm to the world.”
Voltaire

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.

Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

THAT'S relativity.”
Albert Einstein

Spiral proclaiming itself!

Have you noticed it's infiltation of the culture?

"He drew a circle that shut me out --

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in."

Edwin Markham

The Hawaiians of old
never said "Aloha"
by itself.





"Aloha Kakou - Love inclusive to all of us.
How are we all doing?"





"Aloha Kakahiaka Kakou -
How are we all
this morning?"





"Aloha Kaua - Aloha to we two;
how are we doing?"




Aloha is always inclusive and comprehensive.

<>< ><>





It is said that the Hawaiians of old
recognized a kindred spirit
in Jesus' words.




Thus adopting a Jewish brother
and their own religion
in "becoming"
Christian.





They forgave the gruff
and logical missionaries
who radiated condescension
and constraint.





The Hawaiians
in Christian patience
waited for them
to actually live
the religion they
professed.





Warmth & Inclusion to YOU, my friend.
How are WE today?

Cloudia

How to Become

A L O H A!

Waikiki Welcomes YOU-

click on photos to raise mojo

"Our pain doesn't come from the love we weren't given in the past, but from the love we ourselves aren't giving in the present. Salvation is only found in the present. Every moment we have the chance to change our past and our future by reprograming the present."

"We create what we defend against."

"We chose the patterns, however mistakenly, and He will not force us to give them up."

All quotes today: Mariane Williamson

Even though I lived through it, it still amazes me how completely my life has changed.

I find it breathtaking even now, how completely daily experiences mirror habitual thoughts. Shakespeare wrote that "Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so." I have learned though hard experiment that this is merely a statement of bare fact.

Make no mistake.

It takes fearless commitment to face our thought habits.

They appear so self-evident, so obvious, that we never even notice them - they are the air we breathe: invisible.

We never stop to realize that there are alternative ways to respond to any situation. We keep responding the same way, over and over again, proclaiming: "That's just the way I am" all the while forgetting that it's just the way we've always been (up to now) as we keep hoping for a better outcome from our same in-put. "This time will be different," we tell oursleves, but somehow it never is.

Repeating nice affirmations will not help, if your gut is smirking and dis-affirming each one. We can not butt heads with habit. It's head is much, much harder. We must disrupt it's power through the unexpected. To change our energy, our responses, disguises us, and ultimately forges a new intentional identity.

Out of such mysterious change a space is created, where new growth can bring forth shoots. Soon it becomes beautifully clear how we daily experience pretty much what we expect to. You begin to comprehend the subtle cause & effect between your attitude, behavior and the world you inhabit. Change yourself, change the world. Think of the power in this! Expecially as more and more of us liberate ourselves from the "same old thing."

It turns out that people really do know subconsciously how you think and feel about them. We "read" each other all day long. Victims will find willing victimizers unerringly. This graciously presents each with the very opportunities each one needs to work through these issues along the way, and to make other choices. Once we thus come to become ourselves more deeply, we no longer require such lessons, and somehow they cease to show up in our life.

Seeing and being newness,

in ourselves and in our lives,

is the only way to change positively.

And don't forget that change is inevitable.

I have come to enjoy focusing on the daily bounty.

To me the inevitability of change, or endings, only makes today the more exhilarating and glittering. I no longer waste time fearing future, or lamenting the past. Either is a waste of time, a sacrilege in the face of glories too oft obscured by such unworthy considerations.

Attitudes and lives can change - just ask me: a former anxious depressive hanging on day to day. But a dragon guards this treasure's way. He holds a mirror, and only the courage to see yourself, and to grow, will get you past the fear.

A L O H A Friends, Cloudia