Sense your place

"There are a multiple of steps that make a human Sensitive’s life less convenient and requires living by the rules of sequential access. A Sensitive lives the prototype transitional human experience…less convenience more consciousness. Like Gypsies throughout the history on The Planet, Sensitives often become Gypsies who choose to be Travellers not just because houses and walled structures create ill-ness. Sensitives like Lokea Bird find that the seed of migration has waited until the spell was broken."

-from Wood Crafting the Tale

Papa Honua (the planet Earth) is an enduring place. She is a gift and gift-giver, mother and nurturer and she is not alone in her place. She is part of Ever and Ever and is affected by the connection to all the cosmic orbs and energy of the space that Kanaka Maoli (first people of the islands known commonly as Hawaii) know as 'aina (that which sustains us; including the ground and dirt, rocks, growing plants, the sea, the waters both salty and fresh, the air, the mists, the foods that grow in the water ...) in essence Papa Honua is connected to all that is. The Kanaka have been occupied by a culture that values 'aina not. The history of the islands and the sustaining culture of the Kanaka Maoli has not only been paved over to build parking lots, hotels, mansions and multiplex every sort of thing. The islands' history and culture has been infused with the same values of commerce and over-arching greed same as much of the industrial world.

My son and I were out for a Thanksgiving Day walk in the Mill Town. He flew to Washington to spent time with me, Pete and in separate visits he spent time with his Dad. The walk we took that Thanksgiving morning included the sort of conversation a mother values as much as a good deep inhalation of fresh air. My son was born not far from this Mill Town and was raised in a community where he and I were the exception to the rule at that time: we were brown and though his father is native Northwest white, there has always been something different about us. Ultimately, that something was the seed of Kanaka Maoli that lay dormant for the first two decades of his life and mine. I made a choice to seek other experiences and these Northwest communities including the Mill Town opened a world unlike the island home I'd known. Now my son has chosen to move from the Pacific Northwest to create a life in the Hawaiian Islands. He has been there more than six years now. As I observe the life he is creating, that seed of culture has sprouted, rooted and born fruits of a new generation of creativity. My son offers me a view of what it's like for the new generation of Hawaiian who has been swirled with the genes and experiences of the continent.

The conversation that Thanksgiving morning bumped into the subject of "the aloha spirit" a phrase that is all too vanilla an expression coined by the occcupying culture of tourism and real estate

My son said something like, "They (the locals, the Hawaiians) don't even know what that means. They don't show it, act it ...I've been struck by how friendly people here are."

I thought about what he said for a few moments and offered this, "The culture has been so long occupied by the values of greed and control, it's really tough if not impossible for them to know what aloha is. Hawaii is an occupied nation, and the thing is so is the rest of the world now ..."

"Hmmm ... yah, like that's the norm now." He said.

"Yup."

Visits with my son are few, and each one more precious than the last. I think we both acknowledge the fragility of physical life because he has seen me go through many many transformations. He is always the first one to visit us where ever on Papa Honua we are. I have committed to keeping no secrets from this boy, this young man, in the hope that the depth and breath of my experiences can serve me as a sturdy yet flexible foundation. I think he will need that to make adjustments during the next two decades. Sensing his place on the Planet I witness how my son expands his roots. I also see that him testing the flexibility of his hybrid culture. I would like to see and smell him using no chemicals and fragrances and hope in time the example of my life with chemical sensitivities will give him reason to make changes.

The planets, the 'aina, the seeds of culture that remembers the truth about humans' role as part of the Earth's destiny, will know that there are seasons when beings estivate or hibernate to survive cycles of hardship. In spite of all odds, the dandelions, the ohi'a lehua, the frogs and Earth's first people carry the seeds of Grace. This piece is as much a prayer ... saying, "I believe" and an affirmation that "Yes, I have woken from the spell." Occupation is real and is a debilitating condition that too many people experience. America the Nation and its systems of "occupation" are in the early stages of spell-breaking. Cosmic cycles do for the whole what the whole seems not to be willing to do without intervention. Tiny Pluto is now occupying space in the celestial arena of the constellation Capricorn. Big intervention will have a role in doses of spell-breaking in big and small places. If you are not sure of your place, a good direction to look is inside and then out ... what seeds within your world are worth nurturing and where will you plant them?

Mokihana