Ho'oulu 'Aina and Hope

"Ho'oulu 'Aina addresses the health needs of Kalihi Valley (on the Island of O'ahu) by strengthening the connection between people and land. Through four interwoven program areas, the community comes together to create a 100 acre upland resource of forest, food, knowledge, spirituality, and health activity. As we restore this land to health and productivity, we learn that healing is reciprocal." - Ho'oulu 'Aina

" The transformation of despair into hope is alchemical work, creative work. And what all transformations have in common, writes Rebecca Solnit, "is that they begin in the imagination.To hope is to gamble," she says. "It's to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty are better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk. I say all this to you because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say this because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope." - a quote from Rebecca Solnit on Terri Windling's blog Myth and Moor

All day long the rain has fallen. Heavy. Sudden. Piercing. Near hail. The temperature has shifted from an early summer seventy-eight to forty nine. The weather, the elemental gods Lono, Kane they are not blind to the smallness of spirit in humans who are bred on smallness and fear. 'Aue the tragic killing in Orlando. 'Aue, 'aue, ho'ouwe kalani!  Oh, oh what cause for the heavens to cry!

Very early this morning I woke to make time to write one more segment in the medicine story that is uprooting old issues of shame and fear. So deep are some of these issues one life-time may not be enough to ferret them out. But, it will not be for lack of trying. I have worn teeth to prove what an aging ferret's teeth are like. In this growing medicine story the character Uncle Moon wrote a letter to a tiny girl on her first birthday. In green ink, written in a flowing script he wrote:

My Tutu always told me patience is something no man can take from you. So this is how you and me learn about patience. I write, we read. I write, we read. Then you learn to write, we read. Ho'omana

In between my piecing of thoughts into story, I diverted and went to one of my favorite art-nurturing watering holes: Myth and Moor. The quote above describing Hope was part of the beautiful offering left there by Terri Windling.

There. There was something to build into my writer's imagination, and medicine story. I felt the push, the shove that must have been what got me out of a warm bed, and into the woods where already the puddles of rain were deep enough to soak my little shoes clear through. The medicine story being written pulls on threads and roots from so many directions: a mele a song whose meaning has been variously interpreted over more than a hundred years; a name that has laid down waiting, waiting for what? Maybe, the names wait for the next waves or rainfalls filled with hope.

A few days ago, I received a message and an attachment from our son who lives on O'ahu. A second podcast produced by Hui Mauli Ola recorded an interview with a wonderful wahine o Kalihi a woman of Kalihi Valley on the Island of O'ahu. We know this wahine Puni Jackson. When Pete and I were newly unended and empty of hope because we no longer had the safety of 'a home' to live in, our son, Christopher Kawika, invited us to met and visit with Puni Jackson. At the time (2007) Puni and her kane had just moved onto the land and the project called Ho'oulu 'Aina was newly hanau. The land was wild, raw and wet! Though we could not stay, we were welcomed and felt the safety of this pu'uhonua.

Nearly ten years after, we listen to this podcast and heard the journey of hope and healing in Puni's words about the healing process of Ho'oulu 'Aina. The YouTube presentation that begins this post is also Puni Jackson (2015) speaking about the personal messages that needed to be transformed, with hope. Through that listening I learned more about the young woman of forty, mother to her fifth keiki, and example of aloha who gave us hope when we most needed it.

"Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope." - Rebecca Solnit

New Moon in Sagittarius, December 2, 2013

"The new moon in Sagittarius takes place on December 2nd at 11 degrees. It comes just in time to give people hope. If you already have hope, your hope will be reinforced. This is a very positive new moon... -read the whole post at ElsaElsa for thoughts about the new moon in the Houses

This new moon in Sagittarius will be in my 11th house. "New Moon in the 11th house – Give to friends and make some new ones," suggests my astrologer. I've been given the start of a new year, that in many peoples' eyes, especially those who have rebuilding, relearning, and restoring themselves after experiencing loss or as I've come to call it a personal typhoon. Relating to that sort of water-born devastation, the wounds are fresh. Typhoon Haiyan is no accident. What I can do about that typhoon does start with recognizing how one wound affects all. My astrologer Elsa P. is offering me an opportunity to recognize the hope that comes after wounding(s). The hope I feel during my freshly begun new year I put down in the Route 66 posts that have begun here. The energy of the Sagittarius New Moon coming up helps to transform the episodes of wounding when I try to step into spaces that are unsafe for me: try as I might to push on the borders of "safe" some things, some situations are still 'no goes.' Pete and I had one of those situations yesterday. It threw us for a toxic loop. We fell back into the anger-loss-wounded place.

Where's the hope?

Gratefully it comes with time and an informed knowing. Today I see how to apply the energy of the feminine, the moon energy of Sagittarius. There are friends (old and new) that could be made by generously giving what I authentically have. My long-time readers and family know that my blogging life began with the blog VARDO FOR TWO. I closed that blog to the public in 2011. I've reopened it with a new attitude based on my awareness that some good can come by sharing the story of building a two-wheeled Gypsy-style home. We built it with hope. Today we live in it and thrive because I've found a recipe for weaving magic and myth into stories that transcend obstacles. I need these stories, and they come. I write them down, and hope grows. These are mythic times believe it or not.Vardo For Two my first blog is reopened continuing with "Stories Five Years Later ... life on the borders where myth-making and magic are the remedy". Link to VardoForTwo. 
(the link works now, thanks jt!)

Is it too late to look up?

I didn't mean to write this.  We're just back from the Sunday Farmers' Market where we do our bit of volunteering at a place that is just our pace with people who encourage us to be part of the solution.  One like me healing from the effects of chemical injury is always, always overjoyed (can you be too joyful?) to have a place where fragrances and chemicals are not encouraged and in fact encourages us to bring in our Freed-Up practices on-site.  My market bag was filled with one beautiful large zucchini ($1.00), large Italian green beans ($3.00), 4 first-of-the-season Transparent Apples ($1.00) and two 18" Japanese cucumber ($1.50 each).  The morning was easy, the clean-up swift, and the calm vibe from last night's Field-to-Table Harvest Feast still lingered sweet in the memory. 

The full moons of Kaulana Mahina are moving toward Kulu, the fat Mahealani moon was brilliant in the dark sky above the wooded home where we live.  I was just saying to Pete how truly blessed we are to be in such dark and restoring space at night.  I was in the city earlier in the week, driving into Seattle and being in the light intense space of freeways and urban economy.  Healing from chemical injury has meant noticing and attending to the high risk of exposure to too much light -- artificial light.  My night driving and airport adventure was just as I thought it would be:  difficult, but short.  My honey is home, we made the last ferry crossing at 1:05 a.m. and life is good back in the woods.

As I sit waiting for the water to heat so I can wash up the dishes, I sat and thought of Kauai, and Joan Conrow.  Months have passed since I checked in on Kauai Eclectic. It's not an easy blog to read.  It's not Conrow's writing that makes it hard to read, it's always the truth she flattens me with that forces me to check it out with lots of time in between.  The post that got me was entitled "Look Up " and was as suspected, a  piece that began with the full moon shouting at Conrow to get up and bask in her illumination.  The rest of the piece went in typical Joan Conrow style for the na'au with bits of human and societal choices that make you think "TOO LATE, already."  The entire post on Kauai Eclectic is here:  http://kauaieclectic.blogspot.com/2011/08/musings-look-up.html.

From the confines of my small Quonset, where the light of early afternoon sun brights the deep forest thicket, I know Kauai, the Monk seals, Johnson Atoll and the choices of organized systems fall so short of a planet lived in pono.  I know the effects of short-sighted solutions and live with healing from that short-sightedness most days.  I also know that LOOKING UP is the way we found our way out and back to a life lived a lot more firsthand, and that feels really good.  The water's hot, it's time to wash dishes.

Engage in good health practices … CARE

I was born in mid-November and am a Scorpio woman. By nature I am intense, secretive and determined. Scorpio gets a bad rap among the astrological signs because of that intensity scaring some off, turning others away and yet as I grow and grow older the care I learn to give myself must start by knowing or remembering my sun nature. "Live your sun, satisfy your moon," is the mantra I hear over and over in the past several weeks. To live my Scorpio nature which falls in the Tenth House I will be intense, magnetic and successful in 'work or career' in the world. What happens when the foundations of career success are pulled away from a Scorpio like me? She rebuilds again and again. I have a legacy of rebirths and rebuilding and the forms of success in my life are almost always revolutionary. New recipes are my delight, and writing down the recipes on napkins, poetry, tiny home pressed books and blogs ... these are my successes. To some I am flighty and impulsive ... no matter though, I am actually neither. That Scorpio nature that fuels me has inspected, analyzed and compared my shortfalls to the nth degree, and the depth of that Scorpion is insightful because so many views fill my inventory.

Where to go with this as I meditate with the o`o of CARE today? I see me with my walking and digging stick with or without a mask to be with the environment. The environment that includes the stench of heavy industry and jet exhaust; where birds land on sidewalks to peck the sunflower seeds laid out especially for them; and currents lap the shore stones in an unending melody. I see me rest a few extra hours because there is no reserve for more action at the moment. I am rebuilding a life with a foundation atop two trailer wheels bound for the foot hills of the Olympic Mountains. I live with a partner who can build things on a foundation of diverse sorts. As I grow and grow older I live my Scorpion intensity with more transparency than ever ... few secrets (though of course I still have some) are kept as I take to the blog and disclose vulnerability. I fear being without value more than almost anything. But it does not stop me. Here is something that fueled my Scorpion Sun, an excerpt from an essay called "You Were Made for This" written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. The whole piece is also included on the sidebar as one of THE SITES OF LIGHT.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these—to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

Do you believe you were made for these times?