Ho'omanawanui ... Jera ... patience ... harvest

April in the woods is a blast!  A blast of unexpectedly bang on the roof blast of ice pellets.  Incredible shades of light blast.  Cool wood scented blasts of fresh air.  Dark blasts of night-time quiet.  Comforting blasts of warmth in the tiny vardo we call home blasts.  Has it been too long in coming these blasts? Have we suffered loss after loss too long?

April in the woods is a blast!  Duck waddles,  hens crow blast.  One gate, two gates, three gates. God I think we must have ten gates. Opening into, leaving behind.  All kinds of blasts from the past gates.  We have peas growing, sunflowers ready to blast out of dark lepo.  Has it been too long in coming these waddles,  crows, gates, peas and sunflowers out of the dark lepo blasts?

In another version of the story maybe.
This time the story ends with.  No not so very long.
This time we tell a different story and there's nothing so wrong.
Patience.  Long Harvest. Ho'omanawanui.  Jera.  Old words. New story. What a blast!

Ho'omanawanui ...Practice patience and endurance … TIMING IS DIVINE

Mahina is bright in the southwestern room  of the sky this morning.  The Winter Solstice just passed came with a lunar eclipse and there is a sense of ho'omanawanui here in the forest.  Our kitty JOTS is pressed up against my okole cleaning herself.  The huntress is healing from a wound.  We help out with poltices of freshly juiced wheatgrass.  Pete runs the long stems of grass through the juicer and I take the soppy pulp to her wound, run the juice down her back.  She licks the stuff into her.  Time and time again the healing green juice has been our first aid for wounds and imbalances.  In the summer and fall we grew the grass and sold trays of it to a friend who needed to supplement her regime for healing.  When it got to cold to grow it here in the wood I found trays of it at our local community market The Goose.  Where ever we've been Pete has soaked, sprouted and grown the powerful oxygen-rich seeds.

Living close to the Papa, close to the Earth like we are the meaning of ho'omanawanui grows.  Life is more purposeful when you care for home in 8x10 foot pods of space.  This season, our third winter of living from a vardo, we have a second shelter from which we cook, store our ukana (stuff) and generally hang out.  It's a quonset made from an old green house frame, covered in metal siding and floored in Pete's unique 4x4 foot tile pads. There are four of these tile pads fitted onto a gravel bed for our floor. What we did under the sky and then under plastic tarps has moved into the Quonset.  My family helped us out with a second Radiant Electric Heater, we use it in the Quonset.  Mahalo to our Waimanalo 'ohana.  There's little insulation now, so it's cooler than the vardo.  Slowly and patiently we learn what we can do to insulate with materials that will not cause reactions.  Slowly it warms up in here and I can work at the keyboard awhile.  It has been many months since we have had a computer, or access to internet.  Today we have both, and yet we know this could change.

We have dreamed about being somewhere on the Earth where shared resources, common interests, and commitment to chemical free fresh-air living was present.  Slowly over the passed three years we have found pieces of this dream.  All along Ke Akua and the guardians Na aumakua have been there to direct the timing.  Some things, some relationships, many beliefs and practices have changed.  We have learned who we are becoming everyday.  We are growing older and wisdom comes with each speed bump we meet along the way.  Speed bumps force you to slow down or break down.  Funny how we live in the woods with a road filled with huge speed bumps.

Flowing: Practice Patience and Endurance ... timing is divine

Pete and I drove to the Pacific Ocean shore of Washington State last Sunday to celebrate a bit of mastery with practicing patience and endurance. I wrote about it on our other blog VFT. This morning the sensation of being here ... on the Ledge as the weather swiftly proceeds around and through this upland wood is pure grace. The clouds have some where to be, they move across the sky from east to west racing to some unseen destination. Or, maybe they simply race. The air is freshened by the race, a little rain has doused us with moisture but mostly the wind is primary.

This lifestyle we live as modern day Gypsies separates us from so many things and many people. In a common day the separating incidents are more than enough to turn a soul to stone. I watch my darling partner endured one more exposure in the pursuit of an ordinary goal: shopping/in-building bank. Though Pete is less sensitive to chemicals than I he is nonetheless a Sensitive. We wade through the process of unraveling separately and as a pair and as the grief rises like fermentation from raw milk or a batch of kim chee we are pitched by the brain fog or weakness and flow somewhere else. A treasured member of our ohana (kin) waivers between the realms of physical and spiritual life, she is with her sons and hospice care givers back on O`ahu. If we could be on the island we would be with her physically. We cannot so we connect through the cell phone and I tell her, "I'll love you forever." A message from her left on Pete's cell phone "See you later alligator" remains until technology erases it. This cousin has shared her self and her love with thousands of people, young students, troubled families and spiritually disconsolate souls. She has been unselfishly giving in all these years. "Maybe she should have been just a little more selfish sometimes," my brother said yesterday when we talked of this Makua O`o ... our cousin. The grief of separation is real. It is one of the deep emotions the sort of emotion that is expressed in such different fashion among our kin of humans. I feel the loss and purposefully give it my cousin's scent and allow myself the tears, listen to the music of the islands and then turn most of the rest of the grief over to Ke Akua. At least until the next time.

We went to the ocean to hear the roar of the Pacific. We went to celebrate the dream that has become manifest. We went to remember those who are separate from us and yet are never far enough to not love forever. Writing here I am reminded of the divinity of timing. We went to the ocean and found a new o'o and today I'm here back at the page of this blog to use it. "I'll love you forever R. Mokihana."

Practice patience and endurance … TIMING IS DIVINE

DNA

I've been thinking about just how patient I am, and just what I expect of this life. There's a line in the movie Miss Potter. Beatrix is having a go with her father and mother. She is determined to marry Norman, the publisher of her books, and the man she loves. Mama and Papa will have none of that ... a tradesman! No Potter can marry a tradesman. Beatrix demands to know "Does that mean I cannot be happy?" That's the question I have for my own dear self this morning. The thing is probing before trusting is becoming impractical. It takes so much energy to probe and yet living with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities requires probing ... asking pointed questions or suspecting the worst until proven otherwise. Building the wee home on wheels has been a constant process of probing with few choices easily made, and many choices having to be reversed or begun again. We are close and yet we are not yet finished. I am waiting to hear from the Earth Pigment people about using their Natural Wax over the milk paint on the ceiling. I am losing patience, getting worn from enduring...and I'm fed-up.

The tests are constant. I set myself up to turn life into a test, why do this? I have a NAET vile with my name on it. Written across a tiny piece of masking tape is my name M O K I H A N A. Some people are 'allergic' to their own DNA. I would be one of them. I think I'll pull that vile out and give myself a little energy treatment and practice letting go.

Ever feel you're allergic to your own DNA?

Practice patience and endurance … TIMING IS DIVINE

Photo Credit link

Almost ten years ago I published a small booklet "Makua O`o ~the art and practice of becoming kupuna (elder)" Using my desk top publisher I assembled a master and took it to the local print shop and made hmmm... maybe fifty copies printed. Out of my own pocket I paid for my time and the expense of printing these little books. At the time I was a freelance writer and community organizer working with groups interested in exploring the link between traditional cultural values and present-day work settings. How would the ideas of consciously developing life skills find its way into the corporate and non-profit worlds? In my bones I knew the nine life skills had unmistakable application. I took my little books into workshops and board rooms, and told my stories. Without apology I wove the stories and listened for directions from the voice within me. In small increments I shared the teachings of Makua O`o with those who were interested. I think it entertained some people, entranced others who were not sure what or how Makua O`o would 'fit' into their lives. As with the kupuna who shared the teachings with me more than ten years ago, few at the time embraced the practice.

Time has passed. And then I received a call. Out of that past life a former co-worker called to ask permission to continue referencing my little book in her work. My old friend and co-worker, now retired as a diabetes health nurse and community educator, introduces herself as Makua O`o as she works in the Island communities restoring stone walls around the hei`au (traditional Hawaiian temples and observatories), cleaning lo`o kalo (taro patches). Through time, the practice has found a place ripe for growing. Timing is divine.

"The makua (adult) comes to the shoreline and looks out to sea watching and waiting for the ship bringing canned salmon, canned tuna and SPAM. The makua o`o comes to the shoreline and looks out to sea, and remembers how to fish."

-from the booklet Makua O`o~the art & practice of becoming kupuna
Copyright, 1999
Yvonne Mokihana Calizar

Practice patience and endurance … TIMING IS DIVINE

I am by nature, not a patient woman. Saying that may be part of the problem. You are what you say you are. I was born premature, pulled from the warmth of the womb before I was really done swimming in there; part of me has spent a lifetime looking for a cozy place to finish up.

This weekend Pete and I watched one of my favorite movies, The Cave of the Yellow Dog. The beautiful portrait of a Mongolian Nomadic family who lives the edge of a traditional lifestyle balancing on the tip of a needle comforts me. Is it the life in a yurt that reassures me that our own life in The Kitchenette, on our way into a traveling home even smaller is possible? Probably. When I sit to watch a film that comforts me I absorb the smallest details of each frame: I notice the colors, shades and shadows the cinematographer has painted for us, I pick up the shape and pitch of the yurt's roof, see the color of the well-worn deel(the loose-fitting tunic) on the mother has torn away in back. I breathe the air of the high mountains and relish in the simple activity of milking the yak, straining the kefir and cutting the block of cheese. The traditions of Buddha are integral in this film, integral to the lives of this Nomadic family. Spiritual practice is life. Reincarnation, honoring the ancestors, blessing and thanksgiving, children asking for clarity, all there everyday. Several times during this film Nandal, the oldest of the three children asks beautifully inquiring questions of her elders. The answers she gets opened the child to the world view her people have. The most potent of those questions, and the one that re-plays often in my mind and heart is, "Grandmother, will I be re-born a human?" In the soft light of the yurt well after sunset Grandmother's answer begins with a priceless grin absent of any teeth, and a cackle that melts all the walls around my protected heart. Grandmother answers by taking handfuls of long raw rice kernels into a rain-fall over a long needle. She asks the young girl to do it, and says, "Tell me when you see a grain of rice balance on the tip of the needle." Nandal does as she's told ... until finally, she sees it will never happen. "It's impossible," she decides, and turns to Grandmother. Grandmother cackles again then says, "See, my child that is why human life is precious." Nearly impossible and yet, here we are.

My brain is having difficulty making connections, my organs, especially my liver seems distended, sore from a collection of too much of a lot of things. Toxins, ill-chosen foods, an ill-absorbed meal. Yet I am here. The Hawaiian phrase, "au a`i" "I am here," comes to me. I was not a patient child and it seems my life offers me countless opportunity to practice patience. Here I am practicing patience and endurance.

Aloha, Mokihana

P.S. I have hidden the comments link ... any comments from the weekend may hide, too. Hopefully, the comments will show again, this weekend. I'm practicing here, too.