A Few Words that Begin with "P"

Prayer. Psalm. Pelehonuamea.

A most warm welcome on this warm Hawaiian winter day to the thirteen of you who are new subscribers, and an aloha-filled welcome to the hundreds who continue with me week after week. I send a belated Valentine/Galentine to the few who are always liking and commenting and sometimes just shooting off a private text message. Writing for oneʻs self can be very beneficial. Many of us are in the habit of journaling or doing morning pages. But the fact of creating something that matters to someone else - that is the value I want to produce here, or I should spend my time doing something else that matters. So thank you for joining me and especially for letting it matter.

As vog creeps slowly up the leeward coast without even a tiny gust of our customary tradewinds to inhibit it, that gray-yellow haze obscures the view of Hana, Maui, I usually enjoy from my writing perch. Vog - volcanic smog for those of you to whom the term is new. Kilauea is erupting for the ninth time since December, a mere 100 miles or so from my home.

I am reminded that of all the things currently on fire, this is the one we on the island do not flee. We run (drive, fly) towards it. This is Fire that calls to us and inspires us. The Fire that that Aunty Pua Kanakaʻole Kanahele¹ refers to as The Pele, Pelehonuamea, stripped from all the myths and stories and understood as an elemental energy of Nature rather than a human goddess.

I will come back to why I want to speak of Pelehonuamea today.

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Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash

After last week when I shared Carman Mooreʻs prescient lyrics in The Futureʻs on Fire, I found myself musing that fire is itself a theme in this memoir-in-essay. I recalled that fire is the thing I declared last summer that I sought in my writing. And fire was present at the inception of They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir, the eruption of Mauna Loa in 2022 almost being visible from my home and inspiring me to share a poem written in 1992, the year with which the consecutive memoir section of this Substack began.

So what comes after fire? Is it only ash and toxins and grief?

What comes after Peleʻs fire is new life. The dance between Pelehonuamea and her siblings is the dance of regeneration and fresh creation.

The lava cools and in the cracks, new life emerges. Managing forests and grasslands with controlled cultural burns was practiced for thousands of years by the original peoples of North America, contributing to the health of the ecosystem. Fire has its place.

So what comes after the fury of The Futureʻs on Fire? How do we move towards new life? In Carmanʻs Mass for the 21st Century there is one short, quiet but not silent, response before intermission: The Adultʻs Confessional. The prayer is a simple one:

FOR ALL THOSE TIMES I HAVE MADE FEAR, GREED OR HATRED

KING (OR QUEEN) OF MY HEART

I ASK THAT YOU FORGIVE ME

I ASK THAT I FORGIVE ME

I am not dwelling on - or in - greed and hatred, which I banished from my heart years ago. But if I am honest with myself, there is still fear in me. Maybe not ruling as Queen of my Heart. I have not crowned her; she lurks and sneaks in her attacks. I know she was present as subtext or context to the paragraph with which I ended last weekʻs post. She is a tremor I hear in many voices, as their past fears are turning out to be grounded assessments of current realities and future possibilities.

For me, sometimes, those specific, grounded fears bleed out into a generalized paranoia or - my more habitual personal predisposition - a heavy blanket of resignation or resentment that sets in as I recognize that even as capable a co-dependent personality as myself cannot possibly save every starfish.²

At times like those/these, I remind myself of the banner that hung in St Paulʻs Chapel³ throughout late 2001 and the spring of 2002, as the scent of Fire hung in the air. “Courage is Fear That Has Said Its Prayers.”

And so those P-words. Prayers. An entire Pool of Prayers. The second act of the Mass for the 21st Century begins with the Pool of Prayers, which I introduced in this post about how I met Velvalee. While each participant prays in the manner and words of the faith tradition they represent, we also hear Carmanʻs Credo:

CREDO. CREDO. CREDO.

I DO BELIEVE IN A POWER THAT MOVES ME DEEP INSIDE

I DO BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER...CREATOR

THE MOTHER...TRANSLATOR

DESTROYER...THE MAKER

THE GIVER...THE TAKER

THE SLAYER, THE HEALER

DISMAYER, REVEALER

THE SORROW, THE LAUGHTER

FOREVER AND AFTER

THE THUNDER...THE FLOWER

THE MYSTERY...THE POWER

THE SEED AND THE SOWER

THE DEED AND THE DOER

THE MUSIC, THE DANCER

THE QUESTION, THE ANSWER

THE LAMB AND THE LEADER

THE BREAD AND THE FEEDER

PROTECTOR, DIRECTOR, PERFECTER, CONNECTOR

THE SAVER...THE SEER

THE JAILOR...THE FREER

THE GODDESS ...THE MIRROR

COMPASSIONATE HEARER

THE DREAMER, REDEEMER, THE WORD AND THE MEANING

THE ATOM, THE HEAVENS, THE CHORD AND THE RHYTHM

THE TAO AND YAHWEH AND ALLAH AND KRISHNA AND SHANGO AND BUDDHA AND JESUS AND

THE FIRST AND THE LAST AND...

CREDO

I believe. And I am willing to have faith when belief is a bridge too far. As I have often said in these pages, there are things I do not believe that I know to be true. Which means that I accept the Mystery, that there are forces at play of which we humans have scant comprehension. Scientists for the most part, mathematicians at the highest levels as well, all stand in awe of the Mystery, the Unknowable. Astronomers assert without irony that we are the Universe becoming conscious of itself.

And that is where my Fear fades and Faith returns. My Faith lies in all of us. My Faith lies in our innate desire, our birthright, to be part of a herd, to belong to one another, to care for one another, to contribute to the wholeness.

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In the Mass for the 21st Century, the Pool of Prayers is followed by the 23rd Psalm.

I will fear no evil. Because Thou art with me.

Thou. The plural You. Us. The Collective.

I have more P-words to share next week. I want to build a scaffolding for my hope, a framework for our belonging, a kahua for the grounding of collective care.

See you here at our usual Sunday morning spot.

1. This is a long video of the 2024 Native Hawaiian Convention Keynote Address that is so worth watching.

2. We all know that parable right? About the boy on the beach who, upon being told his action has no hope of making a difference, tosses another stranded starfish back into the ocean and says “it made a difference to that one.”

3. The “Little Chapel that Stood” in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.