Two offerings from the Hawaiian deities

The first:  The Goon speaks

My father traveled the globe as a diplomat. One of the places he was assigned was Hawaii. As Minister of the United States he was the State Department advisor to the Commander in chief -Pacific in Honolulu, it was late 1959. I was two. We lived there four years.

He picked up a few items in his world travels that he kept on his desk. Most of the things were of Buddhist origin. It was odd as he had no religious affiliation. His mother died when he was 7 his father when he was 9. It blew away any faith in religion. He had prayed for his mother to live.
He would say to me 'you live, die and are food for the flowers, that's it.'

Among the many items on his large glass topped desk was a funny looking small statue. My sisters and I were fascinated with it. Unlike all the other statues which were made of exquisite materials and were finely carved or bejeweled, this one was made of a green, what looked like, plastic composite. This statue was of unknown origin to me or my sisters. It turns out it was a replica of a Tiki god that he had picked up during his stay in Hawaii. Perhaps someone had given it to him, as it did not look like something he would have chosen for himself. He had good taste.

As children we would copy its oddly shaped face and we called it the goon. If you have seen how the Hawaiian gods are depicted you can understand how difficult it would be to get your face into that shape. We would call out 'goon' through our contorted mouths.  The goon became a family icon and we used it to make each other laugh.

When my father died, my sisters and I drew straws and began choosing one by one what we wanted of his items. In the end the goon was left alone on the table. It was so, well, ugly. We laughed again and decided that we would pass it around from then on so each of us would only have to look at it for a short period of time. We have lived up to our promise and over the years and have passed it back and forth in the strangest of ways. After visiting one or the other we would leave it in their refrigerator, or on top of a book shelf to be discovered later. Or, if we had it in our keeping at the time of a visit we might tuck it into the suitcase of the one visiting. We bedecked it with artichoke leaves and took pictures of it. We draped it in the beads of carnival. It went on a trip with me to Sicily once where I left it with my sister who was living there for a while. The tradition was strong.

There was a fire in Laguna Beach in 1993. My sister’s house was burned to the ground. The goon was gone.

In the mid 90's I had the chance to go back to Hawaii as an adult. It was the first time I had been there since I was a child. I got off the plane in Honolulu and was embraced by the air. A familiarity enveloped me. There was an hour or so before our flight to Kauai so I wandered around in the airport. As I rounded a corner I saw them. There in the window of the airport shop were goons, hundreds of them. I then realized that this was where the goon came from. My skin had goosebumps.

I felt a little funny. All those years of playing goons, completely irreverently, in fact the stranger you could 'do' the goon the better, and here they were, representing the deities of Hawaii.

All this is a prelude to the real story.

One naturally glorious day on this trip to Kauai I got up early and decided to take a walk alone. I went down to the beach and headed left. There were miles of empty beach you could stroll along. Palm trees bent over creating shade. Coconuts fallen and dried lay on the shore. The morning sun sweetly warmed my skin and the breeze brought the scent of flowers which filled my lungs. I was in heaven. A feeling of love filled my heart and gratitude spilled out into my hands as I sat and wove a basket of palm fronds to hold an offering to this place of exquisite beauty. I spend the next couple of hours gathering my offerings. Flowers, shells, a few drops of the water I had brought along and other treasures I had imbued with meaning. I went to the water and walked out into the shallow tide pools as far as I could. I gently put my offering bowl into the water and watched as she, the great ocean accepted it. I watched it float out into the vast open space of water and sky.

After a while I turned around and saw the beach covered with white faces of the Tiki gods. There were thousands of them looking at me. I felt them saying hello, yes we are here together, we accept your offering. It was as if we were having a meeting. For so many years I had tried to mimic them thinking it a childhood family game and now they were actually here. I felt a deep comfort.

The Tiki’s faces were showing up as the white coral that had come from the bottom of the ocean and now was lying everywhere on the beach, having been tumbled and washed ashore.
The broad and misshapen mouths now appeared to be smiling.

The day continued exquisitely and their blessing remained a strong feeling throughout the rest of the trip, indeed it has never gone away.

As I arrived back at the hotel I saw the cute Hawaiian beach boy, attendant to the visitors, scurrying around getting stuff. He came over and asked me how my day was. "Oh!  I said joyously…I saw the Tiki gods today!" I thought he would simply laugh and think me a bit foolish.
Instead he looked horrified. "What's the matter?" I asked. "I would never want to see them" he said. They are fierce and wrathful. "No", he shook his head and moved away," very dangerous, I would not want to see them."

I thought it was a strange reaction until I thought about it. Yes, they do look fierce, but fierce can protect if it is your friend or destroy if you are the enemy. If you had done something harmful, then I can see why you might not want to meet them. But in the absence of that, they show up as your helpers your allies, your protectors. Need to end some raging bad habits? Call on the fierce ones to aid you in stopping them.

Later in the trip I found a wooden one in a used shop somewhere in the interior of the Big Island. It had been made with local lumber, it seemed an appropriate replacement for the ghastly green molded plastic one my father had bequeathed us, and that had been thoroughly purified by fire.

I wondered if I had made all this up. How did the Hawaiians think of these deities? Why had I seen the coral in this form?
When I got home to the mainland I tracked the number of a well respected lineage holder of an ancient Hawaiian family. In their tradition the lineage holders are the people who are charged with memorizing the long line of names of their particular religious lineage, and hold the information the lineage contains.
I called him, for his wisdom in these things.

He kindly spent some time with me on the phone. Among the things he told me was that he felt I had contacted the local deities and that I had understood a part of their teaching.

I called my two sisters to tell them the story. One loved it, the goon had finally talked. The other one was horrified that we had been acting so irreverently toward someone’s God.  She told us she could no longer participate in the goon legend.

I hope to return to Hawaii and meet again my ancient friends.

The second:  Hula arms

On a different day, after walking in the sun and feeling hot, I waded into the water, up to my arm pits. I relaxed and let the water move my arms which floated on the surface. The feeling was blissful, gentle, soothing.
I was feeling the hula. My arms were being taught by the waves how to move.

Hawaiian love, Aloha love, so sweet.