Saturday, February 27, the sirens wailed at six a.m. all across the islands, we later learned, but to us in rural southern Maui, in a cottage too close to the sea, the alarm came from a low flying plane along the coast.
The sun was just coming up over the eastern horizon, where the sea meets the dawn. It was a remarkably clear day, and the dome of blue would have meant blistering sun, but we knew the weather would change. Our hotel had informed us by letter and visit with a rap on the door early in the dark of that morning, so we were warned. We had planned to fly home, so we were busy packing, and now we wondered where or when we would fly, if at all. Perhaps we would be evacuated with the others, who had been told to move to higher ground, to, indeed, Fagan’s Cross, the lava cross on the promontory on the side of Haleakala.
The uncertainty weighed heavily as I looked out to sea that early morning, out to the bright sun, the rugged lava coast, the green fields. My novel, Hana-lani, set here, celebrates the setting and the culture of this traditional community, its peaceful and friendly way of life, its embrace of family, both near and far, and writing the story had deepened my love for these folks. Everyone here is ohana, family, and everyone is cared for. I prayed for these people who had given us so much over so many years. I prayed they would be spared this terrible wave that was rolling through the seas from distant Chile. I prayed for those in Chile too, who had been victims of these terrible rages of nature.
Not for the first time, the fragility of life danced before me, as though the earth of my own world shook a bit, became less stable. I could be a person living in Chile. I could be a resident here in Hana as the waters rose. One day it could be me.
And would we be able to return home? Would the roads be blocked, the planes grounded? Would utilities and basic serviced be shut down?
We moved ahead, one step at a time. The old red fire truck, now the hotel shuttle (a ‘39 Packard) delivered us to the Hana airport, where, in spite of everything, the propjet arrived from Kahului. We boarded and strapped ourselves in, and lifted into the air, flying low along the coast, amazed at the clear day, the absence of any signs of trouble over the waters. Cobalt blues rushed against the black cliffs, and the deeply green flanks of Haleakala rose to the blue dome of a sky. Paradise.
Arriving at the Kahului airport, so quiet at 9 a.m., we joined the waiting lines to check in, slowly moving through the minutes of the morning, praying for Hana. The wave was due to hit Hilo at 11:15. The airport lights dimmed, the water, we were told had been shut down, the restaurants closed.
TSA still screened us carefully, and by 11:30 we had reached our gate in the terminal. Folks peered through the wide windows toward the sea, anxious. Would a wave engulf the airport for surely we were sea level? They said no, but how did they know? Images from movies and news footage passed through my mind, Southeast Asia a few years ago, the Titanic. The tension in the air was tangible, and we made small talk with others waiting, glancing toward the horizon, which we were sure was growing darker and darker. As noon approached, we began to feel safe again, as we heard reports of mild waves, nothing unusual. The world began to right itself around us. Now we worried – would there be a plane? Would there be crew and pilot, for the roads to the airport had been closed.
The plane arrived, the pilots arrived, and we headed home for San Francisco, thankful that Hana had been spared, and now praying for those in Chile.
We hiked up the long trail to Fagan’s cross this morning, taking a chance on the rain. Dark clouds hovered mistily over Haleakala, but patches of blue sky emerged over the sea. We walked between two weather worlds, up through the pastures, grateful the cattle were peacefully distant and not commanding the trail as they sometimes do, their dull forceful eyes challenging you to continue.
The path rises steep and straight at first, dividing the grassy lands, then turns gently to the right, to circle and skirt a promontory emerging from the hillside. You can see the cross there, atop the cliff, its simple lines strong against the mountain and sky, formed from giant lava blocks, a massive creation.
When Paul Fagan from Oakland replaced the sugar fields of Hana with cattle lands and created a working ranch, he slowly revived the failing economy of the area, for Hawaiian sugar could no longer compete with other producers around the world. When he died in 1960 his wife erected this cross in his memory. It stands as a witness to faith and family on the side of the volcano, between the sea and the sky.
We drew near the cross as we followed the path around the hill, then approached the sanctuary, an open porch area before the cross where Easter sunrise is celebrated. Torches line on either side of the massive cross, and I tried to imagine their flame lighting the dark of early dawn, the huge cross in the center, my gaze on the distant horizon over the sea where the sun would slowly appear.
In my novel Hana-lani, Nani-lei comes here to pray for Hana and her people, her family, her children. When I visit Fagan’s cross, I think of old Nani, her wisdom, her sacrificial life. Soon, I hope, Nani’s voice will be heard by others as well, for her story will hopedully be published this year. As I looked over Hana today, standing next to the thick base, and protected by the broad arm of the cross, I prayed for my family too, and this lovely town spread below me, nestled between land and sea. I prayed for those I knew were struggling with life-changing decisions, that they would bravely choose life in the face of a dying and despairing culture. I prayed for our parched world, that our dry bones would be healed, that our culture of life and freedom would be renewed.
And I thanked God for Mrs. Fagan’s cross, it’s witness.
As we descended the steep hillside through the meadows, the rain began to fall, lightly, blown from the sea by a strong warm wind, pushing the clouds back up the mountain. I knew that, in the end, the cross would not be defeated. God would breathe his life into our death.
We headed for Hamoa Bay this morning, following the cattle path through the pastures.
Careful of the meadow muffins, we meandered along the flanks of Haleakala, often pausing on the grassy slopes to gaze down to the sea – the town of Hana nestling around Kauiki Head, the promontory of rock said to have been Queen Kaahumanu’s birthplace. It was a lush, green view, the forests of hau and hibiscus, the palms tall and straight and gently waving, the Cooke pines steepling the sky. All was green and more green, from light to dark, down to the blue sea that stretched as far as the eye could see to a distant horizon curving the edge of our world as we turn so slowly.
The path led us through an arbor of shade, along a recently repaired bridge, and over a dry riverbed, too dry, they say here. In November, the gully was a torrent of water running to the sea, but today there was nothing.
Finally, we turned down toward the cove called Hamoa Bay, following the paved road through a seaside neighborhood, to steep stairs descending to the beach. Waves crashed on the black sand, and surfers rode the glassy surface, racing the foam to the shallows. A few folks stretched out on lounge chairs, others unpacked picnics on blankets. We listened to the roar of the sea meeting the land, caressing it, retreating again, meeting, caressing, retreating…
I watched the water and the land dance to the rhythm of the tides, and recalled the line from the Psalm, “The sea is his and he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land….” Here in this dramatic, poetic world, one is full of the mystery of creation, the mystery of the greatest dance of all.
This last Sunday, the First Sunday in Lent, we flew along the coast in a Cessna ten-seater, low and hugging the rugged cliffs, the foam crashing against the black rock. Haleakala, the dormant volcano, rose above the cliffs, its green flanks sloping to the sea. Beyond Haleakala an unusually blue sky filled the heavens, and now, at 4:30 in the afternoon, shadows began to form as the sun moved down toward the horizon. The plane droned on, its engines whirring, the occasional bleep signaling information to the pilot.
Kahalui to Kona is about a fifteen-minute flight, and we had the plane to ourselves. We had checked in by phone from the airline counter, and the pilot had weighed out luggage and loaded it into the hold. We climbed up the folding steps to the low door, found the row of single seats, each by a window. The seatbelts strapped across the shoulder and the lap, clicking together. We taxied and slowly lifted, watching the the town and farmlands diminish and heading south over the sea. I peered out the window, under the wing, to the verdant green, the white-capped sea, and the amazing coastline cliffs zigzagging to Hana.
My fourth novel, Hana-lani, awaits release by the publisher, OakTara, and as my husband and I flew to the rain forest village in southern Maui, nestled along the coast with a sunrise over the sea and a sunset over the volcano, I heard in my mind many familiar lines, seeing the poignant scenes that form the novel: the plane ride of the young woman from San Francisco, the passage from city to rural, a movement that changes her life forever.
We have, like Meredith in Hana-lani, retreated to another world, a simpler world of land and sea, of sky and mountain. The trade winds seem to own this earth, and we watch the sky for signs of change – clouds moving in, clouds moving away, the sun out, the sun covered, the shades of light coloring the sea and the mountain in infinitesimal shades of greens, grays, blues. For indeed, all takes part in the sea, the mountain, and the forest in between. We, as humans in this lush, both wild and gentle, landscape, are part of it but at the same time are observers from outside. And such a world to observe.
We have settled in to a cottage on a hillside of grass sloping to black cliffs and pounding surf. Wind and weather surges, rain pounds our roof at night, sun burns through the moist air of day to blister our thin city skins. We watch and wonder, in a world of mysterious and marvelous color and movement.
We are also traveling through Lent, and have retreated here to a desert of sorts, one away from the hustle of the everyday. We shall walk and swim. We shall dine on a verandah on deck chairs. There is no TV in our room, no newspapers, no easy Internet. I shall say my Lenten collect, engraft Scripture onto my heart and mind, and pray for guidance in this holy time. I shall also work on my current novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Melody, as I hear the notes of my novel in waiting, Hana-lani, echoing around me in Hana.
May God guide us in all things, each in our own way, this Lent 2010, as we prepare for the great festival of Easter.
The colors of sea and sky meet the horizon, and volcanic ash, hardened into lava formations, rises in sharp cliffs and spreads in vast fields. Breezes turn into winds as white caps on high surf pound the gentle shore, thundering, thundering, thundering…
Life merges into death, as the ancient world collapses into ash, and the new world faces middle age, seeing its own aging, its own death, its own new life.
John 1:1-14 - “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God.” Here, all creation celebrates the Creator, the Word moving over the waters.
We swim, careful not to be pulled out to sea by powerful currents. We walk, careful not to stumble on the sharp rock. We cover ourselves, wary of the sun burning our skin. We know we are witness to the glories of the created world, and testify as well to the deadly. It is a beautiful world but one oblivious to man, a world bent by Adam, corrupted by Eve, yet redeemed by Christ for those who believe.
Our bodies crumble, age, turn to ash as we begin this Lenten season, watching the children play in the shallows.
And on Ash Wednesday my little book, Offerings, was awarded finalist in the Reader Views Literary Awards. We wait now for March 12 to find out the placing - 1st, 2nd or Honorable Mention.
I am immersing myself in the Gospels, those first-century accounts of the Son of God’s time on earth, and reading about Mary Magdalene, as I move slowly through the new words of my new manuscript, The Magdalen Melody. ”The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us…” I pray that His Word will dwell among mine, as I engraft John’s witness on my heart, into my mind.
Ah, St. Valentine’s Day!
This year this lovely festival of the saint and martyr, the celebration of love with roses, cards, and chocolate, coincides with Quinquagesima, the third Sunday of little Lent, the three weeks before Lent. And the Epistle today was about love.
St. Valentine is a figure shrouded in time, but nevertheless a real person who lived in the third century, martyred under Claudius. There were two Valentines of legend – a bishop from Terni and a Roman priest, and his conflated story has become intertwined with legends of mating and courtship in the medieval world. It is said he was imprisoned for helping Christians, in particular blessing their marriages, and for not worshiping the Roman gods. He was martyred for worshiping the God of Love, Christ Jesus.
The Epistle today was the stunning passage in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, defining love:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
We are out of town for a few days, staying on the Kohala Coast on the Big Island of Hawaii, on our own retreat of sorts, and weaving our own bonds of faith, hope, and charity (love). Today looms with great joy, in its themes of sacrificial love, the beginning of the season of Lent in which we seek to truly understand what love is all about, to understand, to know the love of God and how it weaves through creation.
St. Valentine, I believe, understood that love, was willing to die for that love. He experienced the resurrected Christ, the reality of God with him, and among those early followers. For in the end, I am beginning to understand as well, as I research the first century for my novel-in-progress, that it is the resurrected Christ who is the historical figure, the figure we can say changed the world. From that point we can understand Scriptures and all that happened before.
Ash Wednesday nears and we prepare for Lent with Valentine’s Day, a Pauline festival to be sure, as we enter the greatest of all mysteries, Love, a love that never fails.
Happy St. Valentine’s Day, and Happy Quinquagesima, and may your Lent be a loving one…
We celebrated our twenty-eighth wedding anniversary yesterday, and as I entered Saint Peter’s Church this morning my eyes were drawn to the purple altar hangings of Pre-Lent, that short three-week season in which we begin the journey of penitential sacrifice in preparation for the great festival of Easter.
Marriage too is largely that journey of love, the giving to another, the sacrifice of time and self. In the journey, of course, much is received as well, and I often think where the two overlap – in that land of giving – bliss abounds.
As I mention in my recent novel, Inheritance, set in Lent/Easter, the ancient season of Pre-lent refers to the three weeks before Ash Wednesday: Quinquagesima (fifty days before Easter), Sexagesima (sixty days before Easter), and Septuagesima (seventy days before Easter). While Quinquagesima is indeed fifty days before Easter, the latter two names are not accurate, since they actually fall on the fifty-seventh and sixty-fourth days before Easter respectively. The reasoning is unknown, but it is thought these Sundays were linked to Quinquagesima in a general way. Pre-Lent is a time to consider what I might give up and what I might take on for the forty days of my Lenten discipline, forty days reflecting Christ’s forty days in the wilderness, his time of preparation as well.
And why give something up or take something on? Such a discipline trains us to love, trains us to say yes to God’s life in us, around us, and for us. We are spiritual athletes in training. My usual sacrifice is sweets and meats, and I look forward to Sundays when my Lenten rule doesn’t apply, being a resurrection day of celebration. My Lenten rule is a real sacrifice for me, difficult and never totally successful, so that it leaves me room to grow.
A particularly wonderful rule I have recently discovered is to memorize something from the Psalms or the Prayer Offices in our Book of Common Prayer. The Venite, the Te Deum, and the Jubilate Deo (Psalm 100) from Morning Prayer have become a beloved part of my daily prayers, and during Lent I return to the Collect for Lent, “Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made…” Last year I added the touching and lovely Psalm 139, “Thou has searched me out and known me…”. I shall return to these now familiar words and this year add something else, not sure what, but I think it might be the first few lines of John, “In the beginning was the Word….” Mystifying, profound, poetic. Perfect words for my heart and soul, particularly as I go deeper and deeper into my fifth novel, researching the first century documents of Christianity.
I’ve found that these phrases learned by heart, far from becoming rote, enter me, making my conversation with God more vibrant, more living. The time and effort are repaid a thousand-fold, texturing and enriching each minute.
Indeed, the love we journey into in Lent, even now in Little Lent, trains and purifies us, but also fills and fulfills us, as we travel into the love of God himself, and meet, as St. Paul says, “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”
Today may be Sexagesima, but it is also Super Bowl Sunday, and well trained athletes compete on a field for a grand prize. We too run the race, test ourselves, train our hearts and minds. We train to love, and in the training, are loved by Love itself.