Musings: Save What Speaks to You

In the northeast, when Koko and I went walking this morning, the thinnest sliver of silver light held up the pale whole of the moon, while glowing, round Jupiter held down the southwest sky.

The mountains were touched with nary a cloud, and a few lingering stars blinked out as the sun gathered energy and poured it into a mound of fleecy white that was blocking its way. When the day arrived, I went back out and marveled at Waialeale in all her craggy glory, thinking of how much water had poured down her ancient face to create all those crevices and crannies.

Speaking of ancient, I noticed in The Garden Island this morning that Joe Brescia now is willing to sell — at market value, of course — the Ha`ena lot with more than 30 burials where he’s been trying to build a house.

It seems, from the article, that Keone Kealoha of Malama Kauai is willing to play a lead role in meeting with Brescia and his attorney, Walton Hong, to figure out a solution. Keone also astutely noted that “state legislators and administrators need to work with the community to develop a more comprehensive policy to handle burials in a more sensitive manner.”

It also seems that Chief Perry’s move to stop construction of the house last week is a little more solid than some critics claimed, as apparently Hong isn’t moving to challenge the Chief in court, as those same critics falsely predicted.

The paper quotes Brescia as saying:

I was disappointed that Kaua‘i Police Chief Perry took it upon himself to treat any work done on my property as a violation of Section 711-1107 of the Hawai‘i Revised Statues, and interrupted and halted the work planned,” Brescia said. “The law was obviously designed to punish those persons who desecrate burials without authorization.”

So is the issue then not whether an act constitutes descretation, but whether it’s authorized? If that's the case, it does appear to be time to revisit the burials law.

Meanwhile, it’s also time to be aware of just how much information the government is collecting about us and what it plans to do with all that data.

Finally, in what some may dismiss as coincidence, but I view as serendipity, I had just finished posting Sunday’s blog — where I mused about what course we are to take in this beautiful, troubled world — when I tuned in late to New Dimensions on the radio, just in time to hear the guest, Michael Meade, say something that brought it all together for me, and so I wanted to share it with you, too.

Meade is a storyteller, you see, so he told a story of a man who rescued a small fish that was afraid of being eaten by larger fish, and as he moved the fish into different containers, it just kept getting bigger and bigger, until it was so large the man finally had to carry it to the sea. In return for his kindness, the fish warned the man that a big flood was coming and told him to make an ark, which the man did and so was saved.

Meade went on to urge us to reach out to “the little things that speak to us to be saved,” and if each of us finds these things, and if enough people do their parts, these become the things that continue on when the big cultural structures — the political and religious systems — go up in flames.

It’s all about “weaving yourself back into the design,” he says. “Take the little thing that is talking to you and carry it as far as you can carry it, and maybe you will run into others carrying their fish along the way.”

You can listen to Meade’s talk all week for free. It’s well worth the time, especially because, as Meade notes:

Myths are trying to say through metaphor how to act when things threaten to fall apart.