October 22, 2023
Exodus 33:12-23
Matthew 22:15-22
‘Amakihi are generally inoffensive birds. They fly with other birds, they feed with other birds, and they even allow other birds to get pretty close to their nests – though they’ll chase off a bird that gets closer than, say, about three feet.
One ‘amakihi, however, must have been watching i’iwi, perhaps, or more likely people, because he chose and ohi’a tree and said, “That’s mine!”
I told a story a while ago about an i’iwi trying to protect an ohi’a tree and you might remember that it didn’t work. And I’ve told a story about an i’iwi trying to keep other birds away from a tree in blossom and how an ‘amakihi found a way that other birds could eat there, too. Those trees were in full blossom, with the scent of nectar drawing the honeyeaters of the forest in from all around. This tree, however, the one that the ‘amakihi chose as his? It was not at all tall, and barely had a flower on it. Nobody was terribly interested.
Except for this one ‘amakihi, who told everyone who came near: “It’s mine!”
He ate the bugs from it, and sipped nectar when it blossomed, but he couldn’t really feed himself entirely from this one tree, so he’d forage around the forest. As soon as he was satisfied, however, he’d be right back to his chosen tree, to chase away any bird that was getting “too close,” whatever that meant at the time.
“Why are you doing that?” asked his sister.
“The tree is mine!” he told her.
“How is the tree yours?” asked his father.
“It’s mine!”
That’s an argument you can have for a long time.
His grandfather came by and circled the little tree while he was perched there. He didn’t get too close, so his grandson didn’t get upset. He landed a little bit away in another small tree and called out, “Can we talk, grandson?”
The ‘amakihi wouldn’t even let his own grandfather perch in “his” tree, so he flew to where grandfather was.
“That’s your tree, is it?” asked grandfather.
“Yes, it is,” said the grandson.
“How did you plant it?” asked Tutu.
“I didn’t,” said the grandson.
“Then you must have watered it,” said Tutu.
He hadn’t done that, either.
“Or fed it to make it grow,” said grandfather, but the grandson hadn’t.
“All right then,” said the grandson, “maybe I can’t claim the whole tree. I’ll just claim this branch.” He flew over and perched on it, singing out, “It’s mine!”
Grandfather flew to another branch and said, “You must have done a lot of work to get it large enough to hold you.”
“This flower cluster is mine!”
“Well done for making it blossom!”
The grandson fell silent.
“Even among the humans, grandson, who argue about who owns what among the things of the Earth, and who turn some things into other things and who do make things grow where they didn’t, even among the humans, they know that they didn’t make the land, and they didn’t create the seeds, and their claims to own things are… a problem.
“You’re an ‘amakihi. You’ll build a nest and you’ll raise chicks. Even those won’t be ‘yours;’ they’ll be their own. Let it go, grandson. Let the tree be its own.”
“I think it’s a wonderful little tree,” said the grandson.
“Love it all you like,” said Tutu. “Let the tree be its own.”
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I tell these stories from my memory of what I’ve written. As a result, what I said in the recording may be very different from what I’d previously written.
Photo of an ‘amakihi by Dominic Sherony – Hawaii Amakihi (Chlorodrepanis virens virens), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52150186.
ordainedgeek 
Again tears. Parenting, leaving a church, letting go of words I think of as mine to lets them be used in other ways.
That’s a striking thought. I tend to think of words as being simultaneously birdlike (flying into the world) and rather static, like a tree. In this story, the words are more like the tree, I think, being claimed.
Yes!