December 10, 2023
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
A pueo went soaring one sunny afternoon. He’d been hunting most of the morning and he was no longer hungry. So he just flew, holding his wings and tail out, gliding with the wind, rising and falling on the steady breeze flowing between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.
As he went, he wondered about greatness.
It started as he looked at the mountains to either side of him. Mauna Kea, he knew, was a little bit higher, and it wears a snowy crown sometimes in winter that’s easy to see from most of the island. Mauna Loa, though – well, it gets snow, too, but it can be hard to see, and it isn’t as high. From the air, though, the pueo could see that over a third of the island is on Mauna Loa’s slopes.
The pueo dipped down over Kilauea and circled around its trees. Some of those ohi’a trees rise a hundred feet into the air, with broad trunks and strong stems. Truly those would have to be considered great.
Other ohi’a grew just a few feet high, but they grew from places which had been solid rock just a few years before. Was it greater, the pueo wondered, to grow broad and tall in good soil, or to grow just a little bit when you had to make the soil yourself?
The pueo saw lava flowing, building up the island. And the pueo saw ferns growing in old lava flows, breaking it up into sand and soil. Which was greater, he wondered?
He saw i’iwi dipping into ohi’a blossoms with their long curved beaks, and saw ‘apapane work harder for nectar with their shorter beaks. But he also saw ‘apapane eat the bugs that also sought out the nectar, while the i’iwi passed them by. Which was greater, the pueo wondered, to have a beak so admirably shaped for nectar, or to have a beak that allowed you a wider diet? Even if it was bugs?
Which was greater, the ocean or the land? The lava flows pushed the island further out, but the ocean wore down the shorelines. Which was greater?
Which was greater, the rain or the sun? Absent one or the other, green things would not flourish, and the creatures would go elsewhere.
Which was greater? He wondered and he flew.
Greatness, he decided, can be found wherever you look. The greatness he preferred, in the end, was the greatness that built things up and made new things.
by Eric Anderson
Author’s note: A Pueo is a Hawaiian owl, a relative of the short-eared owls found in many places.
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I tell these stories from what I remember about what I’ve written – which means, of course, that I don’t always remember it quite the same.
Photo of an ohi’a in blossom – a small one – by Eric Anderson.
ordainedgeek 
And John the Baptist is clearly ‘apapane.
He is! The funny thing is, he has the reputation of an i’iwi – something of a bully and a one-trick pony.
What an interesting insight!