“But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.'” – Matthew 1:20-21
Let me dream with you, Joseph, just for a moment.
Let us dream together that our trust is well placed. Let us dream together of a promise fulfilled.
Let us dream together of a God who is with us. Let us dream together of a break in the gloom.
Let us dream together, waking newly resolved. Let us dream together and see a new day.
Let me dream with you, Joseph, just for a moment.
A poem/prayer based on Matthew 1:18-25, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, Fourth Sunday of Advent.
The image is a 12th century fresco of Joseph’s Dream and Joseph and Mary with the Cherry Tree (bizarrely misunderstood as Adam and Eve) in the crypt of the Notre-Dame Gargilesse church, Gargilesse-Dampierre, France. Photo by Daniel VILLAFRUELA, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19347294.
The kolea is a pretty mellow bird. They’re not terribly skittish, though some will keep a sensible distance from people. We are a lot bigger than a kolea and probably look kind of scary to them.
The myna, on the other hand, is not a mellow bird. They sing a fair amount, but they also screech and argue. They’re pretty sociable with one another, and one moment everybody is happy and content, and the next moment everybody is hollering at one another.
Which makes them a lot like some people, now that I think of it.
Mynas fly, of course, but you could call them homebodies. They don’t tend to go very far. Kolea, on the other hand, fly long distances from where they nest in Alaska to where they spend the winter here in Hawai’i. If you’ve ever flown on an airplane to the North American continent, you know that’s a long flight. Well, kolea fly it with their own wings and they don’t go as fast, so it takes longer.
The mynas find it all rather puzzling and strange.
A myna was picking worms and seeds alongside a kolea one day. The two of them were quiet most of the time, because by chance most of the myna’s other friends had had a big argument and flown off to continue it somewhere else. So it was just the two of them.
“I’ve always wanted to know,” said the myna to the kolea. “Why do you fly so far?”
The kolea thought about it. “I’m not sure anyone has asked me that before,” he said.
“Well, I’m asking,” said the myna.
“I do like the change,” said the kolea, “and I know that it gets awfully cold in Alaska during the winter.”
“Then why not stay here?” asked the myna.
“There are different things there,” said the kolea, “and it just feels right to raise chicks there.”
“Then why fly all the way here?” asked the myna. “What do you come here to see?’
The kolea was quiet for so long that the myna was about to ask the question again, but then the kolea spoke:
“I come to see different trees, trees that blossom red and purple and gold. I come to see soaring mountains crowned with snow when there’s green all around the island. I come to see waterfalls that make rainbows. I come to see mountains with fire and beaches with black sand.
“I come to see birds that also live in Alaska, like ‘akekeke, and birds that don’t live in Alaska, like ‘apapane and nene and saffron finches.
“I don’t think I’d appreciated, though, that I also come to see mynas, and to be asked questions I was never asked. The next time I fly to Hawai’i, I’ll be coming to see you.”
“I’m glad,” said the myna. “Next time you fly from Alaska, I’ll be very glad to see you.”
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory (and inspiration). The story you have just read is not identical to the story as I told it.
Photo of a myna (on left) and a kolea (on right) by Eric Anderson.
“When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?'” – Matthew 11:2-3
John, there you are, imprisoned by a king whom you had castigated for a sexual misdeed and took it badly. Beyond the stony walls, you hear, another speaks your word: “Repent!”
“The realm of God is near!”
You know this one. You baptized him despite your protests that he should have baptized you. The water has flowed on beneath the bridge, incarcerating you and prompting him to speak:
“The realm of God is near!”
I’m with you, John, if not behind those iron bars, I’m with you in the need to know: “Are you the One?”… and I believe he is the One, and preach that faith as truth! There is no faith without anxiety, for me as well as you.
“The realm of God is near!”
You said, “I’ve got to know,” and John, I hope you knew to hear about the healing and the good news for the poor. It’s what I hang my hope on, and my faith, and why I trust in God’s eternal love.
“The realm of God is near!”
You know, I hope, wherever you may be today your faith and hope and trust moved in the world alive and powerful and merciful. And I will trust, like you, that our Anointed One still lives.
“The realm of God is near!”
A poem/prayer based on Matthew 11:2-11, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, Third Sunday of Advent.
The image is The Imprisonment of John the Baptist, one of the mosaics in the Baptistery of Saint John, Florence, Italy, unknown artist (early 1300s). Photo by Sailko – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41892074.
I’m a neophyte birder. I give credit for prescience to former Connecticut Conference Minister the Rev. Dr. Davida Foy Crabtree, who gave me Hawaii’s Birds (Audobon, 1997) as I was moving to Hilo. As I’ve said elsewhere, I began learning about local birds in order to tell stories during worship services. Most of the creatures that I grew up learning and knowing about simply don’t live here. On an island with very few native mammals, I turned to birds as the inspiration and characters for these stories. Many of those stories are archived here.
It was only last year that I began formally recording bird sightings through a service of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology called eBird. In 2025 I completed 43 checklists, attaching photos to twelve of them. I took 1,191 photos and 107 videos that I’d be willing to show somebody else. The sightings covered 45 species on three of the Hawaiian Islands and in Connecticut.
That’s not a lot of species for a serious birder, but that’s a part of living in Hawai’i. It is a lot of photo and video material. As the end of the year approached, I realized that I had more bird material than I could include in my annual “A Year” video. The result is the video above, featuring some of the birds I saw and photographed in 2025.
Some of my favorite photos are, of course, in the video, but here they are in a gallery as well.
An ‘apapane wanted to know what the best way to be a flock is.
There are plenty of examples if you journey around the island. He found an i’iwi, who said, “Keep it small, less than ten. And chase everybody else away. Speaking of which, ‘apapane, it’s time you got out of here!”
He checked with a myna, who said, “Oh, just get a few birds together.” “Yeah,” said a second myna, “but make sure they don’t argue.” “What do you mean by that?” demanded a third myna. “Don’t you get cross with me!” said the first, and the ‘apapane flew away as the mynas argued about… nothing.
The ‘akiapola’au, the ‘akepa, and the ‘amakihi said that it’s useful to join a flock because then some of the predators, like cats and such, get intimidated. “A good flock is one that keeps us safe,” they told him.
That sounded pretty good.
He looked in on the ‘akekeke, who said, “Just stay together!” He asked the kolea, who prefer to keep some distance from one another. He thought about asking some fish, but they weren’t coming to the surface to talk to any hovering birds.
It was the nene, however, who gave him the most to think about.
When he found a nene to talk to, they were gathered around one of their number who’d hurt her wing. The little group was hungry and rather footsore as they trooped along, looking for ‘ohelo berries (or pretty much anything they could eat).
“Why aren’t you flying?” he asked one of them.
“Because she can’t fly for a while,” said the one in front.
“Can’t you leave her while you go eat?” he said.
The nene looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“A good flock is one where nobody gets left behind,” the nene said.
The ‘apapane returned to his part of the forest, and gathered his friends and family and any other birds he could. Together they could find food and shelter. Together they could scare off some of the dangers. But most of all, he told them:
“A good flock is one where nobody gets left behind.”
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them from memory plus inspiration. As a result, the recording of how I told it does not match how I wrote it.
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
Isaiah 11:1-2
I hate to break it to you, Isaiah. But then, perhaps you know already. You saw it, after all, in Hezekiah, who trusted in the word of God and watched the army of Assyria retreat from Jerusalem’s walls, but then succumbed to royal pride and showed his wealth to greedy eyes.
These shoots of Jesse had their moments, true, the worst had flashes of your wisdom. But they let the widows cry for justice, let the orphans cry for food, while they enriched the wealthy, fed the full. The best of them, like Hezekiah, fell afoul of hubris like their ancestors before.
And then, Isaiah, came a child anointed by the Holy Spirit, who embraced your words, declared they’d been fulfilled, and best of all with mercy, stories, grace, and healing brought them to fulfillment. You would have cheered to see this shoot of Jesse blossom and bear fruit.
You would have cheered to see the fishermen, the shepherds and the farmers, even tax collectors, daughters of Jerusalem, embark on journeys up and down the land to seek his healing and his word.
They cheered to see the lepers cleansed. They told his stories to their neighbors with excitement and enthusiasm. They affirmed a humble man from Galilee as Christ.
They could not save him, though, Isaiah, from the fear and might of powerful men. They seized him and they beat him.
They called him rebel, and they nailed him to a tree, and jeered to see him suffer there and die.
Isaiah, human folly is enough to break your heart.
A poem/prayer based on Isaiah 11:1-10, the Revised Common Lectionary First Reading for Year A, Second Sunday of Advent.
Caterpillars don’t have the easiest life. They don’t get around very much – but then, when you move mostly to find another leaf to eat, you don’t need to move very far. There are things about that, while you’re eating leaves, would be very happy to eat you, and that makes for more than a few anxious moments. A lot of the birds I happily tell stories about would happily eat a caterpillar, and that makes them rather sad.
Caterpillars are among the most hopeful creatures on Earth, however. Each one of them hopes to go from an animal that crawls slowly across the branches to one that flies through the skies. They hope to go from someone that you hope will be overlooked (and so not eaten) to one that glows brightly in the sunlight. They hope that the beauty they feel on the inside will be mirrored on the outside.
What’s amazing is that that’s what happens.
Two caterpillars were sharing their hopes on a branch one day between bites of leaf. I’m going to leave out the biting and chewing, because it actually took more time than the conversation. Caterpillars are serious about eating.
“I’m really looking forward to being a butterfly,” said the first.
“Me, too,” said the second.
“I can’t wait to fly,” said the first.
“Me, too,” said the second.
“I’d like to see more of the world than this flower patch,” said the first.
“It’s a good patch,” said the second.
“I’m not saying it isn’t,” said the first.
“You’re right, though,” said the second. “It would be nice to visit another one.”
“All we’ve got to do,” said the first caterpillar, “is wait.”
“Just wait?” asked the second.
“Just wait,” said the first.
“That doesn’t’ sound right,” said the second. “I think we’ve got to build a chrysalis, and stay in it, and then come out as butterflies.”
“Don’t be silly,” said the first. “You hope for it, and then it happens.”
“I don’t think so,” said the second. “I think you hope for it, and then you do something about it. And then it can happen.”
I don’t know what happened to the first caterpillar. I hope it made a chrysalis and became a butterfly, because the second caterpillar was quite right. Caterpillars become butterflies in the chrysalis. They’ve got to make things happen to make other things happen.
Dream of better days. Hope for them, and believe they can come to be. But don’t forget to do the work for them. Hope is good, but hope and effort are better.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them on Sunday from memory plus inspiration. The story you just read will not be identical to the story as I told it.
“Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.'” – Isaiah 2:3
A mountaintop is the House of God, a place of mystery.
A mountaintop lacks human homes, for it is foreign ground.
A mountaintop is a solid thing, we think, until it flows.
A mountaintop can teach us anything we wish to learn.
A mountaintop can teach us truth unless we’d rather hold our lies.
The liquid stone flows down the mountainside passing people flowing up.
The mountain’s fluid flanks sweep our pretense away.
And then the lava hardens into rock like human hearts
Who fail to learn the truth that swords and spears mean nothing
And the truth that plows and pruning hooks mean everything.
A mountaintop can teach us truth unless we’d rather hold our lies.
A poem/prayer based on Isaiah 2:1-5, the Revised Common Lectionary First Reading for Year A, First Sunday of Advent.
The common waxbills may be the smallest birds in Hawai’i – meaning how big the adults get. Newly hatched chicks even of very large birds can be smaller. But if you see a very small bird with a rosy beak, it’s likely to be a common waxbill.
They like to eat the small seeds of grasses and herbs, and they tend to move about in flocks of anywhere from a pair up to thirty or forty birds. With a flock, of course, comes the problem of decision. If I’m the only one who needs to make a choice, well, I can make the choice. I decide whether to go this way or that way. When there’s somebody else, though, now we have to work out our direction, our left or right, our up or down.
Waxbills have the same problem. When they’ve eaten the seeds in this plot of grass, how do they decide where to go next?
A waxbill decided one day, after a certain amount of chirped argument, that somebody had to take charge. Somebody had to make the decision. Somebody had to rule.
“We’re going this way,” he called, and took off. Most of the other waxbills took off with him, but not all, so he circled back and screeched at them until they, too, joined the rest of the flock and flew with him. Some of them were relieved not to have to argue any more. Others were irritated that they had ideas that nobody listened to. And there were a few that didn’t want to go in this direction at all.
One of the nice things about being a bird that eats grass seed is that, pretty much any direction you go is likely to have grass in it. They flew. They found. They ate. But not everybody in the flock was happy.
The next day, the waxbill in charge decided to take charge again, but this time some of the waxbills wouldn’t go at all. He chirped at them. He screeched at them. He even flew at them as if he was going to hit them with his wings. But they wouldn’t go.
Eventually the flock settled back to the ground again, and one of them said, “I don’t mind following you, but we need to take trouble to agree which way we’re going to go.”
“No, we don’t,” said their self-appointed leader. “I know what I’m doing. I’m in charge.”
“We all have ideas about where to find seeds,” said the waxbill speaking for the others. “Some might be more right. Some might be more wrong. And that includes you. If we all share, we’ve got a better chance that the ones who are more right will be heard, and that we, as a group, will find more seeds.”
“You’re a fine leader,” he went on, “but you’re not the only one with good ideas. We’ll follow – but we’ll also contribute. If you don’t want to listen, well, somebody else will have to lead.”
It took longer that way. It did. But this little flock of little birds did better than they ever had before at finding good clumps of grasses in seed, and they did it with birds who felt better about their leadership and their fellow fliers in the flock than they ever had before.
It can be a challenge to make decisions. It might be that the most important decision you can make is how you make a decision for yourself and with others.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories in full ahead of time, but I tell them from memory (plus improvisation). As a result, what you read and what you hear will be different.
And the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” – Luke 23:35
I sometimes ache for your pain, O Savior, tortured there upon the cross, and I, without the mocking, echo those cruel words of long ago, and urge you, “Save yourself!”
But when I do, you hold me close with misted eyes. My lips go silent, as I strain to hear your soft reply: “Instead, I will save you.”
A poem/prayer based on Luke 23:33-43, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Reign of Christ, Proper 29 (34).
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