Stories

Story: Sun, Rain, and Trees

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 5 Comments
Three red birds with black wings, two perched in a tree top, with the third flying toward the other two from the right.

July 27, 2025

Hosea 1:2-10
Luke 11:1-13

You know how it is with brothers and sisters and siblings of all kinds. Some days everybody gets along, and the next day nobody gets along. It’s squabbling from dawn to sunset, and on the following day everybody is happy again.

In one ‘apapane family, that wasn’t what happened.

Mind you, they were pretty good to one another in the nest. They were cheerful most of the time when they were learning to fly and when they were getting their adult red-and-black feathers. Each of them felt very grown up as they paraded their bright colors through the ohi’a trees.

For a reason nobody ever discovered, that’s when things fell apart. The two younger ones – and younger is a very narrow thing when you hatch in the same nest just minutes or an hour apart – couldn’t speak a kind chirp to one another. “You’re impossible!” said the brother, who was the middle one. “You’re more impossible!” said the youngest, who was one of the sisters. “There’s no such thing as more impossible!” said her slightly older brother, and it went downhill from there.

The oldest one, an older sister, listened to them with a mixture of laughter at her younger siblings and a fair amount of sadness that they couldn’t get along.

It got worse during nesting season. For some reason some of the supplies were in short supply. Twigs were in plenty, and grasses for lining, but a lot of the mosses were hard to find. The younger sister and her husband had a lot of trouble. Her older brother and his wife, on the other hand, did pretty well. It was chance, pretty much, but they actually had more mosses than they could use and his sister didn’t.

That’s when she flew over to her brother’s nest and clamored and called for help.

“No!” he called. “Go away!” But her nest really needed the materials, and she really couldn’t find them.

“Help! Help us!” she said, and she kept calling and pecking at the branch by the nest until, at last, he couldn’t do anything but give her some mosses and watch her fly away to her own nest.

Of course she came back. She still needed more. One beakfull wasn’t enough, as both of them knew. She had to go through the same thing again. And again. Until he relented – again – and she flew off with the mosses.

That’s when big sister appeared at her younger brother’s nest.

“Are you going to make her go through that again?” she asked.

“She’s annoying,” said her younger brother, which sort of was and sort of wasn’t an answer to the question.

“And you’re not?” said older sister, to which younger brother could only mumble in reply.

“Did you grow these mosses?” asked his sister. “Did you grow this tree? Do you make the sun to shine or the rain to fall? Do you make the sweet nectar in the flowers? Did you make it so that eggs could hatch and fledglings fly?”

Of course the answer to all those questions was no.

“Be like the sun. Be like the rain,” said his older sister. “Be like the tree and the flowers. Don’t make her peck and poke for what the world provides. It’s easier, too. You’ll both feel better.”

When the younger sister came back, her brother had mosses ready for her, and even helped her carry some back to her own nest. And when, in another season, it was the younger sister who found lots of nesting materials and older brother who didn’t, she shared without fuss or complaint.

They were like the sun, the rain, and the trees.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them in worship from memory and improvisation. As a result, what I wrote doesn’t match how I told it.

Photo by Eric Anderson.

Story: A Tree Falls

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

July 20, 2025

Amos 8:1-12
Luke 10:38-42

The oma’o’s heart was in the right place, mostly. The physical heart was, of course, in the right place in his chest and beating regularly. His emotional and spiritual heart was maybe a little bit off to the side, because while he was thinking a little bit about another living thing, it has to be said that he mostly was thinking about himself.

It was a thinnish koa tree that he chose to protect. Its leaves were pretty thick even if its trunk wasn’t the widest. He liked the flavor of its flowers. There were some other birds that did, too, and he began to chase them away whenever he saw them. “I’m preventing them from over-feeding,” he said to himself. “That way the flowers can bloom and the fruit will grow.”

There were also bugs and caterpillars on the trunk and branches of the tree. Some of those he ate, because an oma’o will eat just about anything. Most of them he ignored. Oma’o might eat anything, but when there’s fruit around, they’ll eat that.

But he also wouldn’t let other birds approach the tree to eat the bugs, either. He chased away ‘apapane and ‘amakihi, ‘alawi and ‘elepaio. He even chased away the hook-beaked ‘akiapola’au after he caught one digging into the tree bark with its short lower beak.

“Stop digging into this tree!” he shrieked. “You’re hurting it!”

“This caterpillar in the bark is hurting it,” said the ‘akiapola’au. “I’m getting it out.”

“Not while I’m around!” shouted the oma’o, and chased the other bird away.

As the days went on, the koa leaves started to turn funny colors and droop. When the oma’o landed on a branch, it didn’t spring back up the way it had. Twigs dried up and fell away. Leaves littered the ground around the base of the trunk.

“That tree is sick,” said an ‘elepaio to the oma’o. “It’s got too many bugs. Let us help!”

“No,” said the oma’o. “You’ll hurt it.”

“Look at all those caterpillar tracks below the bark,” said an ‘akiapola’au. “Let us dig them out. The tree will get better.”

“I’m not letting you anywhere near this tree,” said the oma’o.

Even he had to admit that things weren’t going well. He no longer ate flowers from the tree, because there weren’t any. He visited other trees for fruit. There were plenty of bugs to eat, but when he ate some, there were always more.

When a tree falls in the forest, it does make a noise. The birds hear it. And they cry about it.

The birds heard the oma’o’s tree fall. And they cried.

“Why are you crying?” the oma’o asked an ‘elepaio. “It was my tree, not yours.”

“I’m crying because that tree could have been a place to nest for decades,” said the ‘elepaio. “It would have sheltered my family in the rain,” said an ‘amakihi. “It would have fed my children and my grandchildren,” said an ‘akiapola’au.

Looking around, the oma’o realized that not only had he hurt the tree he’d called his own, he’d hurt all the birds around. Not only that, he’d hurt future generations.

When a tree falls in the forest, the sound of its fall echoes into the future.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory (plus improvisation), so it does not match the text you just read.

Photo of an oma’o by Eric Anderson.

Story: The Soaring Hero

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 1 Comment

July 6, 2025

Galatians 6:1-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

If you go up to the summit of Kilauea, look around for some white birds with long white tails flying about. I mean, they might be there when you’re there, and they might not, but take a look. If they seem to be gliding about on the warm air that rises above the volcano, you’ve seen a koa’e kea, the white-tailed tropicbird.

Koa’e kea fish far out to sea, so they’re not flying about the volcano summit looking for food. They do like to nest on the pali, the cliffsides, around Kaluapele. And, unusually for this bird that’s found all around the world, they like to soar.

It’s not just at the Kilauea summit. I’ve seen koa’e kea soaring above the water pool below Wailua Falls on Kauai. Those birds certainly looked like they were having fun.

Something Kilauea has that Kauai doesn’t is hot lava. For these last few months, Kilauea has sent these amazing plumes of lava high into the air, and it’s been flowing out on the crater floor and raising it higher. It’s been impressive. So what have the koa’e kea been doing when there’s been hot rock of about 2,000 degrees flying in the air?

Well, they’ve been flying right next to it, riding the hot air rising over the pooling lava, and getting far closer to the lava fountains than I would ever go.

One young koa’e kea was particularly fond of soaring over the lava, and every time the jets spouted into the air, there he’d be. He liked to toy with getting closer and closer to the plumes. He was sensible enough to keep from getting burned, and he stayed away from the rain of hot rock and ash, but he got close enough to make all the other birds of his generation go, “Wow!”

A photo of a lava fountain with a white bird flying between it and the viewer.

“Wow! You got so close!”

“Wow! You must be brave!”

“Wow! You must be a hero!”

I’m afraid it went to his head. He started to strut when walking, which is a difficult thing for a koa’e kea to do. It’s built for flying, not walking. More than that, though, he started to look down his beak at his friends who wouldn’t fly as close to the lava as he would. “You’re not so brave, are you?” he’d ask. “When are you going to be a hero?” he taunted. He left a lot of bad feeling behind.

Even his flying showed how arrogant he was, and it wasn’t pretty. It just said, “I’m better than you.”

His father joined him as he soared one day. “You’re flying well, son,” he said, “but maybe you could turn down the attitude. It doesn’t suit you.”

“It certainly does,” said the son. “I’m the brave one. I’m the best. The rest can just deal with it.”

“You’re certainly brave,” said his father, “but do you know what ‘koa’ in our name means?”

“No,” said the younger koa’e kea, who spoke bird, but not Hawaiian.

“It means ‘hero,’” said his father. “We’re all heroes. And if you’re a little braver than most, realize that someone else is certainly as brave as you. Be glad that you can fly in the rising air, and take joy in all the wonder of it all. Others of our kind don’t get that chance, and plenty of other birds can’t do what we do at all.

“Be glad, son, but leave the pride behind. It doesn’t add to your happiness. It just hurts the ones who love you.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory and interaction, so the way I told it is different from the way I wrote it.

Photos of koa’e kea and lava fountains by Eric Anderson.

Myna Distraction

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

June 29, 2025

Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

It had been hot and dry. Most creatures, including people, don’t get too surprised by warm weather in East Hawai’i. We get upset if the trade winds subside for very long, but let’s face it. We’re in the tropics. Hot weather comes with that.

Dry, however, was strange and uncomfortable. The grasses didn’t grow as well, so there weren’t as many seeds around. Bugs went looking in different places for their meals, so they were harder to find. As for the worms, well. They dug deeper into the soil, making it harder and harder for the birds to find a meal.

Some of the birds started getting anxious.

“We have to do something,” announced a myna as they hopped around a lawn, picking over the picked-over grasses for a seed somebody had missed, or a careless spider, or a worm that had, for no reason anyone could think of, taken a wrong turn and emerged on the surface.

“Yes, we do!” agreed the other mynas.

“What do we do?” asked one after it became clear that the first myna had said all he was going to say.

“We need to find more worms,” said one.

“We need to find more seeds,” said another.

“We need to keep the worms and seeds we find for ourselves,” said a third. And now, everybody listened.

“Yes!” said another myna. “We’ll drive other birds away and we’ll have all the food.”

“Great!” said yet another myna. “And who will do the driving away?”

“The biggest ones,” said a smaller myna. “They’ll scare the finches away.”

“And while we’re driving them away,” said a big myna, “what will you smaller ones be doing?”

“Waiting for you,” said a smaller myna innocently.

“Yeah, right,” said a big myna, and suddenly the whole flock erupted into an argument about who would guard, and who would eat, and who would wait to eat.

While they argued, a pair of house sparrows landed on the lawn nearby and started hunting for seeds and bugs. They didn’t find a lot, but they did find some.

“What are the mynas arguing about?” said one of the sparrows to the other.

“Who gets to eat,” said the second.

“Why?” asked the first. “While they’re arguing nobody gets to eat.”

“I don’t know,” said the second. “It seems like a distraction to me.”

“That’s what it is,” said the first. “It’s a myna distraction.”

The two of them ate together for a while, then flew off to another place, while the myna distraction went on.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory and with a certain amount of improvisation, so what you have just read will not match how I told it on Sunday.

Photo of two common mynas by Eric Anderson.

Story: Truth and the ‘Akiapola’au

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

June 15, 2025

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
John 16:12-15

Birds are pretty honest creatures. They sing when they’re happy, and they screech when they’re mad. They give alarm calls when they’re scared, and they make hungry noises when they’re hungry.

An ‘akiapola’au  used to follow ‘elepaio through the forest to find food. The funny thing is that ‘elepaio and ‘akiapola’au don’t eat the same things. ‘Elepaio like bugs and spiders, which I don’t, to be honest. ‘Akiapola’au will eat those, it’s true, but they prefer the worms, caterpillars, and bugs that burrow into the wood of koa trees. It’s been noticed that a tree full of bugs and spiders is probably also one that’s full of burrowing insects, too. The Hawaiian canoe makers knew that, and the ‘akiapola’au knows it, too.

The ’elepaio could be trusted to tell the truth.

This one ‘akiapola’au, however, came up with a new idea one day. You see, while he was following the ‘elepaio, other birds were following him. He worried that they’d eat all the food before he did. The fact that none of them ever left the trees hungry didn’t seem to make a difference. He had to protect his food.

He thought.

Not that it was his food before he ate it, but anyway.

So he developed the habit of tapping at tree branches that didn’t have bugs in them. ‘Akiapola’au do that to find where things have burrowed into a tree, but he started doing it, and then digging where he hadn’t found any. It attracted other birds. They’d come in to see.

And he’d fly off to some other tree where he’d try to find something he could actually eat.

The result was a fair number of frustrated birds, who’d look around where he’d been tapping and find fewer spiders and insects than they expected. They went to bed somewhat hungry.

He was pretty satisfied with his trick when his auntie turned up after a day of tapping on insect-free trees. “Nephew, why are you spending so much time hunting in trees without food?” she asked.

“Don’t tell anyone, but I’m drawing the other birds away from the good trees,” he said. “I don’t want to run out of food and be hungry.”

“So you’re lying to them?” she asked. “And before you say, ‘No,’ don’t think about lying to me.”

“I don’t think I’m lying to them,” he said.

“You’re acting as if there’s food where there isn’t. You don’t have to say a word. It’s still a lie. It’s a lie that’s bringing hunger to our forest when it isn’t necessary. There’s plenty to eat. Isn’t there?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“As for you, you’re spending so much time in trees without food: how hungry are you when you go to sleep?” she asked.

He realized that, in fact, he spent so much time in trees without caterpillars that he was hungry at the end of most days. His lie meant that he wasn’t eating enough.

“No lying, nephew,” said auntie. “It’s not worth it and it never was. Go find the trees with food in them, and share the word with the other birds around us. We’ll all be better for the truth.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory and inspiration. On this particular day, I’d happened to speak to one of the young people the night before on a video call, where I told him that I’d be telling him a story the next day.

Photo of an ‘akiapola’au (adult male) by Eric Anderson.

Story: Can a Stilt Fly?

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

June 8, 2025

Romans 8:14-17
Acts 2:1-21

The ae’o shouldn’t have had any doubt about the question. But she felt awkward and ungainly, which isn’t unusual when you’ve done a lot of growing in a very short time. She was only about four weeks old, but that was time enough to learn a few things about the world.

For one thing, she’d learned that she had very long legs as compared to the size of her body. The ae’o, it’s said, has the second longest legs for the size of their body of any bird. That’s a lot of leg, or not a lot of body, depending on how you want to think of it. She’d also learned that those legs were very useful for walking around in the calm waters of a fishpond, and she learned that she could use her long beak to pull food out of the water. She’d learned that in English she was called a “black-necked stilt,” which seemed fair enough, because she had long stilt-like legs and the feathers on her neck were definitely turning black as they changed with her age.

But she’d also learned that other birds were very different. The ‘Alae Ke’oke’o were sort of similar in size, but they had much shorter legs. In fact, they swam across the top of the water. She’d seen kolea and akekeke pecking for bugs and such along the shorelines before they left for Alaska. All of those birds seemed a lot more compact than she did, with her smallish body and long neck and long long legs. She’d watch the kolea wheel about the sky.

And she grew to believe that she could not fly.

I don’t know how she missed the fact that her parents flew quite well. I don’t know how she failed to notice that she, herself, had been taking wing-aided hops for a week. I don’t know how she missed all that. But she did. “I’m not going to be able to fly,” she said sadly one day, thinking that nobody was there to hear her.

“Really?” said a voice. “Why not?”

When she looked over, she saw another bird’s face with a long beak looking at her. It was a cattle egret, one of the many who liked the area of her fishpond.

“Just look at me,” she said. “Look at these long legs. Look at this long neck. Look at these wings. They can’t possibly get me off the ground and into the sky.”

The cattle egret looked her over carefully and said, “I’ve got long legs.”

She took a good look and realized that he did. “And I’ve got a long neck,” he continued.

“So you do,” she said.

“And have you noticed?” he asked. “I can fly.” And to prove it, he took to the air and flew twice around the fishpond before he landed near her again.

“I can’t be sure, but I think you can fly,” he said. “Have you tried?”

She didn’t bother to say, “No,” because they both knew she hadn’t. She didn’t say anything at all, in fact, but she did spread her wings. She looked at him sharply to make sure he wasn’t teasing her, but there was no trace of laughter in his face.

She took off. She flew.

She took three turns around the fishpond – she’d meant to do the same two turns he had, but she miscalculated the landing and had to come back and try it again.

“I can fly!” she said.

“You can,” he said. “I’m glad you tried. And I’m glad you fly.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from a combination of memory, improvisation, and of course in conversation with the young people I tell them to.

Photo of an Ae’o (Hawaiian Black-necked Stilt) in flight by Eric Anderson.

Story: The ‘Amakihi Hoard

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

June 1, 2025

Acts 16:16-34
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

He was young, which may explain why he tried something that an older bird would know didn’t work. He was also pretty anxious about things, which explains more. In the end, though, it was his tutu who saw the biggest reason, which was…

I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should start the story at the beginning.

The ‘amakihi was young. And, as I mentioned, he could get anxious about things. If it was sunny, he worried about whether rain would come again. If it was raining, he worried about whether it would ever stop. If he was surrounded by other birds, he worried about whether it would ever be quiet with all these birds singing. If he was by himself, he worried that he’d be lonely forever.

Mostly, though, he worried about being hungry.

As a young and growing bird, he’d driven his parents to distraction by his constant calls for food. Some birds, and people for that matter, eat when they’re hungry. He’d call for food when he was full, because he knew he’d be hungry again soon. That can be pretty unhealthy for people and for birds, but frankly his parents couldn’t keep up with his demands, so they fed him more or less the right amount of food.

When he left the nest, he kept it up. If he was hungry, he’d head for the nearest flower, snap up the bugs, and drink the nectar. If he was still hungry, it was time for the next flower and the next bug. And if he wasn’t hungry, he’d still move on to the next flower.

What kept him from getting sick from overeating is that he had to do enough flying between trees that he couldn’t quite eat more than was good for him. Not quite.

One day, though, he was watching some bugs instead of trying to eat them. They were bees in their hive, and they were gathering nectar and storing it away. Suddenly it struck him.

“I can gather flowers and store them away like the bees,” he said. “Then I’ll never have to worry about finding flowers, and I’ll never be hungry.”

Off he flew.

He started snipping blossoms from the trees: Ohi’a, Mamane, anything he could find. He tucked them into an abandoned nest he found, then flew out in search again. If there were other birds around, he’d chase them off first so he could get the flowers. He had gotten rather big with eating, so other birds tended to fly away. The forest filled with squawking, protesting birds as he flew about with flowers in his beak.

He’d made quite a few trips and the forest was in an uproar when he found his grandmother perched next to his store of flowers.

“Aloha, Tutu,” he told her.

“Aloha, grandson,” she said to him. “What are you doing?”

“Storing flowers,” he said, “so I’ll never be hungry.”

“Really?” she said. “Who gave you that idea?”

“The bees,” he said. “They store nectar and pollen and they’re never hungry.”

“Grandson,” said Tutu, “would you look carefully at your flowers?”

For the first time since he started collecting them, he looked. No longer connected to their branches, they’d wilted and faded. Their nectar had dried and disappeared. A few bugs were crawling on them, of course, but even the bugs preferred the liquid nectar of a living flower.

“Why did you do that?” she asked. “Did you really think it would work?”

“I thought that I needed food for myself,” said her grandson, “that the other birds couldn’t take away from me.”

“The forest is for everyone,” said Tutu, “for every one of us. We’re not bees, who have ways of storing things, and they share what they store with the entire hive. We are forest birds. We don’t hoard. We don’t keep things away from others, not from ‘amakihi, not from ‘apapane, not from i’iwi. We share.”

She looked at him closely. “What do we do, grandson?”

“We share, Tutu.”

“Good. Let’s go have lunch.”

They left the sorry hoard behind for the living flowers they shared with all the creatures of the forest.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in full ahead of time, but I tell them from memory (and inspiration).

Photo of an ‘amakihi by Eric Anderson.

Story: The Molting ‘Apapane

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

May 25, 2025

Acts 16:9-15
John 14:23-29

He wasn’t the oldest among his siblings, cousins, and friends from nearby nests, but he was one of the first to molt from his young feathering to his adult colors. He’d had gray feathers on the chest and brown on his head and back, with black on his wings and tail. They all did. It made their games of hide-and-seek pretty difficult, because those colors melded into the shadows on the tree branches pretty well.

As I say, though, he was the first among them to start losing some of those brown and gray feathers, and start to gain the red feathers from head to tail. Frankly, it wasn’t going well. Loose feathers itched, and so did the new feathers as they grew in. They also didn’t fall out evenly. He found himself with a grayish belly blotched with the new red feathers.

“You look ridiculous,” said one of the young ‘apapane who played hide-and-seek with him, and, well, he felt ridiculous.

“Can’t you hide that?” asked another of the ‘apapane. He was a cousin, but he could be mean, even to a cousin. Our young ‘apapane couldn’t think of how.

“Go clean that up,” ordered one of the bossier young ‘apapane. She was one of those who thought she knew best for everybody else. But he still didn’t know how to take care of it, so he kept his perch and tried not to cry.

“Knock it off,” said the smallest of the young ‘apapane. All her feathers were still brown and gray, and she looked like she’d just been groomed by the finest feather-settlers of the forest. Everybody assumed that she was talking to the young bird with the splotchy red.

“Yeah, knock it off,” said the one who’d started this by calling him ridiculous in the first place.

“No, you knock it off,” said the smallest ‘apapane. “And you. And you. And all of you.”

She shook her wings and continued, “First of all, what can he do about it? You all know that our feathers will change from what we’re wearing to what our parents wear. Did you think that happened overnight? Didn’t you realize that it’s going to take time and that there are rough spots along the way?”

As it happened, none of them had thought about it.

“What are you going to do,” she demanded, “when this happens to you in a week or two? Are you going to make everybody going through this fly away, or are you going to help them when it itches and tell them it will be all right? What would you want for yourself?”

She asked that last question straight at the bird who’d ordered the molting ‘apapane to go clean that up. She didn’t say anything until it became clear that she had to answer.

“I’d want help,” she said.

“How about the rest of you?” demanded the smallest ‘apapane. They all admitted they’d want help.

“And that’s what you’ll get,” she said. “We’ll start with our friend here.”

“So how are you?” she asked. “Does it itch today?”

That’s how that generation of ‘apapane made it through their molt.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory and improvisation. What you have just read will not match the way I told it.

Photo of a juvenile ‘apapane in molt (at least that’s what I think it is) by Eric Anderson.

Story: Welcome

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

May 18, 2025

Acts 11:1-13
John 13:31-35

The young ‘amakihi was nervous. She had been busy growing up, which ‘amakihi do a lot quicker than human beings do, but there was a lot to pack into that time. There was eating, and learning what to eat. There was taking care of her feathers, which changed when she molted and the feather lengths changed. And of course there was flying.

Then she had to learn about eating again, because there were things she could get to with working wings that she couldn’t get to in a nest. She learned about new bugs, new fruits, and new flowers. She’d been too busy to be nervous.

She was nervous now, though, because her parents had announced that the family would join a flock for the summer. She wasn’t really used to other birds. She’d met an auntie or an uncle or two, and of course her tutu, but these would be strange ‘amakihi. Would they like her? Would they be mean to her?

It made her more nervous to realize that the flock wouldn’t include just ‘amakihi. It would include ‘akepa, ‘alawi, and scariest of all, ‘apapane. She knew there were a lot of ‘apapane around. She’d seen far more of them than she had ‘amakihi. She’d also seen them chase ‘amakihi through the forest, even her own father. “I got too close to their nest,” he’d explained, and that made sense because she’d seen him chase other birds away from her nest, but still. The ‘apapane made her nervous.

“It will be all right,” said her father. “It’s different when birds aren’t worried about nests and eggs.”

“It will be all right,” said her mother. “You’ll make it all right.”

The day came when she and her brother and her parents flew over to an ohi’a tree filled with other birds. There were other ‘amakihi, and she knew some of them because her tutu were there. There was ‘akepa and ‘alawi showing off their green and bright orange feathers. Mostly, though, there were ‘apapane. They hopped through the branches, singing their beautiful songs, and looking very sharp in their red and black feathers.

One of them, who was keeping rather quiet, hopped over to the branch where she was sitting, keeping very quiet and hoping nobody would notice her.

“Hi,” said the ‘apapane. “What kind of bird are you?”

“I’m an ‘amakihi,” she said. “And you’re an ‘apapane.”

“I am,” he said, and looking rather nervous, said, “I feel really dumb. I’ve never seen most of these birds before. Do you know any of them?”

“Well, I know my family,” she said, “and I’ve seen a couple of these other birds before,” – she didn’t mention that they’d been chasing her father away from their nest – “but most of these birds are as new to me as they are to you.”

“Oh, good,” said the ‘apapane. “I guess this is new to most of us youngsters?”

“I think it is,” said the ‘amakihi. “I’ve been worried that nobody would like me.”

“You’ve made me feel better,” said the ‘apapane. “I think most birds would like you for that.”

“And you’ve made me feel welcome,” said the ‘amakihi. “Thank you so much for that.”

Mother had known, after all. She had made it all right.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them from a combination of memory and improvisation. As a result, what you’ve just read will not match what you hear.

Photo of an ‘amakihi by Eric Anderson.

Story: Imitation

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

May 11, 2025

Acts 9:36-43
John 10:22-30

How is a young bird, or a young turtle, or a young person supposed to figure out how to be an adult bird, or an adult turtle, or an adult human being? People, at least, get some instructions from their elders. We get taught how to get dressed, and what things are good to eat (or at least good for you to eat; opinions differ on whether things that are good for you are tasty enough to eat), and especially important things like, “Don’t touch the boiling tea kettle on the hot stove!”

Birds probably don’t get quite that much teaching. Certainly they don’t get the years of it that we do as we’re growing up.

A young ‘akekeke was learning how to be an ‘akakeke. He’d already made one trip from Alaska to Hawai’i, just as the kolea do, and he’d been sleeping and eating and flying about ever since. But he was confused.

You see, there were creatures who did very different things than ‘akekeke did, and he wondered if their ways might be better.

Mind you, there were plenty of creatures who did very similar things. Kolea and hunakai and ‘akekeke all hunted through the grasses and tidepools and rocks for insects, snails, and so on. If he imitated them, things went pretty well. He tried to imitate the ae’o, but he didn’t have long pink legs to hold his body out of the water of the fishpond and he ended up gasping and spluttering as he flapped his miserable way to shore.

The least successful of all was when he tried to imitate a honu. He flopped into the water in a calm spot and lingered below the surface. Then he tried to eat some seaweed on the underwater rocks. He choked on the water, of course, and once more hauled his bedraggled self onto the beach.

He looked about and saw his mother.

She asked, “What are you up to, son?”

“I’m learning,” he said. “I’m learning to be an ‘akekeke.”

She looked around at the other ‘akakeke on the shore, none of whom were trying to feed like a honu. “How?”

“By imitating what I see,” he said.

“Are you learning anything?” she asked.

“I’m learning that some things don’t work,” he said, and coughed up a little more water.

“I’m not saying you can’t learn anything from a honu,” said his mother, “but for basic things like eating and flying, I don’t think there’s much they can teach you. I don’t think you can eat the way they do, and they certainly can’t fly the way you do.”

“I suppose not,” said the ‘akekeke, who was a little sad about not learning anything with his imitations that day.

“You have taught me something today, something I can imitate,” he said.

“What’s that, son?” asked his mother.

“You’ve taught me to be kind.”

Whether we wear feathers, shells, or rubbah slippahs on our running feet, let’s all imitate those who are kind.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them from memory (plus improvisation) during worship. What you have just read is not necessarily how I told it.

Photo of an ‘akekeke (ruddy turnstone) by Eric Anderson. Not far away, grazing in a shallow pool, there was a honu (green sea turtle).