appreciation

Story: The Crunchiness of Life

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 6 Comments

February 22, 2026

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Matthew 4:1-11

Saltiness, sweetness, and yes, I’m visiting another one of the taste buds. I’m afraid it’s bitterness. That’s not a favorite for many people.

Now, coffee drinkers do tend to like some bitterness to it, but the birds of the mountain forests don’t drink coffee. Instead, they drink nectar, and as I mentioned last week, nectar is basically sugar, so it’s sweet. ‘Apapane and ‘amakihi both like the nectar of ohi’a and koa and mamane and lots of other flowers and flowering trees of the forest, as well as some of the fruits.

Those trees don’t flower all at the same time, and they don’t flower all the time, so the birds have to move to and fro to find the ones in blossom. If you’ve got wings to fly with, that’s not so bad, but when those birds can’t find flowers, they look for other sources of food. Mostly, that’s bugs and spiders.

To which I say, yuck.

As it happened, so did an ‘amakihi.

Plenty of birds, ‘apapane and ‘amakihi and others, like the taste of bugs. They like the flavor. They like the crunch. Best of all, they like the way that after they eat some, they don’t feel hungry, which is a very good thing.

This ‘amakihi didn’t like feeling hungry, it’s true. Unfortunately, he really didn’t like the crunchiness of a bug meal. And he didn’t like the flavor at all.

“It’s bitter,” he complained.

“It’s not that bad,” said a friend.

“I rather like it,” said another friend.

“Yuck,” said our ‘amakihi. “It’s bitter and nectar is so much better. I don’t want to deal with a crunchy life.” So he flew off to look for flowers.

It was a bad day for nectar. Most of the trees were in seed, not flower. The trees that did have flowers also tended to have grumpy i’iwi in them who’d chase him away. He’d get a sip or two from a lonely flower on a lonely tree, then fly off again, sometimes with an i’iwi behind him.

It was a bad day for nectar, and it was a bad day for him.

Sitting on an ohi’a branch, he spotted a spider’s web. That had made for a bad day for some bugs, but now the ‘amakihi was hungry enough that he’d manage the bitterness. He poked his beak about until the spider came out, and a moment later he’d eaten it, bitter crunch and all.

“Yuck,” he said, but his heart wasn’t in it. That bit of food inside him made him feel so much better, so much better than he’d expected. He found another spiderweb and another spider, and he caught a couple of flying bugs as well.

“How are things going?” asked one of those friends he’d flown away from a couple hours before when he went to search for nectar. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Not really,” he said. “I didn’t find many flowers, and the ones I found were claimed by i’iwi who chased me away. I found something better, though.”

“What’s that?” asked his friends.

“I can deal with the bitter when I have to,” he told them. “I can hold on until a better day. I can appreciate being fed even when it’s not so sweet. I can even savor the crunchiness of life.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in full, but I tell them from memory and from interaction. The story as you read it does not match the way I told it.

Photo of an ‘amakihi (and a spider) by Eric Anderson.

Story: Finding Sweetness

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

February 15, 2026

Exodus 24:12-18
Matthew 17:1-9

Last week it was saltiness. This week it’s sweetness. We’re making our way around the taste buds, I guess. I don’t actually have plans to visit sourness or bitterness, but who knows?

An i’iwi was having a hard time. They’re used to sipping nectar from ohi’a flowers and koa flowers and mamane flowers and lots of other flowers, and nectar is basically flower sugar. It’s pretty sweet. It does change, though, a little like the way that some oranges are sweeter than others. It’s got to do with the rainfall or lack of it, and the soil nourishment, and lots of other things that I don’t know about and the i’iwi doesn’t know about and the tree might know about but trees don’t talk about that sort of thing very much.

In any case, the i’iwi wasn’t finding much in the way of sweet nectar. Nectar, yes. Enough to keep her from getting hungry, yes. Sweetness that satisfied: not so much.

So she went looking for sweetness.

It’s not uncommon for the nectar-feeding birds of the mountains to fly about looking for nectar. She had a somewhat different agenda, though: sweeter nectar, and not just nectar. For whatever reasons, though, the nectars she sampled tasted much the same: a little dry, a little bland. She could eat it, but she really wanted something better. It was the difference between your grandmother’s chocolate chip cookie, and the cookie you ate the reminds you how much better grandmother’s chocolate chip cookies are.

She didn’t find it.

She was sitting grumpily on a branch complaining about this to her mother. I’iwi can be pretty good at being grumpy birds, and she was putting in the practice to get really good at it. Her mother, I must say, wasn’t a particularly grumpy bird and didn’t want to be.

“So you want to find sweetness?” she asked her daughter. “Where have you looked?”

Her daughter described her flights up the mountain, and down the mountain, and along the slopes of the mountain, and how the nectar just wasn’t what she wanted or hoped for.

“Those are the only places you checked?” said mother.

“Where else?” said the daughter. “I could fly farther but will that work out any better?”

“I don’t know,” said her mother, “especially because I think you can find sweetness much closer to home.”

“Where?” demanded her daughter. “Where is there sweetness here?”

“There’s the warmth of the sun on your feathers,” said her mother, “and the sound of the rain on the leaves. There’s the scent of mamane on the wind, the great blue of the clear sky, and the dramatic greys of the cloudy sky.”

“Those are ordinary things!” her daughter protested.

“Well, there’s also the way your father loves you, and your grandparents love you, and the way I love you,” mother said. “Is that ordinary?”

“It is,” said the daughter, “but it’s special, too.”

“Best of all,” said mother, “is the sweetness that’s inside you. It goes with you wherever you fly. You never have to worry that it will run out. Even when no one is around, even in the coldest, darkest night, even when none of the trees are in blossom, there is sweetness in your heart.”

“You helped put it there,” said her daughter.

“Sip that sweetness when you need to, daughter,” said her mother. “Sip it and be refreshed.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them from memory and improvisation. The story as you have read it is not identical to the way I told it.

Photo of an i’iwi by Eric Anderson.

Story: Why Do You Fly So Far?

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments
A myna (a dark colored bird with yellow feathers around the eye) and a kolea (Pacific Golden-plover, a light brown bird with darker brown spots) in a grassy field.

December 14, 2025

Luke 1:46-55
Matthew 11:2-11

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.

Story: Dive or Skim

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

October 23, 2022

Psalm 84:1-7
Luke 18:9-14

It’s a funny thing. The koa’e kea – the white-tailed tropicbird – and the noio – the black noddy – eat basically the same foods. They like small fish, they like squid. But they catch their food in very different ways. One koa’e kea had noticed this.

“That,” he said to another koa’e kea, “is disgusting.”

“What is?” she asked. The two were flying out to their fishing grounds from the ledges of Kilauea.

“Them,” said the first, “those noio. Watch them crowd together. Why can’t they hunt alone? There’s a horde of them fishing there. Then the noise. Every last one of them is screeching and calling. They’re flying low, and any bird should know that you can’t spot fish if you’re not high over the water. And most of all“ – he shuddered even as he was flying – “they don’t even know how to do a proper dive.”

“Really?” asked his friend. “What do they do?”

“Watch,” said the first, and they watched as noio after noio skimmed low over the water. The surface of the ocean rippled with the movement of the small fish beneath it. The noio dipped their beaks into the water, seized a fish without landing, and flew on as they swallowed.

“They don’t even pause on the surface to properly appreciate their meal,” he moaned.

“Aren’t there big fish down there, too?” asked his friend, who had noticed larger forms deeper in the water.

“Ahu,” said the koa’e kea, “skipjack tuna. They’re chasing the same fish as the noio. I don’t know why they’re not all crashing into one another, and why none of those noio have become lunch for an ahu.”

They watched the chaotic scene for a while, and then the second koa’e kea said, “You know, it seems to work.”

“What?” he said.

“With those ahu around, the small fish are closer to the surface,” she said, “and with so many birds in the air you wouldn’t want to pause on the surface. From all I can tell from here, none of them look like they’ll go hungry.”

“Do you want to fish like a noio?” he demanded.

“No, I’d rather dive from a good height,” she said, “and I’d rather not have a lot of other birds about because I’d crash into one when I’m diving. I’m not eager to run into an ahu under water, and one of my dives might get down to where they are. I can’t call the noio disgusting, though,” she continued. “They’re living, and thriving, and happy, and fed. That’s a pretty good life for a seabird, don’t you think?”

I don’t know for certain whether she’d convinced him, because he didn’t say anything more as they flew out to their own fishing grounds farther from shore. I’ll call her wise, though, to recognize that there’s more than one way to live a good life as a seabird, and to appreciate a seabird who does things differently.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

The story is told from memory of this manuscript. That is enough to cause some differences. Today, there was another presentation before the story, and, well, you’ll just have to see it to believe it.

Photo of a noio in flight (though not actually skimming the surface) by Eric Anderson.