creation

Better than Appears

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

June 4, 2023

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
2 Corinthians 13:11-13

The young ‘amakihi had had a bad morning. First there was the big wind that had woken him, first by howling in his ears, then by twisting the branch he was perched on in a very odd way, third by pitching him off the branch into the air, and finally by whirling him along for a way, struggling to get himself upright and under controlled flight.

He’d managed it, but he was still breathing hard when he clutched the twigs of another ohi’a tree tossing in the breeze. It soon settled down, though – that had been a big puff of wind, but just one – when things got exciting again. His eyes caught movement overhead and he took to his wings once more, this time diving further down into the forest canopy to escape the i’o that had just broken from its spotting circle toward a hunting dive. His heart was beating wildly again when he found a space within the branches the i’o couldn’t reach. The i’o flew off to hunt somewhere else.

His breath was just settling to normal when suddenly there was an i’iwi whistling at him. The tree he’d perched in also contained the i’iwi’s nest, and she wasn’t about to put up with an ‘amakihi near her nest. She’d stayed quiet while the hawk was near, but after that. Well. Lots of whistles.

He flew off to another tree, blessedly free of i’iwi, i’o, or high winds, and reflected on his lousy morning. “This is a rotten world,” he said aloud.

“You think so?” said a voice. He looked up. Just to crown his bad morning, just when he’d said something she was bound to criticize, there was his mother.

“If you’d had the morning I’ve had,” he couldn’t help saying, “you’d agree. The world is rotten.”

“Is it?” she said, and beckoned him to follow. They flew over to a great field of lava rock, dark grey and hard and heating up in the morning sun.

“Right! Just like this! Hard and colorless and hot,” he told his mother, who said: “Look again.”

This time when he looked he saw the water droplets left by a rain shower, shining like stars in a grey sky, but now on earth rather than above. He looked again and saw, in the cracked rock, water soaking into small bits of sand. Some of those bits of sand had green things growing in them, some of them had fern shoots, some had leaves waving above. There was ohi’a growing here and there from those crevasses: shoots, stems, bushes, even small trees. His mother led the way down to one young tree in full blossom. They landed amidst the perfume of its nectar.

“The world isn’t so bad,” he said when she gave him a look. ‘Amakihi mothers have a Look, you know, much as many human mothers do.

“Taste,” she said, and even though he knew what he’d taste, he did.

He gave his mother an ‘amakihi smile. She gave him one back.

“The world,” he said, “is good.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

https://www.youtu.be/Mw_zQHF1Tco?feature=share&t=784

I tell these stories from my memory of what I’ve written. And, well, my notion of how they might be improved in the telling.

Photo by Eric Anderson.

Story: Growing Memories

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 1 Comment

November 13, 2022

Isaiah 65:17-25
Luke 21:5-19

Last week’s story was about a kolea who came back from a summer in Alaska to find Pohoiki completely changed by lava. It was a hard thing to accept that this is how an island grows. He saw a landscape that had been green and growing transformed into one that was rocky and barren.

He might have taken more comfort if he’d talked with a tree – though I’m not sure whether even a kolea really knows how to listen to a tree.

The trees whisper on the wind. They let their soft voices swirl about on the breeze like a sigh. A lot of what they say is simply, “Do you remember?” and “Yes, we remember,” and the memories float through the forest.

Higher up Kilauea, surrounding the crater we call Kilauea Iki, there are a lot of trees and they have been watching that crater for a long time. “Do you remember?” they sigh, and yes: they remember. They remember when it sloped down into a notch. Trees and bushes sprouted along the sides and the bottom. They remember when lava fountained over a thousand feet into the air and poured down into valley. They remember watching the lava pooling and the lava pool rising. They remember that when the lava stopped fountaining and flowing, the valley floor was four hundred feet higher than it had been. They remember watching parts of the flat surface crack and tilt as the liquid rock cooled to solid.

“Do you remember?” they sigh. Yes, they remember.

They remember when it was just black rock, steaming in the rain, baking in the sun.

They remember when ohi’a seeds fell upon that hot rock and did nothing. They remember watching seeds landing on the rock in a small crack and doing their level best to sprout and grow, but even the pushing of their roots could only find a couple grains of sand. They remember when the first ohi’a landed in a spot where cracking and rain had created enough – just enough – small bits that a root could take hold and begin collecting rainwater. They remember when the first of the little ohi’a plants – so small, those plants – they remember when the first of them had enough soil and water and sunshine and strength to form flowers and set its own seeds to scatter.

“Do you remember?” they sigh. Yes, they remember, and that includes the small trees, some no more than inches high, that you’ll find one here, one there, on the floor of Kilauea Iki.

The kolea, I’m afraid, didn’t think to ask the trees, and he was in the wrong place to ask them down at Pohoiki if he’d thought of it, and he may not have understood what they said to him if he’d asked.

But the trees along the steep sides of Kilauea Iki remember, and they sigh their memories just the same way they scatter their seeds: cast out upon the blowing wind.

“Do you remember?” they ask, and they answer, “Yes, we remember.”

On the flat black surface of the Kilauea Iki crater, roots crack the rock into soil, shoots stand ever higher above the stony surface, ohi’a blossoms flutter crimson in the wind, and they share their seeds and their memories upon the blowing wind.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

The story above was told from memory of this prepared manuscript. In my opinion, I told it better than I wrote it this time.

Photo of an ohi’a blossom in the Kilauea Iki crater by Eric Anderson, 2016. The Kilauea Iki eruption took place in 1959.