Hawaii

2024: Birds and Music

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

After three years of living a very different existence, in the midst of and in the decline of a global pandemic, I found much of it rather exhausting. 2024 felt like playing “catch up” on projects and plans that had been deferred while managing COVID-19. Frankly, that wasn’t easy.

Church of the Holy Cross was able to give energy and focus to things we hadn’t. We resumed welcoming people into membership, and we launched an Open and Affirming committee. We continued to live stream worship via YouTube, since it serves both people who live at a distance and people who cannot attend worship. Video did not replace people in a sanctuary, and it won’t. It’s a different experience, and still worthwhile.

I completed my service as Chair of the Hawai’i Conference Council in June, presiding over an in-person ‘Aha Pae’aina for the first time. The meeting included a lengthy debate over an issue that continues to trouble the Conference: what financial support the Conference should give toward a position in one of the Associations. During my four years, the delegates chose both to fund it and not to fund it by narrow margins. I’m pretty sure that it will take more time and discussion before people consider it resolved.

To my sorrow, I found myself returning to the Chair of the Hawai’i Island Association Committee on Ministry, from which I’d stepped down when elected as Conference Council Chair. I returned to the Committee in May in great part because of the shortage of ordained ministers on Hawai’i Island. During the summer our Chair, the Rev. Larry Walter, died. The Association asked me to fill in, and then elected me to continue the work in the fall. The Committee was further marked by tragedy when one of the lay members, David Williams, died unexpectedly in October.

I continued to make a lot of music. I wrote eight songs in 2024, and all eight are available at 2024: The Songs. The instrument count remained the same (this year’s major expense category was cameras). I sang the spring and fall seasons of the Big Island Singers, which was both great fun and a huge amount of work. The fall concert included my solo performance of “Creature of this World,” which is now two years old. I continued the weekly “Song from Church of the Holy Cross” and the monthly Community Sings. I decided to reduce my solo Community Concerts, however, to four times a year. As the year closed, the musical community of east Hawai’i made its way to Church of the Holy Cross the sing Handel’s Messiah together.

I continued to write weekly LectionPrayers here on my blog, and also contributed to The Living Psalms project of the UCC. Preparing for worship I wrote liturgical materials, sermons, and stories. In the fall, I was welcomed onto the Board of the UCC Media Justice Ministry, my first appointment to a national ministry of the denomination.

I didn’t have a lot of visitors this year – and after welcoming my brother by getting a stomach bug and my cousin by having my water heater break I don’t blame them. Ben and Dee Anderson (no relation) came to Hawai’i in February and Ben did a dialogue sermon with me in church that Sunday.

Kilauea summit, April 1, 2024.

My primary outlet this year (and the most expensive) has been photography. I returned to many of my favorite subjects in 2024, including flowers, sunrises, the occasional sunset, landscapes, and natural shapes. A couple of my favorite images this year were black-and-white. I gave a lot of my attention, however, to birds. I can no longer claim I am not a birder.

Selected Favorite Birds 2024 - 1 of 59

I not only pointed my camera at birds, I made plans to go photograph them. Rather foolishly, I promised a friend I’d take a picture of a bird I hadn’t seen in eight years (the i’iwi, a distinctive Hawaiian honeycreeper with a distinctive long curved orange beak). I got a photo, and I even liked it. I even saw (and got a bad photo of) a bird I hadn’t even heard of, the ‘akiapola’au, thanks to two birders who were seeking it by the trail.

Next year, I plan to spend some time on other islands, and yes, I’ll bring my camera.

I didn’t do a lot of traveling in 2024. I made three trips to O’ahu as part of my Conference work, and flew to the northeast in July/August to visit my more-scattered family in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. I could have added Maine to that list, but I spent too much time in the rental car as it was. With driving being my primary activity, my photos tended to be of people I love, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I will say that the day Paul Bryant-Smith and I kayaked down a river in New York State was great fun and amazing birding – I saw great blue herons and bald eagles veery closely – but fortunately for my camera, I didn’t bring it along to share my dips in the creek.

2025 will bring something I’ve been waiting for this year: the second sabbatical of my career. Expect to see less new writing, as I’ve got a project for the time, but also expect to see some more photographs.

I suspect that a number of them will be of birds.

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Story: ‘Opukaha’ia

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 5 Comments

February 18, 2024

Genesis 9:8-17
Mark 1:9-15

Usually I tell you stories about birds. Sometimes I tell you stories about other kinds of creatures, like honu. Sometimes I tell you stories about trees and seeds, and once or twice about clouds. And from time to time, I tell you stories about people, young people and older people.

And I make these stories up.

Today I’m going to tell you a story that I didn’t make up, although I’m putting the words together for it. It’s about a real person who lived and died over two hundred years ago, someone whose life made an enormous difference for you and for me. His name was ‘Opukha’ia.

He was born not terribly far from here in Ka’u. His early life was a sad one. There were wars as Kamehameha I sought to rule all the Hawaiian Islands, and in one of those wars ‘Opukaha’ia’s parents and siblings were killed. He was taken in first by one of Kamehameha’s warriors, and later by an uncle, who was a priest of the Hawaiian gods. The uncle raised ‘Opukaha’ia to become a priest as well.

One day ‘Opukaha’ia visited an American ship anchored offshore, and decided that he wanted to leave Hawai’i, feeling like he had lost his connection with his home with the death of his immediate family. His uncle, I should say, didn’t want him to go. There were two young Hawaiians on the ship, as a young man named Thomas Hopu had already signed on as a cabin boy. The ship made a long voyage, first to Alaskan waters to collect cargo, then to China to sell cargo and take on different cargo, and then all the way around the southern tip of Africa before making their way to the east coast of North America. The ship’s captain invited ‘Opukaha’ia to stay with him at his home in New Haven. New Haven, as it happened, was the site of Yale College, which taught math, science, literature, law – and religion.

The story goes that the young man was sitting on the steps of the main college building when a senior named Edwin Dwight came along and asked him if he wanted to learn. ‘Opukaha’ia wanted to learn very badly, and Edwin Dwight became his tutor. I’m not sure when he adopted the English name Henry. When the ship’s captain had to leave for another voyage, Edwin Dwight found Henry ‘Opukaha’ia another host with a relative named Timothy Dwight. He was, at the time, President of Yale College.

It took some years for Henry ‘Opukaha’ia to accept baptism and membership in the Christian Church, but not because he was slow to believe. He devoured study of Christianity just as eagerly as he ate up study of the English language with a series of mentors and tutors. He wasn’t sure of his own soul. He took it very seriously. He didn’t want to sadden God by falling away from his faith.

I don’t think he did make God sad, by the way.

He had a tremendous influence on the brand-new missionary movement in New England. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was founded just a year after Henry ‘Opukaha’ia landed in New Haven. Originally, they planned to send missionaries to India and Sri Lankha. ‘Opukaha’ia made them consider Hawai’i, in great part because he was willing, available, and training to go as a missionary who spoke the language. In 1820, just ten years after the founding of the organization, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions landed its first missionary company here on this island, over in Kona.

Sadly, Henry ‘Opukaha’ia was not with them. He contracted a disease and in those days there was no effective treatment for it. He died at age 26 in Cornwall, Connecticut. Nearly his last words were, “Aloha o’e.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I prepare these stories ahead of time in writing (it’s what you’ve just read). I tell them on Sunday morning from what I remember of what I’ve written and what I create in the moment. They are not the same.

The image of Henry ‘Opukaha’ia was prepared for the publication of his memoirs, Heneri Opukahaia, A Native Hawaiian, 1792-1818, by Edwin Welles Dwight, 1830.