More about gates: "The Black and White Gate"

Angeles Arrien writes, "At the Black and White Gate, we review and reassess our conduct in the art and craft of relationships. This gate requires that we face the history of all our relationships: with ourselves, friends, colleagues, and family members, as well as organizations, teams, and communities. Here we are reminded of our purpose as human beings --a miraculous species born to learn about love and to create. Any relationship can function as a conduit for both manifesting creativity and mirroring to us the extent of our ability to express love...We begin to release our reliance on fear or pride to protect us. We recognize in our later years that the only way to come home to our spiritual nature is to express our love nature."

We are at that point in a wanderer's path where we know the time for moving is upon us. When that itch to move was fed mostly by the itch, a restlessness, with less history with needing to (we outstayed our welcome, couldn't tolerate something/someone ... ) there was probably more excitement; the grass being greener, or the temperature more appealing paramount. With a decade's experience living in a wagon and sharing other's space, there is for me a different sense of movement. Today's investigation begins with asking:'What is the difference I feel? How is this move different from the others?'

At the simplest level, part of the answer is we are living with a person and on 'aina that welcomed us. We didn't have to convince or cajole our way into her life; she sought us out . Without conditions, the welcome has allowed us to feel our worth again. Even with the rough celestial alignments: the oppositions, transiting Pluto and Saturn through Capricorn in my 12th House, the eclipses, we sleep deep, love fully, shoulders drop from our ears and Pete stands tall his spine erect, his thick veins pumping blood to fuel his very busy physical way. My health varies with seasonal allergies and my immune system's resiliency. My spiritual health connects to my willingness to care for and channel what I learn and stay in flow. My greatest challenge is to allow what I learn to be 'enough.'

Terri Windling put this bit of wisdom from Lewis Hyde on her blog: "Creativity in ancient China was not self-expression but an act of reverence toward earlier generations and the gods. In the Analects, Confucius says, 'I have transmitted what was taught to me without making up anything of my own. I have been faithful to and loved the Ancients.' "

Put that way, I can understand the struggle I feel about writing and expression in a fuller cauldron.

 Oh ... that's where the tension builds.

Put that way, my kuleana, my responsibility and my creativity is to be faithful to my Ancestors.

There ... a connection to those who I am separate from, an illusion or delusion.

Put that way, what I learn is a flow of knowing and it's my job to keep adding to the water, the wai, the wai wai, the value.

Here ... in the language that I am not fluent with yet so intricately woven to. There ... is the place holder waiting for the drop of understanding.

I began reading, and studying Ka Honua Ola written by Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele several years ago. I continue to read and study. To make peace with my relationships it matters that I explore, again and again, the contract between myself and my Ancestors.

As I write, I hear a voice say, "And these chants were meant to be vocalized ... you are reading print on paper ... account for the gap."

Right up front the authoress says of the mana'o set down in print:

"Ka Honua Ola is a portal to the expanse of ancestral memory Ancestral memories offer us many lifetimes of experience, love, pain, belief, understanding, and wisdom...a gift, and we can decide how this gift is used..."

 "Entering the world of ancestral memory requires a certain mindset. Take time to enjoy and understand each phrase or line before going on...this gift took many lifetimes to wrap. Don't be in a hurry to unwrap it and become frustrated in doing so. The meaning and force of the ancestral knowledge will unfold precept upon precept, and each has a code to inspire you on to the next level."

 "We, as Native Hawaiians, must continue to unveil the knowledge of our ancestors. Let us interpret for ourselves who our ancestors are, how they thought, and why they made decisions..." 

 

The gift of Ancestry. To behold it, one need only look at the relationships we have with our siblings( I have one brother, Pete has two brothers and four sisters), our children (I have a son, Pete did not father children), our parents, our cousins (I grew up with lots of them, Pete not so much).

Or maybe the understanding of these relationships comes in waves that build over time and have meaning only if you are a water being, a person familiar with water/ocean/weather related to water. The waves of experiences for me have come again and again in my seven decades. Though I have moved from my islands of birth, I have rarely been far from large water, and almost always been on Island.

Weaving insight from The Black and White Gate once more, Angeles Arrien wrote, "This gate reveals what we are learning about love in all its forms of expression, as well as what prevents us from expressing the love that is in our hearts...We need to bless those who challenge us to love more fully, for they are great teachers who show us when we are open-hearted or closed-hearted, full-hearted or half-hearted, and strong-hearted or weak-hearted in our relationships..."

Though Pete and I were born within the same decade we grew up in birth cultures with weather, landscape, ethnicity, racial prejudices and genetic predispositions vast in differences. There were some valuable similarities though, and our life together often knots our similarities to make sense of daily challenges. We are both recovering Catholics. And both of us grew up in working class families, with working man's hands playing significant roles in our everyday world.

Our experiences with homes before we partnered are different. Pete rented 'job shacks' -- apartments in the city where he was working; drove to the farm on weekends to be with his brother and his brothers family. I went from my parent's home to my first husband's home in the Pacific Northwest where I raised a family, worked in the city and twenty some years later divorced and eventually brought Pete back to my parent's home.

A spiral path.

An illness with no name claimed a place in our lives. When we learned  its name MCS/Environmental Illness was inconvenient and changeable, with curves and puka to its manifestations, varied with the season and for different reasons. At first, few understand it. And later, the inconvenience was more than most would endure.

Our relationship -- both that between me and illness and us (Pete and me) and the illness challenged and supported us individually and as a pair. With time, and age, loving ourselves, one another and the combined sense of us together? The Gods and our Ancestors made a deal with us: Build a wagon to live in and see how that levels or rocks the way for you both. Like Noah and Mrs. Noah, we did build the wheeled ark.

Living in a wagon out loud, or even softly, in public? Miraculous, surprising; simple but not easy. 


When you have been branded, 'less (homeless, less than a land-owner, less abled, less well, less moneyed) either by your own judgments or other's, the work of reassessing our conduct in the art and craft of relating does take a commitment to dig deep for 'ike papalu. Charles Mudede's recent SLOG column put the commitment on the line, whose line? See what you think after reading Mudede's post that begins:

"We will not understand why hating on the poor or homeless people—an attitude whose popularity has spiked in Seattle's Amazon and post-gentrification era—is in such bad taste unless taste itself is clearly explained. This post will offer an explanation, and also show, in its closing section, why those who express—on social media sites like Safe Seattle and Nextdoor—hatred for persons who live in poverty, and have, at the same time, little to nothing to say about how poverty is imposed on these people (the poor and poverty are one and the same thing in their minds), must be seen as nothing but badly bred" - 'Seattle: Hating on Homeless People is in Very Poor Taste', Charles Mudede, Seattle SLOG

Timing-wise, today's New Moon is a good time to consider what we have learned about relationships. The Moon is always female, as Marge Piercy's book of poetry reminds me. New in her dark holoku, the coming cycle is fresh for the making. How do we make our way with honest self-regard and humility while also becoming more willing to do the work of clearing and opening the heart of old habits that lead to a closed loop, a circle, rather than a spiral. Old habit = old patterns. A spiral path = similar experiences, different outcome.

The other morning, I spotted the bright waning moon through the dense umbrella of Maple and Alder, black outlines of leaves let in the sliver ... like a spot light for someone looking her way. Within moments the first voice of the day the long moan ... Heron. I was blessed with a Heron Moon. Moon's light ahead of Sunrise. This pattern, this kilo, a growing habit of attending to the Moon, I relish like silky coconut milk swirling in a mug of Irish Breakfast tea.

Here in the wagon Pete and I built to journey and make our way Pete is outside working off the lists of chores that will help our friend care for this 'aina, this place that feeds. We have come to a place where love has been applied with broad gauzy bands. There has been an open-handed version of sharing that comes I believe because life has worked her mystery on the giver.

We have saved some of the resources that would have paid for camping fees; and instead of paying money we have exchanged love. We understand there is enough to go around. We understand that not everyone believes that. We understand that it's not up to us to make others believe.

Charles Mudede's article, written with his tongue deeply into his cheek, depicts 'homelessness' and "hating on the poor and homeless" with such a deft hand. I appreciate his sway with language, and read him at first because Pete is a loyal fan of Mudede.  I continue to read him because he has a platform to shout from, and be read. Power to the People!

Poor taste the gentry.
What?
Old White Folks Protest the homeless in their neighborhood Safeway parking lot.

Back in Hawaii, the issue of building one more big ass telescope on the slope of our sacred mountain, Mauna Kea, is stirring up the many and polarized assessments of humans relating to the 'aina, the place that feeds. Protestors and Science face off. And the question of whether to become involved, and why, rises from the people who I call family. If a Hawaiian does not get involved as protestor, other Hawaiians will judge. Is one more telescope with gigantic mirrors to magnify starlight in discovery of 'dark matter' reason enough to build on Mauna Kea?

More than ever Pualani's kahea to us Hawaiians to know what our Ancestors know, and believe, is a search and interpret mission. It is important to think for ourselves, fold in our past, and live the present. Assessment of our relationships to ourselves and to all others requires that commitment -- 'eli 'eli kau mai, dig deep and what you find is yours. Don't dig? You stay on the surface, and those who do dig may make a decision for you. 'Aue. Can you live with that?

In a few days, we will move our Golden Wagon back to town and find a space at a campground where human beings live in RVs and tents, and pay $25 a night to stay. The line or the boundary between judging them/us homeless or some one other than is a tricky one. The sounds or the faces of judgement are sometimes invisible, like shadow banning. Icky stuff, prevalent and practiced both virtually and face-to-face (I have learned this practice is also called Gaslighting, or 'mind-fucking').

What we are doing as we prepare to leave Scatchet Head, is become more conscious of our part in relating to our place in our journey. Finding and using words, language and images to describe how this late Summer move is different challenges me. Pulling at 'olelo, the language of my Hawaiian Ancestors helps when English is insufficient. It doesn't matter that I am thousands of miles from the Source of that language and culture, I know my Ancestors and my culture travels.

Mature love, aloha seasoned well with time and attention, we have a second chance to love and be loved differently. Hover over the photos throughout this post and discover Marge Piercy's poem, "To Have Without Holding." With much gratitude, our weeks here parked in the hips of Abuela Maple, and welcomed by a kind hearted soul of a woman, have made it possible to believe in second, or third chances at loving humanity; and being loveable. Mahalo nui loa, Pushkara.

"Maybe there are such things as second chances, even if dreams go unanswered ..."  -Keri Hulme, the bone people

 How do you assess your conduct in the art and craft of your relationships? Is your relationship with the Gods, and your Ancestors an intimate one?


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Mahalo nui and Power to Us People!
Mokihana