First Parish of Sudbury

Sunday Worship                                                          October 27, 2002

Rev. Katie Lee Crane with Steve Johnson

 

Huna – The Ways of the Native Hawaiians

 

 

A Ohe Pau Ko Ike I Kou Halau

Think not that all wisdom is in your school.

                                                                                                                -Huna proverb

 

OPENING WORDS                                                                      Rev. Katie Lee Crane

 

[Katie Lee explains that our opening words are a partial translation of the words that Steve Johnson will chant at the centering silence; he will be explaining more about the meanings behind these words throughout the hour.]

 

Kane, come and position yourself above me

Possess me, put me in order, rearrange me.

As you do, I am in a state of centered calmness….

 

Throw yourself toward me.

Possess me, pierce me, fill me up until I am satisfied,

Oh Kane, supremely strong guardian.

 

I take on your form….

 

UNISON CHALICE LIGHTING

 

Chalice of clay, ground us in the earth.

Flame of fire, kindle our compassion, ignite our passion

Elements of our worship, root us, stir us, calm us, free us.

 

CENTERING SILENCE                                                        Steve Johnson

When the first Europeans landed on Hawaii, the native Hawaiians were amazed—they spoke, but they did not breathe! The Hawaiian word for breath is Ha, so Europeans were known as haole – they do not breathe.

Join with me, as you wish, in breathing the Hawaiian way: Ha breathing. Take in a long breath through your nose, and let it out through your mouth: Ha! Try it with me—if you get dizzy, stop breathing. Not permanently!

Do this with me. The Hawaiians, in festivals or important meetings, would do Ha breathing for two to eight hours before starting their business. So breathe with me. In a moment, I will chant a chant to Kane, the male creator, asking him to enter me and lend me his powers. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Ai noho ana keakua i ka na helehele

i alai ia e te ti ohu ohu e ta ua koko

E na kino malu i ka lani

Malu e hoe

E ho’o ulu mai ana o Kane i kona kahu

‘Owau ‘owau noa ua I kea

 

 

WORSHIPPING ALL TOGETHER               Rev. Katie Lee Crane & Tracy Duncan

 

As Katie Lee tells the story, Tracy interprets it in dance and movement.

 

Let me tell you about Pele. Pele is one of eight gods and goddesses in the ancient Hawaiian ways. She is the keeper of the sacred fires. She is the goddess of volcanoes.

 

Pele’s mother, Haumea, was the mother of all the Hawaiian goddesses and gods. But she was also the mother of humans, too. That makes Pele our sister. And it makes us brothers and sisters of the gods and goddesses. That means – at least as the Native Hawaiian people believe it – people and gods really aren’t so different from one another.

 

Pele is fire energy. She is powerful and passionate. She is the river of molten lava that is the life-blood of the earth. Some people see Pele as jealous or angry. Some say she causes earthquakes and tidal waves or that she is the volcano erupting. But, to say only that is to miss the point. For when Pele’s sacred fire erupts and flows into water, new life is born.[1]

 

Today we understand from scientists how volcanoes are formed and what happens after they erupt. But let’s imagine that we are the ancient peoples of Hawaii. They made sense of all this in a different way; they told the story of Pele.

 

Sometimes they described Pele as a beautiful young woman – tall and lovely. Sometimes, they said she was an old woman, wrinkled and bent with age. Sometimes, they said, if you look right into at the lava shooting out of the volcano’s crater, you can actually see Pele – standing erect, dancing, waving her arms, her hair flowing.

 

Here’s what happened. Deep, deep, deep within the earth – even below the deepest part of the ocean – Pele carved out a pit to protect her sacred fires. She watched and watched the embers, glowing and glowing brighter until they were so hot they made the earth’s rock melt. Oh, how Pele loved the exquisite white-hot rock, melting and bubbling up through the earth. It was glorious to watch.

 

Up, up, and up through the center of the earth, that hot rock boiled and gurgled. Just like a pot that boils over, the hot liquid rock got hotter and hotter and hotter, until it exploded into a fire that jumped and danced and shot its flames right through the surface of the earth.

 

Without warning to the people of the earth, Pele’s fires would crash through the crator of the volcano. The flames would shoot into the sky, that hot, bubbly liquid rock would flow down the side of the mountain into the sea. And what do you think happened when it slid into the water? It cooled off and hardened. It became new land. And the island grew bigger. And the mountain grew taller. And then – just when it looked like everything had been destroyed by the flowing rock, something amazing happened. Just as soon as that firey rock began to cool down and harden, they saw the most beautiful red flowers start to grow and bloom. That flower, the ohi’a, is Pele’s flower and it is sacred, for it is the first evidence of new life.

 

Pele’s story teaches us that, out of death comes life. It reminds us that, what seems like destruction of the old, sometimes makes new things possible. Yes, Pele may be seen as volcanic – unpredictable, impulsive and given to sudden rages – just like erupting volcanoes. But Pele also represents passion and power, energy and new life.

 

[single voice chants:]

 

Ancient Mother, I hear you calling.

Ancient Mother, I hear your song.

Ancient Mother, I hear your laughter.

Ancient Mother, I taste your tears.

 

REFLECTION Wheel of the Year: Earth-centered Traditions            Rev. Katie Lee Crane

 

Today’s service is the second in a year-long series I’ve called “The Wheel of the Year,” in which we examine different ones of our many sources of inspiration through the lens of someone who has a connection with that source. Today, Steve Johnson will tell us something of the Huna tradition of ancient Hawaii. Steve has been to Hawaii six times to learn these ancient Hawaiian ways. Of course, in the distant past, this kind of learning would be a lifetime of study and spiritual discipline for those keepers of the sacred ways and wisdom. What Steve has learned is a modern distillation of the ancient ways and teachings. Nonetheless, learning about the ways of the Huna has influenced Steve’s own spiritual journey.

 

What Steve is describing is what we Unitarian Universalists name as one of our many sources of inspiration, an “Earth-Centered Tradition,” in which we honor the spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

 

It is important to note that we might have chosen some other earth-centered traditions for today’s discussion – the Druid teachings of the ancient Celts, or Shintoism, or Wicca. We might have explored West African, Mayan, Norse and Native American traditions, to name only a few. We chose this because of Steve’s personal connection to the tradition. He learned about it when he first met a teacher at work, of all places. He was drawn to these ancient teachings. He has since studied them, found some of these teachings transforming, and, in the process, discovered some things that have shaped his own personal meanings.

 

I should note here, something we discussed in September when we looked at Judaism; it is something that will surface again and again in this series. Is it OK for someone like Steve to explore a tradition that was not his or that of his people? Some Native Hawaiians criticize haole students, like Steve, arguing that he has no right to study their tradition – or study it in this way. They might argue that belongs only to the ones entrusted with these ancient and sacred ways and can be learned only in a lifetime of study. There are no easy answers to this dilemma. But it would be irresponsible of us not to raise it up and wrestle with it.

 

In the minds of many, the Huna ways might be labeled, incorrectly I think, as paganism. The term comes from the Latin, pagani, meaning “people of the fields,” or “people of the land.” It was a name used to describe tribal peoples throughout Northern Europe whose religious traditions, while each different from the other, were based on the premise that Nature is sacred. Many of these traditions deified the earth as a mother/goddess. Since this view was most popular – for obvious reasons – among those rural peoples who lived in harmony with the land, the term “pagan” came to be used to describe them.

 

While the word has its origins in Northern Europe, we can find religions of the people of the land all over the world. It is often the tradition of the indigenous people of a particular region. So, for example, in the Americas such traditions are found among the First Peoples or native peoples. In Africa, these beliefs are reflected in the Yoruban and Egyptian religions; in what we call the Middle East, it was the ancient Sumerian and Canaanite-Hebrew religions that preceded Judaism. It was the religion of ancient Greece. In Asia, we find it in Hinduism, Taoism and Shintoism.

 

These many and varied practices originated at a time we would now call pre-historical and pre-patriarchal. Their roots are ancient, reaching back as far as hunter-gatherers. There is evidence of seasonal rituals of renewal as long as 25,000 years ago. Generations of tribal peoples made meanings and created rituals from their relationships with the elements, from lunar and solar cycles, natural occurrences such as eclipses, meteor showers, or volcanoes, as we learned earlier. Several traditions organize around the “wheel of the year,” a repeating cycle of seasonal and sacred festivals marked by solstices, equinoxes and the cross-quarter days in between.

 

Though their practices varied, often these traditions share a belief that everything – rocks, trees, humans, animals – is imbued with life and consciousness. Another is the belief that divinity manifests in many ways and resides in everything that exists; it is both immanent (present within all) and transcendent (present beyond all). Out of these principles come a multiplicity of gods and goddesses, a celebration of diversity, and an attitude of respect toward all that exists.

 

Unfortunately, the negative stereotypes of so-called paganism remain. So I ask all who hear today’s words and chants to heed the ancient Huna proverb and remember that not all wisdom is in your school. Open your mind and your heart to a tradition of peace, of equality, of generativity and forgiveness.

 

READING from Kumulipo, the Hawaiian creation myth                Steve Johnson

 

In this Hawaiian creation myth, the male creator, Kane, is stirred to action by the call of the female, Uli. Her call and his response leads to the creation of all things and lies at the base of all dichotomies.

 

In the beginning, there was space and darkness and stillness older than time and forgotten by the gods. In a now, longer than forever, there was nothing, and there was everything, too; and it was silent beyond all sound and still beyond all motion.

 

Then, movement began to move, and the movement was Mana. It arose as an impulse in the stillness, and a wave arose in that space, and then time began.

 

Life began there as a wave of energy in the still unbounded space. In the beginning all came from here, and all shall return hereto in the end. When the darkness draws back in all of the light, then all shall return to her breast, even the gods.

 

There is no movement in the stillness of space until the power stirs. Kane, he is the active priniciple. And Uli, she is the passive principle, and it is she who as the Great Ocean calls to him to return to her, to sink into her abyss. And everything that shall exist is subject to the nature of the active or passive principle.

 

It is her call to him in the soundless infinite, from original darkness, that arouses his interest: EEEEEEEEEE AAAAAAAAAAAA OOOOOOOOOOO. That makes him arise from his slumber, for he is essentially inert. IAO. Not on his own accord does he arise, but for the desire of her. Until her hands touch him, he is as if dead.

 

Awakened by her, then he shall manifest, and as he arises, he emerges as the all-potent Kane, and his desire shall call to him the womb of all life, Uli. But without the kisses of Uli, he sleeps forever.

 

As the Mana hits the edge of the Universe, the first dichotomy is born.

 

MUSICAL INTERLUDE I am becoming you                              First Parish Choir

 

REFLECTION Huna: The Ways of the Native Hawaiians            Steve Johnson

I want to tell you a bit today about the ancient Hawaiian culture, religion, and society. I have had friends who found themselves powerfully moved when they discovered, often in midlife, the power of ancient beliefs. For some it was Native American, for others Celtic, for others Wicca, or Zen, or Tantra. For me it has been the study of the ancient Hawaiian culture.

I am a computer programmer, raised by parents who were scientists. For much of my life, I had little place for spiritual beliefs and practices. When a friend suggested that four of us to go Hawaii to study the ancient ways, it sounded like a nice vacation. I was amazed by the richness of the tradition that I found there, and the many ways it touched me. And I returned five more times to study.

Many of the old Hawaiian beliefs are strikingly familiar:

A strong role for the four elements earth, air, fire, and water, and the fifth element, io, the void. The teachings are much like those of the alchemists of the middle ages.

The Hawaiian medicine not only involved herbs and rituals, but also mental healing, meditation, breathing, and energy work using chakras.

The Hawaiians believed in the unconscious mind, and set great store in harmonizing the conscious and unconscious minds. They also believed in a third mind, the higher self (similar to the soul) that survived death, and was in direct contact with God and other higher selves. This concept is strikingly similar to Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious.

Hawaiian mythology has many people in it who were born as ordinary human beings but who took on godlike attributes, or became transfigured and expressed the energy of the god. So Laka, the goddess who invented hula, was also a person, and many hula masters trace their ancestry or their teaching lineage to her. So too Pele, the goddess of fire, and many others.

Some of the old beliefs are unusual, but I find them very compatible.

There is a tradition of meditation, but it is to build up energy, through breathing, in order to accomplish things, rather than to detach from the world. All contact with the powers of nature involves joyous passion with an almost sexual quality. This sure isn’t my experience of the Judeo-Christian tradition!

Much of the ethics of this ancient culture was based on forgiveness. Forgiveness is essential in aligning the conscious and unconscious minds. Holding on to past wrongs prevents us from changing, and keeps us connected to those who harmed us.

The Hawaiians saw all things as intimately connected, energetically, by chords of aka. They describe aka as strikingly similar to the ectoplasm of the spiritualists, a clear or white ropy substance. If two people touch, or speak, or even think of each other, an aka cord connects them. Energy travels on the aka cords, so these cords can hold us back, to cause us to lose focus, to respond to people as they used to be, rather than the way they are now. In our modern world, think of how we must be tangled in aka cords, with all the information we process. What a powerful metaphor! Forgiveness of old hurts loosens the aka cords and lets us move on. It refreshes relationships. It keeps us from picking up other people’s “stuff”.

The message of the creation myth is that everything exists in dichotomy with its opposite. As a logical thinker, this was hard for me to get comfortable with. When I learned that the greatest kahuna were able to believe several contradictory things at once, I just assumed they must be crazy. But all meaning depends on context. The same act can be seen in many ways, depending on what context you adopt. This helped me leave the trap of true/false thinking and opened up a much richer world to me.

The ancient Hawaiians believed that our conscious, unconscious, and higher minds are all connected, but our higher self is connected only to the unconscious mind, not the conscious. All contact with the higher self, and thus God (and the higher selves of other people), must come through the unconscious mind. Our unconscious mind edits our prayers (“you don’t deserve that!”) and it distorts the messages we get from our higher self. Powerful spiritual energy, distorted by unresolved unconscious issues, can do great harm.

This explains so much to me! Psychology studies the unconscious, but ignores the higher self. Religion, for the most part, ignores the unconscious, leading to abusive and hypocritical religious leaders, as well as religions that counsel killing infidels and Jews, mutilating genitals, or whatever. True contact with spiritual forces must begin by accepting your unconscious mind and aligning it with your conscious mind, entering into a partnership, a dialogue, with what Carl Jung called “the shadow”. As this alignment proceeds, the whole universe appears to grow closer and more aligned as well.

The ancient Hawaiians gave “equal time” to the male and female deities. Kane, the male principle, is responsible for the form of things, for matter. Uli, the female principle, is responsible for energy and intention. The ancient Hawaiians saw all creation as resulting from the interaction of male and female, just as in the creation myth. And all dichotomies as have, at their base, a similar split. For everything you see, its opposite shadow side is not far away. Even the four elements come in two dichotomies: Earth and Air (Male), and Fire and Water (Female).

As I mentioned, the Kahuna were known for being able to hold contradictory beliefs at the same time, and act on all of them in harmony. Isn’t that a good metaphor for the largeness of spirit that we are called to as a UU? We can hold, in our meeting houses and in our minds, contradictory beliefs at the same time, and it’s OK, because everything is part of a dichotomy, it exists with its opposite, and all dichotomies come from the creators.

I would like to close today by inviting you to do a guided meditation with me, one of the many techniques of forgiveness the ancient Hawaiians developed. This process is called Ho’oponopono. The Hawaiian word pono is untranslatable. It means at peace, in harmony with, right. Ho’oponopono means “to make right right”, or “make very right”.

So please sit up, place your feet on the floor, and take a deep breath and let it out with a Ha!  Let a person come to mind with whom you are not pono, not at peace. Since we have only a few moments, you might pick someone who is not one of your major life issues!

Do another Ha breath, and feel the energy come into your body with the breathing. Close your eyes, and imagine a small stage, below you and in front of you. Invite this person to step onto the stage, and imagine them there. As you breathe, imagine an infinite source of love and healing, flowing from a source over top of your head and let this love and healing flow down into you, through your head and into your body, and filling up your body to overflowing. Make sure that it is OK with you to heal this person of their hurt and pain, and that it is OK with them too. If so, let this love and healing flow out of your heart, and down to the stage, and fill them up, and heal them also.

When they are healed, have a short discussion with them. Forgive them for the wrongs they did to you. Ask them to forgive you. If they will not, ask them what it would take for them to forgive you. Listen to their answer, and consider doing it!

As you forgive them, now, they will begin to float away. Imagine the aka cords that bind you to them dissolving. You might imagine cutting them, or dissolving them in the light of love and healing. Let the person drift away, smaller and smaller, into the void.

When you are ready, come back into the room and gently open your eyes.

You can do Ho’oponopono with crowds of people, strangers, even objects. You may need to do it several times for those with whom you have major issues. As you repeatedly visualize this infinite source of love and healing over your head, with you always, ready to heal, your life will grow ever richer. I know mine has.

 

CLOSING WORDS                                                                      Steve Johnson

& Rev. Katie Lee Crane

 

E iho ana o luna

 

Bring down that which is above by means of light. (light = universal energy, mana)

 

E pii ana o lalo

 

To ascend, take from darkness into light that which is below by means of light.

(Make your unconscious conscious, harmonize your conscious and unconscious minds.)

 

E hui ana na moku

 

This will transform the spiritual energy, as it flows from the source and integrates all the islands within you, giving peace. (The spiritual energy will enter your unconscious mind, and integrate it with your conscious mind.)

 

E ku ana ka paia

 

This will affect you profoundly, and change your life, bringing illumination, and you will feel the delightful supreme fire. (When your conscious and unconscious minds are in harmony, you will be able to directly experience the divine.)

 

An Historical Perspective

 

The Hawaiian Islands were settled between 500 and 1000 BCE. The land was rich and the Native peoples developed a peaceful society with both male and female leaders (kahuna). They were fish farmers, the first in the world, produced petroglyphs, and had a remarkable theory of the unconscious mind by 500 CE, more than one thousand years before Freud.

 

Around 1200 CE, this culture was conquered by another Polynesian culture that was patriarchal and warlike. There were centuries of feuds and local wars. The old religion went underground, while the new religion developed increasingly bizarre tabus.

 

Still, every Native child learned of the mysteries of the gods and goddesses, of the adventures of the ancestors and of the traditional ways of their people from respected elders. The children did not learn a written language, but instead, rhythmic chanting. It was through these chants that the knowledge and traditions were preserved and passed from one generation to the next. These chants are thought to be extremely sacred, such as the hula chants thought to come directly from the goddess Laka to those chosen as kuma-hulas or hula teachers.

 

The first Europeans landed in the 1700s. The Europeans ignored the tabus of the newer religious traditions and nothing happened to them, weakening the prevailing Native religion. This newer patriarchal and warlike religion was finally outlawed in 1818 by the Hawaiian king, leading to a series of civil wars. In 1820, a boatload of missionaries arrived from Boston, and converted the people to Christianity. Roughly 6/7^ths of the Native Hawaiians died in the next ten years, mostly from smallpox and measles. The Christians suppressed all native religious traditions and gods, and forbade the hula and other ancient ceremonies.

 

When the Europeans came and so many Hawaiians died, some Kahuna used their skills to attempt to fight the Europeans. For this reason, many Christian Hawaiians think of the ancient ways as witchcraft. For the Native peoples of Hawaii, though, the name of the sacred knowledge that was communicated orally from generation to generation is Huna, which means secret. It is privileged information, believed to be profound and sacred, meant to be transmitted only with respect and understanding of its ancient wisdom.

 

The suppression of the ancient ways continued into the 1950s. As late as 1959, people were arrested for chanting in public. In the last 30 years, however, interest in the old chants, language, and healing techniques has revived. Much has been lost, but much was preserved through the oral tradition.

 

In many cases, the old ways survived in code! The Hawaiian language has only five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and eight consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w, and ‘ (glottal stop)). This leads to a lot of ambiguity; words tend to have more than one meaning, and poetry and chants are constructed on several levels. It is nearly impossible to make a literal translation of these into English because the words contain complex and multi-layered meanings.

 

                                                                                    - Steve Johnson