To Live Pono: Meeting Someone

This morning a line from J.R.R. Tolkien shared on Twitter by @TolkienProverbs reminded me of a post I've been meaning to write for a very long time.  The proverb was a bit of wisdom placed on the lips of Eomer, third marshal of the Riddermark:

The stranger should declare himself first.

This counsel seems obvious enough, but very few people seem to actually realize it's importance.

I cannot begin to fathom the number of times someone has shaken my hand and said, "It's nice to meet you," without ever telling me their name or asking mine (sometimes "Father" works, but knowing the proper form of address hardly suffices for "meeting" someone; if you meet someone, you should at least know his name).

Whenever I find myself in such a situation, it takes every ounce of restraint not to say, "But we haven't met at all.  All you've done is shake my hand on your way out the door or on the way to the buffet line."  Strangely, my saying something like this would be seen as rude, which is why I restrain myself, but a failure to introduce oneself and acknowledge another person is somehow not seen as rude.

My hunch is that people say, "It's nice to meet you," from a desire to be polite, or at least from a general understanding that they should pretend to be polite.  It seems a similar situation to the odd question, "How are you," when the one who asks the question doesn't actually want a response.  It is supposed to be polite to ask the question, but this is really only a false politeness, unless you actually want to know how someone is.

Please, the next time you say, "It's nice to meet you," or something very similar, please be sure to first introduce yourself and, at the very least, ask the other person's name.  It's to way to live pono, to live righteously.

To Live Pono: Staying home when sick

No small space of time has transpired since my last post in this series I am calling "To Live Pono," not because of a lack of suggestions about living life more righteously but for the timeliness of such posts.

This morning at Mass I could not help but notice the great number of people who spent a good deal of their time at Mass coughing and blowing their noses.  Clearly, they are ill.  To be sure, they do not have the flu, but neither are they well.

Much of living pono involves a respect for other people.  The phrase, "To live pono," might well be replaced with Jesus' great teaching: "Do to others whatever you would have them to do to you" (Matthew 7:12).  This teaching applies equally to those who are well and to those who are not.

Please, when you are sick with a cold, and especially with the flu, remember that there are people around you who have weak immune systems.  The cold that you might fight for only a few days might well take someone else two or three weeks to fight off.  When you are ill, if you do not have to be out and about, please stay home, get well, and help those of us with weak immune systems stay healthy.

This little bit of pono will be greatly appreciated.  Mahalo for your kindness!

To Live Pono: Learning from Hobbits

Recent travels to Quincy, Indianapolis, and Nashville (where I am now) have kept me from posting this first installment of an ongoing series titled, "To Live Pono."

Over the last several years it has become - sadly - acceptable to greet someone saying something like "How's it going?" or "What's up?" without actually expecting a response.  Indeed, it seems almost unacceptable to actually answer the question, let alone ask it in return.  Since I first detected this unfortunate reality, it has bothered me greatly.

I can't tell you how many times I've answered such a question and, when I have asked it in return, have received no response at all as the initial questioner simply kept walking by and likely enough didn't even hear my answer.

If you don't already, I encourage you to answer such questions honestly: "Great," Slow," "Boring," "Miserable," are all actual answers and they should also be acceptable answers.  Sometimes things simply aren't just "fine."

There is nothing pono/righteous in inquiring about another person without actually wanting to know.  A simple greeting of "Hello" would be much more appropriate.

Image Source: Corey Godbey

When pondering this lamentable state of American life - of the unfriendliness and apathy of one person for another - I'm often reminding of the greeting Bilbo Baggins of the Shire first gave to Gandalf the Grey.  Tolkien relates the encounter:

"Good morning! said Bilbo, and he meant it.  The sun was shining, and the grass was very green.  But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.

"What do you mean?" he said.  "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?" 

"All of them at once," said Bilbo.  "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.  If you have a pipe about you, sit down and have a fill of mine!  There's no hurry, we have all the day before us" (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit: Or There And Back Again [New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997], 5-6)!

This is the first time Bilbo has encountered Gandalf.  He doesn't even know who the wizard is, yet he greets him warmly and authentically and invites him to join him in his morning pleasure.

Is it too much to greet another person and actually mean and intend the greeting?  I don't think it is.  Is it too much to ask a question with sincerity?  I don't think so.

Let us, then, strive to break this cycle of un-caring and live pono!

Where is the pono?

It has now been twelve days since I returned from Hawaii and still the memory of my last day on Oahu looms large in my mind.  Specifically, the drive back to the Cathedral from Hale'iwa Beach remains most clearly.

As I drove through the pineapple fields with the red dirt near the mountains on my back to Honolulu, I was listening to Hawaiian 105 KINE when two songs played back-to-back which seemed to summarize the emotions that I could not find words to express.

The first was "I Miss You, My Hawaii," by Na Leo Pilimehana.  The refrain sings:

Everytime I stop to watch the moon dance across the early evening skyEverytime I hear a country tune I can see the shores of Wai'aniEverytime I listen to my heart telling me it longsto go back homeAnd it makes me want to Cause I miss you, my Hawaii

Even as I prepared in my mind to finish packing before even being taken to the airport, I missed Hawaii.  I missed the natural beauty of the island, the mountains and the ocean, the red dirt and the beaches, the trees and flowers, the smell of the sea and of the flowers, the sound of the waves and the breeze across my face.  I already missed all of it.

But more than that, I missed the people of these islands.  They are the most warm, welcoming, and friendly people I have ever encountered and they have taken me in as one of their own.  They do indeed strive to live with aloha and to live in pono.  For whatever reason, on the mainland I sometimes feel somewhat out of place, but on the island I feel quite at home.

With this sadness - for lack of a better or clearer word - the second song - or, rather, one line of it - caught and held my attention.  The song is titled, "You and Me," by Celio and Kapono.  The line that caught my attention sang:

Can I take you home with me?

Immediately I thought back to the t-shirt I saw only a day or so before that read, "Keep Calm and Live Pono," a phrase which struck me so deeply that it became the basis for a homily I preached at the Cathedral (that Easter particularly enjoyed).  It occurred to me then what I needed to take home with me: Pono.

About three days before I had to return to the mainland, I said to my friends at the Cathedral - in all honesty - "I'm not ready to see white people yet."  Knowing what I meant, they laughed with me.  Let me explain what I mean.

That morning I went out to Makapu'u Point for an earlier morning hike to watch the sunrise.  As I passed by slower folks on the way up - and was passed by folks already on their way back down - I offered a greeting of "Good morning," or some other such words.

The islanders - those of Asian and Polynesian descent - always returned the greeting in kind and we would then wish each other a good day.  The white folks who had lived on the island for a while (you can tell) didn't always return a verbal greeting, but they would always at least nod the head in greeting or wave in greeting.  It was the white tourists who refused even to turn their eyes toward me.  Each time this happened - when a warm and friendly greeting was completely ignored - I couldn't help but remember life on the mainland.

Mainlanders do this to each other all the time without even noticing it.  Consider our usual "greeting," the question, "How are you?"  To this question I most always respond, "I'm well; how are you?"  A response is rarely given.

If someone asks me instead, "What's up?"  I answer either "Not much, you?" (or some other answer, depending on the circumstances) and a response is rarely given.

Where is the aloha?  Where is the pono?

It is this simple concern for others that I must bring back to the mainland, this spirit of friendship and warmth that is so evident among the Hawaiian people.  To live pono is simply to think more about others than about myself. It is, a very real sense, to live the Christian life, to love with the love of Jesus Christ.

To be sure, it is easier to live pono when others are trying to live it around it.  That is why, I think, it is so present on the island (and the natural beauty of their homeland doesn't hurt, either).

Here on the mainland we're often in too big of a hurry to carry about someone else, even simply to pause for a moment and see how their day is going and often a word of praise or of encouragement.

To this end, I intend to start a new series of blog posts that will be titled "To Live Pono" through which I hope to offer simple suggestions about living pono and bringing a little more love and happiness to the world.

I pray that I will indeed have taken pono home with me.  Won't you help me spread pono?

P.S.: If you want to hear the two songs, here they are:

Homily - 2 September 2012

The Twenty-Second Sunday of the Year (B)

Dear brothers and sisters,

In 1939, the Ministry of Information of the United Kingdom printed a poster that has recently become rather well-known.  With a simple red background and a crown, the poster carries these words: “Keep Calm and Carry On.”  They were intended to be used in the event of an invasion of the Sceptered Isle as a means to remind the people to keep their composure despite the difficulties and setbacks that had befallen them and may yet still come.

Each of us needs such reminders from time to time about how we are to live.  For this reason, Moses presented the Law to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, but these stone tablets proved – all too quickly – to be insufficient reminders (cf. Deuteronomy 4:1).  So it was that the Lord God announced, “I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33).

Saint James refers to this law when he urges us to “humbly welcome the word that has been placed in you and is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).  In these words, we hear the echo of the words of Moses: “Observe them carefully, for this is your wisdom and discernment in the sight of the peoples” (Deuteronomy 4:6).

If we wish to be “truly wise and intelligent,” we must follow the “light silent sound” of this word speaking within us (I Kings 19:12).  But if we are to hear this voice, we must be still and silent ourselves.  As Monsignor Nicola Bux has recently observed, “The soul is not for noise and debate but for recollection; the fact that noise bothers us is a sign of this.”[1]

In the quiet of our hearts we continually hear the Lord Jesus saying to us, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13:34). 

The love that Jesus has given to us is no mere emotion, no passing sentiment.  It is authentic love; it is the desire for the good of the one who is loved and a willingness to obtain that good for them, even if it means sacrifice.  By giving his life on the Cross, the Lord Jesus has shown us the path on which we are to walk if we wish to arrive at the Father’s house.

To love, then, as Jesus loves us, we must love without condition and without reserve; we must hold nothing back and give all of ourselves for the good of others.

Our beloved Saint Damien shows us the way forward, he shows us how to love.  Father Damien said, “I would gladly give my life for them.  I do not spare myself when it is necessary to go on a sick call that takes me twenty to twenty-five miles away.”  Too often we are all too ready to spare ourselves.  Through the example of Father Damien, we learn how to love others more than ourselves and to put their needs before our own.

Blessed Marianne, too, shows us how to carefully observe the command of love.  She said, “I do not think of reward; I am working for God, and do so cheerfully.”  Too often we desire credit or recognition for the good we do, and this often leads to much frustration.  Through the example of Mother Marianne, we learn the importance of humility in love.

If we truly seek to love both God and neighbor in every aspect of life – in matters both important and insignificant – we must, as the Psalmist sings, do justice and live in the presence of the Lord (cf. Psalm 15:1).

Justice, simply put, is giving to each person what is owed to him.  Every person, because he is made in the image and likeness of God, deserves to be loved and treated with charity, to be welcomed and loved as Christ Jesus personally welcomes and loves each one of us.

As simple as this is, it is not always easy to do, as we know all too well.  In moments of frustration, of disappointment and of anger, we too readily cast aside our love and think too much of ourselves.  In these moments, the Lord Jesus could rightly say of us, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,” because we fail to give the love we have received; we fail to do justice (Mark 7:6; Isaiah 29:13).

Because we do not want to the Lord to speak these words to us, we should keep ever before us the admonition of Saint James to “be doers of the word and not hearers only” so that we might simply talk about living justly but actually live justly (James 1:22).  Both Father Damien and Mother Marianne were doers of the word and not hearers only; you and I must follow in their footsteps, in humble and total love.

A few days ago I walked past a young man wearing a t-shirt that read, “Keep Calm and Live Pono.”  That simple phrase stuck with me.  It is taken, in part, from that poster of the Ministry of Information and, of course, from the motto of the Kingdom and State of Hawai‘i: “Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ‘Aina i ka Pono,” “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness”.

Pono is generally translated as either “righteous” or “righteousness.”  Biblically speaking, to be righteous is to live in right relationship with God and in right relationship with man, it is to live as one should be living.  As you know, pono can also mean goodness and morality and duty and virtue and proper.  In short, we might well say that to live pono is to live justly and we know that the “one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.”  So it is that we could paraphrase the motto of Hawai‘i: “The life of the Christian is perpetuated in righteousness” because the one who lives justly will make their way to the Father’s house.

To live pono is to live a life of love, a life of aloha; it is to conform ourselves always to Christ crucified, to love as he has loved.  It is this law that has been placed within us and that we must observe carefully because it will save our souls.  May the Lord strengthen us in this holy endeavor and bring us safely into his presence.  Amen.

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[1] Nicola Bux, Benedict XVI’s Reform: The Liturgy Between Innovation and Tradition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 149.