VIEW FROM THE PEW
One of the greatest kindnesses one person can do for another is to just listen. Sit down or lean back and say, either by words or just patient attitude: “Do tell me your story, take your time, I’m here to hear the whole tale.” And if you endure and have follow up questions, that’s beyond kind, that’s downright saintly.
So when has that happened to you? Ever?? What I’ve been feeling lately is that, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to finish three sentences max before someone else commandeers the conversation, changes the subject or launches into their own anecdote or grievance, or repeats an oft-told story. Even when it’s meant to console by comparison with a sadder or scarier tale, can’t you let me get to the punchline? So then I’m caught in the internal struggle, either practice what I preach about listening or get into a verbal contest to wrest back control of the conversation. Or tune out. Or just stay home and don’t talk to anyone. At least I’m not flaunting a smartphone and texting in their face, the ultimate shrug of disinterest.
Someone very dear to me, with the security of auntie status in her community, has earned a PhD in listening by just doing it. Clerks in stores summon her to their lines so they can unload grievances as they load her cart. Neighbors and passing walkers and joggers linger in her front yard to describe health conditions, families’ upheaval, gossip from down the street. I remind her of the Peanuts comic strip with Lucy at her booth selling advice for five cents. I think I’d be ducking into the front door. If she doesn’t get credit in St. Peter’s book for a chronic corporal work of mercy, I don’t know who does.
Taking part in the services during Holy Week put us into a mode of listening as a deeply spiritual experience. How many times have we heard the Gospel accounts of the passion and death of Jesus? But we love to hear them again; we wait for the familiar quotations. Some of us can count on getting weepy having to chime in “Crucify him!” or hearing Christ’s last words on the cross. How could you explain to a non-Christian how much you need to hear an annual repeat of the climax, the women who expected to be mourning but found the tomb empty?
After all the news about violent deaths, and about government leaders endorsing a culture of death, we’ve heard the good news about everlasting life. And the story will continue.
Then, there is the can-you-top-this method of listening. News reporters are professional listeners, at their best when they present all sides of people’s opinions not filtered by the writer’s own viewpoint. But when they retire, they are like old athletes whose memories of times when they batted one into the bleachers, or kicked it between the goal posts, grow more marvelous as time passes. I’m amazed at the depth of memories some professional storytellers have, putting things in a timeline or a context long past. I’m sure they resort to the online archives … or to the scrapbooks of clippings that some duffers kept. Sometimes I’m skeptical: aren’t you borrowing from someone else’s tale or blinded by hindsight?
I know there are leaks in my memory bank, especially from way back in the day when I was a police reporter. My tale from the police beat days would not be about crimes and arrests but about a 1974 civil rights triumph that opened up the ranks of the Honolulu Police Department to women and to men who didn’t happen to be tall and burly. Lucile Abreu and other “policewomen” were limited to service in the Juvenile Crime Prevention Division, paid less than men, and not eligible for promotion. Abreu’s complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission grew into a class action suit. The city settled, removing the ban on women and the 5-foot 8-inch height limit that effectively discriminated against many Asian men. Abreu, a 5-foot 1-inch tall mother of five, became the first woman in the detective division. I clearly remember the anti-female culture — starting at the top echelon — that the first new women officers faced. It’s a story I’ve had reason to repeat recently with the selection of Honolulu’s first woman police chief Susan Ballard on Nov. 1.
That was the abridged version of the Abreu story, thanks for listening. There’s more under her name online, including an item on the HPD website.
To remember and tell again
Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a wonderful gift from two bright young scholars who actually wanted to hear a story very important in my life. They “heard” my long version via email. And they asked questions for more. What a thrilling experience to remember it and tell it again.
The story of St. Damien was what interested Ellie Mulvaney and Elsa Mechelke, seventh-graders at Highland Park Middle School in St. Paul, Minn. They presented their research project at a divisional competition and won a slot to tell the Damien story at a Minnesota State History Day competition April 28. I’m rooting for the Midwest girls to make it to the National History Day competition in Maryland next month.
Various Hawaii students have chronicled the same subject down through the years. The life of Damien and the saga of the banishment of 8,000 leprosy patients to Kalaupapa is part of Hawaii history they’ve researched for our own state History Day competition. It’s not a chapter chosen this year by the 230 contestants who will present their projects April 14 at Windward Community College.
Telling the story of Father Damien de Veuster, who served leprosy patients who were exiled to Kalaupapa, was the highlight of my writing career. It unfolded in chapters over three decades, from a grass roots movement to get Damien recognition by the Catholic Church to the triumphant conclusion with his canonization as a saint on Oct. 11, 2009, at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome by Pope Benedict XVI.
The story didn’t totally slip from the headlines afterward because the Franciscan religious order succeeded, in a much more streamlined campaign, with the cause of Mother Marianne Cope. The German-born nun, who brought sisters here from New York in 1883 to care for leprosy patients, was named a saint in October 2012. After establishing hospitals on Oahu and Maui, she went to Kalaupapa in 1888, tending to Father Damien in his dying days, and worked there until her death in 1918.
Writing for the newspaper, it was all about facts, dates and details, watching the ponderous Vatican discernment process as officials looked into the life of the unassuming Belgian priest who volunteered for a brief stint among the exiled patients and chose to stay with them for 16 years until his death on April 15, 1889, at the age of 49. It was important to suppress my inner excited Catholic and try to be objective in print.
I knew my young scholar penpals had access to all the facts from more official sources than myself. They were interested in putting Damien into context, my descriptions of the remote place and people who live there in Damien’s time and now. It was downright cathartic for a journalist who gets to release pent up opinions and personal perspectives. It was the curmudgeonly Catholic of a certain age that got to answer their question: “What are your views about Father Damien and what he did on Molokai?”
I told Ellie and Elsa, “Damien is so opposite of the kind of saint that is shown on a holy card or stained glass window, soulful eyes looking toward heaven. His faith and understanding of Jesus’ teaching to love your neighbor was so awesome. He was an activist, a hands-on hard worker. He was a curmudgeon and compassionate. Not only did he do the offices of a priest, saying Masses, teaching, baptizing, hearing confession, and marrying and burying his people, he did physically strenuous work as a carpenter, building several churches before even getting to Molokai. He built houses and dug ditches for primitive plumbing. He got grungy, had callused hands and was probably too tired to spend hours in prayer.”
The girls asked for more details when I mentioned that the priest was a thorn in the side of church leaders and kingdom of Hawaii officials. He relentlessly wrote them, demanding supplies and help for the sick and frail people who were initially exiled with the theory that they would plant food and take care of themselves until a predictably early death from the disease. I pointed out that his work had captured the interest of 19th century writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Damien knew how to leverage that publicity to get help.
Interfaith and ecumenical cooperation are popular concepts nowadays, but friendship and collaboration between Protestants and Catholics was not in practice at his time. Damien did not see the separation, especially not in the needy people who needed care. He was friends with the mostly Protestant government functionaries and doctors responsible for the settlement and with other religious leaders who served in Kalaupapa. That reminded me to mention to my captive scholars about Siloama Church, a tiny chapel near Damien’s church, with its plaque memorial to 12 women and 23 men who formed a Congregational church in June 1866, 18 months after the dreadful quarantine was imposed and seven years before the Catholic priest arrived.
And that reminded me of a book published last year by Brigham Young University history professor Fred Woods, “Kalaupapa, the Mormon Experience in an Exiled Community,” which tells of the friendship between the priest and Jonathan Napela, a former Maui judge, who accompanied his wife to the settlement when she was stricken with the disease. Napela became the first Mormon leader there and worked with Damien to improve conditions until his own death of the disease in 1879.
And then, I thought of something else … From afar, I can imagine my scholar audience texting each other “TMI.” Too much information!
St. Damien’s history is alive today. May 10 will be the 145th anniversary of the day he first set foot on the Kalaupapa peninsula. Students from several schools will bring lei to drape on the bronze statue of the saint in front of the State Capitol. The 9 a.m. ceremony will be sponsored by the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Bishop Larry Silva will participate, and will preside at a 6 p.m. Mass at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa. The date is a feast day in the church’s liturgical calendar. I think this should be celebrated as a statewide historical event.
There will be music, said Sacred Hearts Sister Helen Wood, an organizer of the event, because that was another thing Damien fostered in Kalaupapa. He wrote to his family about organizing his patients into a band and choir. “When they were sent to Kalaupapa, it was practically a death sentence. Did they give into it? No,” said Sister Helene. “He helped them to live life to the fullest. And the choir and band took part in each funeral procession to celebrate death.”
Their pastor had taught them about the resurrection and eternal life. And they listened.