A member of the Missionaries of Charities held a prayer book for a disabled Palestinian woman during Easter Mass March 31 at Holy Family Church in Gaza City, Gaza. (Dawoud Abu Alkas / Reuters / OSV News)
View from the Pew
Pentecost has always been one of my favorite church holy days. I love the imagery of the Holy Spirit appearing as tongues of fire over the apostles, freeing them from fear and sending them forward afire with zeal to share what Jesus taught them.
It’s a resounding “amen” finale to 50 days of Easter. It’s an event recorded for us with rare eyewitness detail of this awesome physical appearance of God and the miraculous communication skill of the new missionaries being understood despite the many ethnic and language differences of their audience.
I wish I could revisit the celebration years ago at my parish when a former pastor and a strong and stalwart Sacred Hearts brother provided dramatic imagery with red fabric flames suspended in airspace over the altar.
It involved a dangerous climb into the high attic and no one would dare test those ceiling tiles again.
This year it’s draped red cloth to match the liturgical vestments and, in tune with the new pastor’s wishes, lay participants at Mass continue the recent trend of dressing to match the color scheme.
Sorry to see the Easter season come to an end. Who couldn’t help but be saddened by the state of religious observance amid the crass and cruel reality of our world today?
Thousands, probably millions, of Christians could not even focus on traditions marking the foundation of our faith, Jesus’ resurrection. They live in places and circumstances where evil seems to rule. Violence, hatred, greed, despots and deranged political scenarios have sent normal life into a spin around the globe.
The same is true for millions of Jewish people who saw their most meaningful religious event, Pesach or Passover, disrupted by warfare and a wave of rage against Israel that has morphed into viral antisemitism. How could you gather at a peaceful prayerful family dinner or communal Seder feast in that emotional climate?
Their celebration marks the end of the Hebrew people’s enslavement in Egypt as they were led by Moses to their promised land. Scholars calculate the date of the events chronicled in the Old Testament book of Exodus as about 1,300 years before the birth of Jesus.
The turmoil and terror in that patch of our planet these days isn’t new; the Bible chronicles fights for territory from the beginning of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.
I read about some Christian fundamentalist’s twisted version of history recently to the effect that those ancient Jewish people had to fight Muslims way back when.
Stop. Fact check: The Islamic faith was not founded until 632 AD, after the prophet Muhammed recorded revelations Muslims believe he received from God by way of the Angel Gabriel. Once he recorded the teaching in the Quran, it was spread by his followers beyond his roots in what is now Saudi Arabia.
That religion spread in the Middle East and it became the third contender for dibs on the territory considered holy by Jews and Christians.
Muslims in the holy land also had their most important religious observance disrupted this year.
Ramadan, the annual monthlong discipline of fasting and prayer, ended April 9. It is a time intended for reflection about your relationships with God and other people. At the end is the most important Muslim religious holiday, Eid al-Fitr, a three-day celebration of feasting and communal gatherings.
People ducking for cover in Gaza refugee camps could hardly focus on their spirituality and fellowship this year.
History is apparently not a strong subject in universities today, or the demonstrators on all sides would know that what is happening in the Promised Land these days is a repeat of centuries of strife, not even matching the savagery of past conflict over possession of land now being identified as Palestine. Christian crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries were among the religious warrior-killers.
The identifications we use today, Arabs (which centuries ago indicated nomads not ethnic identity), Palestinians (as different from Arabs), Israelis (many of whose ethnic roots are European) — these are all identifiers that have been in flux for eons.
The Holy Land was home to Christians since Jesus walked and taught there. The dwindling number of Palestinian Christians there can trace their faith to the first apostolic missionaries.
It’s a time for particular sadness as Orthodox Christians marked their Easter observance on May 5 (using the ancient Julian calendar, they’ll get to Pentecost on June 24). I wonder if it was even possible to attend an Easter service during the current nightmare of religious warfare.
I’m remembering interviewing a Palestinian Anglican priest who has worked for decades to foster religious tolerance and peace in his homeland; despite his own childhood memory of his family being evicted from their ancestral home when the Jewish state of Israel was created after World War II. Father Naim Ateek has ties to the Episcopal Diocese of Hawaii.
Another Palestinian I met when she visited Honolulu is a Bethlehem woman whose family’s handcrafted olive wood Nativity sets were once sold at the Honolulu Cathedral Gift Shop. Her home is overlooked by armed guards on a boundary wall built by Israel.
But now, I must be truthful. When I contemplate and write about people living in danger, fear, sadness, who must be in a struggle to even focus on their spirituality, it’s really all about me. I think about them to try to get myself in perspective.
It’s been a fraught Easter season personally. Two days after singing Easter alleluias, I switched to a poor-me mantra. Long story short: a fall, a broken hip, time in a hospital and a convalescent bed in a rehab center. Disgusted, demoralized, fearful of the future, losing faith in my ability to fight back and come back.
Worst of all, I couldn’t seem to focus on a prayer. I know clergy folks are busy, but I wish I had called for help or encouragement or a patient listener. I scoff at a TV commercial by a prominent Protestant televangelist with a dial-a-prayer promotion, but I wished we had a local Catholic version. Thank God for my listener, caregiver cheerleader sister.
I didn’t have a miraculous visit from an angel or God’s voice in my ear in the midst of an anguishing month. There was too much noise.
If you’ve never been incarcerated in a nursing care facility you can’t imagine what a cacophony of disturbing noise it is. Beeping alarms when patients hit a nurse call button; entry door alarm squeals; calls for help and curses from bedrooms along the corridor; high-volume hallway commentary and bustle by nursing staff and cleaning people, roaring air-conditioning; high-voltage lights; the humbling need for help in basic hygiene. Put it all together and it spells POOR ME.
But finally, I recognized there was an angel in the midst of the fray. There was music, day by day. Someone roaming the halls carried and shared a recorded playlist of mellow music perfect for the age demographic.
There was Perry Como with “And I Love You So” and Kui Lee singing “Beautiful Days of My Youth.” There was “Edelweiss,” “Autumn Leaves,” “Country Roads,” “E Kuu Lei” and a whole lot of soothing Hawaiian music I couldn’t name.
We caught a glimpse of a guy in a wheelchair rolling himself down the hall surrounded by an aura of music. Sometimes we could hear him somewhere strumming an ukulele and singing.
It took us too long but finally we encountered the troubadour.
As my sister wheeled me around the outdoors pathways at Palolo Chinese Home — fresh air, birdsong, peace — we encountered a man tending potted flowers in a raised planter. We heard a lot about his gardening venture; he was not the yardman but a resident.
And, as we worked through the “who are you” introductory conversation, it turned out that Walter Kawaa is a retired Honolulu police detective. He remembered the haole newspaper police reporter from back in the day, not my name but the homemade cookies I’d bring to make friends and develop sources with the cops.
In those good old days, the former police station was open to citizens and reporters could roam into the traffic or detective or other divisions to actually talk to an investigator. It was before a new fortress-like police station was built where the public is not welcome; “Fort Alapai” was its nickname and it reflects the attitude police developed toward the public and particularly the news media.
Kawaa, 80, grew up in Halawa Valley on Molokai, working with his family raising taro. A full-blooded Hawaiian, he also likes to talk of his family’s roots in the Christian faith as brought by New England Congregational missionaries. He and his siblings started their music as children singing a cappella Hawaiian hymns in church and it is a continuing family tradition. He has been a member of several United Church of Christ congregations where the Hawaiian language is spoken and sung.
Walter married a Catholic girl, Audrey Napua Brown, an English teacher who sang at the Queen’s Surf when they met. He said she would attend Saturday evening Masses “so she could go to church with me Sundays.” They were married for 47 years before her death in 2016, leaving a son, a daughter, five grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
She also left a heartbroken husband. “I didn’t sing for two and a half years,” he said. “Finally the Lord knocked me on the head and said, ‘Look at your grandchildren.’”
He’s been singing ever since and that didn’t stop when health issues led him to move into the care home in December.
One memorable night, Walter brought his eight-string ukulele and songbook along on a visit to me, and for more than two hours, I was blessed with Hawaiian-language hymns and translations. One of Audrey’s favorites was “Ka Hora Maikai,” a translation of “Sweet Hour of Prayer … that calls me from a world of care, and brings me at my Father’s throne, makes all my wants and wishes known.”
I also heard a lot of the hymns I’d heard attending celebrations or funerals.
We had other musical moments and a meal or two before I was liberated from what I considered a time of trial. Each time, Kawaa ended a meeting with a prayer. He was thankful for the place he now lives, the food he eats and especially, prayed for the nurses, nurses aides and all other health care workers. I have tears remembering his mention of it being “precious to meet again a friend who bakes good cookies.”
I found my voice during time with this humble, faith-filled, kind man. Thanks to him, I realized that the circuit has always been open and God has been hearing me, even when I was focused on groaning and complaining and feeling sorry for myself.
Not singing, but I am thinking of a Catholic hymn, “Be Not Afraid,” for myself and all those I mentioned in this column. “Blessed are you that weep and mourn, for one day you shall laugh. … I go before you always, come follow me and I will give you rest.”
