a firetender's chronical.1

I'm inviting you in to the unfolding of a story that takes place in Hawaii. It's about meeting Madame Pele. Not in the sense of encountering her, but in the sense of being up to both her challenges and rewards.

Something like 80% of the people who move to the Hawaiian Islands move back to whence they came or elsewhere within a couple years. It is common lore here (though how can you call the truth "lore"?) that Malahini - newcomers - go through a metaphoric trial by fire. Once they step foot on the islands their world is turned upside-down until such time as they are either chewed up and spit out, or embraced, by Pele, the Goddess of Fire herself.

It's personal. It's got to be because in this hall of mirrors the changes you are asked to go through are custom-designed to correspond with the weakest and strongest parts of you, and you alone. Everything you are gets reflected back to you. Sometimes with just enough of a touch of distortion to scare the crap out of you because you discover it's not distortion, it really is you!

No two people seem to go through the same things. Sure, the economic reality is a huge adjustment here. There's a Third-world quality to the place that places poverty side-by-side with riches. Politically, the cronyism, speed of the machine, uneven class-related law enforcement, and economic ties to controlling interests reminds me more of the mechanics of the Deep South back in the 1970's than what you find on the Mainland today. But all that is just colorful background for the real struggle of you against yourself.

That having been said, let me fast-forward and summarize my last three years here: I have been in a world of wonder where door after door has opened for me, showing me a view of Paradise with me in it, and then finding the whole scene dissolves into mist as that door closes in my face.

It has been a pattern of seduction, vision, and not defeat, but a back-to-the-drawing-board beckoning. If you're not willing to start from scratch, over and over, you're outta here. The key to making it on these Islands is surrender. For by surrendering to what is, and not resisting the process of constant re-definition, you, in some mysterious way, allow Pele to embrace you. And then, when you least expect it, she showers you with gifts of incredible proportions.

It's not that you must suffer to receive those gifts. It's that you must make yourself worthy of their bounty.

So, for me, the key has been to give back as much as I can. This, especially in this economy, is the healer's weakness: with the obligation to share the gifts that have been freely-given comes the challenge to survive long enough to give more.

To bring this back to the now, here is the situation within which I find myself. My experience in Hawaii is that I've had to re-define my understanding of myself as a healer three or four times. Each new view of myself has come from having been gifted a new tool to work with designed to considerably increase my reach as a healer. In the exploration of these tools, I have been working out their uses by giving them away. In the process, however, I've gotten so far away from making them work for me economically that I've almost buried myself.

"Almost" is what I'm left with and thanks to Madame Pele, and I hope, my peers in Zaadz, I'll be able to apply a new state of surrender to this situation, learn to recognize and accept the gifts I'm meant to both gain and give, and pull out of the ditch and into a world that is ready for them. In the process, I'm enlisting you to take part in the journey.