August 26, 2026 Minister’s Message

Aloha!!

After Lala, having seen “Mary Oliver, Saved By the Beauty of the World” the moving documentary on my trip to NYC, I thought of her poem…

Hurricane
It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn’t stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.
— Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

Let me know if you want to see the documentary here at church – I found a way :)

We are so lucky to be here, in this miraculous place, with each other.

Hope to see you this Sunday as our church, “Rediscovering Hawai‘i’s Soul,” shares the work of over 700 people (so far) gathering and working together to protect and sustain our rare Hawai‘i.

Mahalo for all you do,
Rev. Deborah