Desctruction and Change

Well aloha everyone, and good morning. I’m up here at the volcano. And it’s the most beautiful sight, it’s a beautiful, beautiful day. The sky is that gorgeous pale blue, coming out of winter pale blue. We can see both the big mountains, we can see Mount Aloha.

The long slopey mountain behind me. And we can me Mauna Kea, which is the mountain with the observatories on them. They’re both about fourteen-thousand feet high. So it’s absolutely beautiful. The volcano has changed a lot, even in the last 18 months since we came up here and stayed up here.

And that really prompted what I wanted to talk about today, which is about change and destruction. Because the volcano, the eruption of the volcano last year has created significant, significant change. The crater has hugely increased in size, and lots of things have changed up here.

So, really, it was a very destructive process. And one of the things that I think, often with destructive processes we think, oh my god, that’s terrible. And people are saying, oh my god it’s terrible, the crater has sunk and we lost places we used to go and this is not good. But, destruction leaves way for creation.

In the case of the volcano, there are new pieces of land being created. There are new islands being created. They’ll take awhile, but there are new islands being created. It’s a slow process, but it’s a creation process. But the destruction has to happen first.

In the Hawaiian culture, when Pele, who is the goddess of the volcano, becomes active, it usually mean that something has happened, something is happened that she’s not necessarily pleased about.

In the Hawaiian system, a lot of the elements or the characteristics of nature they were called gods or goddesses. It was actually a monotheistic religion. But you had these, if you like, nature spirits. You had nature goddesses, nature gods.

And Pele was one of those. And on the big island, because the big island has this active volcano in the middle of it, Pele was one of the most significant. She’s the goddess of the volcano and the story goes that she stole a stick of fire, and then went to look for somewhere to live and she tried the different islands and Kauai was too wet and Oahu was too dry and Maui was too windy.

So she journeyed around and finally, she settled upon the big island. And the big island, she liked the big island, ’cause it’s both dry and wet. And she made her home in the crater, and the crater’s been here ever since.

And that’s how the Hawaiians kind of explain the creation of the crater. But they also explain the life of the volcano and the life of the area around the volcano, in terms of Pele.

So, when Pele gets going, when Pele erupts, generally it’s because something is not quite right. It’s interesting because we often think, we talk about, oh, we’re killing the planet. Pele has a way of taking care of herself and the environment around her.

So in the latest eruption, one of the things that got damaged, not completely closed down but damaged, was the Geothermal Plant. Areas of land were eaten up this time and a lot of people did lose their homes.

Fortunately only one person, I mean sadly, only one person lost their life, but fortunately it was only one, and that was a person who was hiking into the area where she was active. People who disrespect Pele, there are many stories in the sagas of people who disrespected Pele and then paid for it. Usually because she would come and take their village out in the next eruption.

So, here they’re very respectful of Pele, as the representation of the energy of the volcano, of this beautiful, beautiful area of the volcano. So Pele may be about destruction but she’s also about creation.

It’s about change, and it’s definitely about respecting the land, because when you respect the land and you honour the land, then the land is kind to you. When you respect Pele, and you’re kind to Pele, then Pele is kind to you.

So, I’ll just take a little walk along and we’ll see what we can see. It’s a great crater. A great crater indeed. That’s aloha from me, and I’ll be doing another video very soon. So take care, and I’ll talk to you very soon.

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