All the ways we flow

This weekend we prepared to welcome performers and guests to the Safety Pin Cafe. There were makana (gifts) to wrap between the normal goings-on of a weekend on the Prairie Front.

Water colored shades of embroider floss would wrap beautiful hand-made paper, wauke perhaps, mulberry maybe, with a scene of water filled with Whales and Fish.

Pete measured lengths of floss, and I cut paper bundles enough to enclose unscented coconut soap harvested from the Solomon Island niu ola (coconut) plantation owned by a family for many generations. Packets of Hibiscus Tea was added, with a safety pin, to thank the musicians and dancers of Whidbey's Ukulele Kanikapila + two ('ohana was here from Brooklynn) and Halau o Mokupuni i Waina Na Mauna.

While we prepared our friend Prescott was inside the kitchen mixing up Apple and Almond scones to be sold in the Farmers' Market cafe, the Laughing Cat Cafe. Every Sunday throughout the market season Prescott is here making scones, preparing and volunteering for an afternoon of activity at the South Whidbey Tilth Farmers' Market.

My son called me from O'ahu late Saturday afternoon while I was wrapping gifts. That's me returning his call. We chatted, catching up on what was going on where he is, and where I am. Before our chat was over he pulled into the cemetary where his Tutu are buried. My Ma and Dad. I got to chat with them, too and included my family in the preparations and the welcoming of Ancestors and Audience into the coming event called "Water Catchers ... all the ways we flow."

 Our old friend Liz, from Anacortes drove down to be with us.

You don't see what weather came between the phone call and the pitching of Liz's tent. But it was a doozie of a storm: thunder, lightning, and pouring water. Water to catch, and then, it cleared to the sky pictured above.

Pete and Liz helped me with a mock set-up for Sunday's event. It gave me time to see how the two tents would feel, and for a few minutes I could sit with the Land, invite the Ancestors, and bless the activity that was to come. Other members of the Tilth community needed to borrow those tents for their own special event. It seemed the time to bless those tents was meant for more than the Safety Pin Cafe; there was a new baby coming that would need the water catching, too.

Sunday late morning, the tents for the Safety Pin Cafe were pitched for our performance. Welcoming the Ancestors and the Audience, I opened the Safety Pin Cafe. The chant or pray called Pule Ho'ulu'ulu is one that calls on the Ancestors as it also creates sacred space. I explained what I was doing, and taught the Audience a second chant, that would involve all there in the invocation. "E Ho Mai", the chant created by Edith Kanaka'ole of Hawaii Moku for her halau hula before they began the work of interpretation through hula, speaks of asking for permission, asking to be granted meaning(s) in the words.

I reflect on that Sunday morning days later as I edit this post adding words and removing pictures and wait to receive permission to publish photographs taken that day.

Re-located as I am from my home of origin in Hawaii to this place and this island in the Salish Sea this day in the Safety Pin Cafe was a grounding session for me and application of my astrology. My North Node in Taurus was beckoning me, along with our Audience, to live my karma. Like the author and astrologer Elizabeth Spring (who I link to in this paragraph), my South Node in Scorpio repeatedly tempts and taunts me to live dramatically; a way of life that is my default mode with deep roots and much practice from/in my early life. I too have "needed to get lost, and found, many times," returning over and over again to this Pacific Northwest environment.

Along with the chants that welcomed Ancestors and created sacred space the first story I shared, with permission, a re-telling of Aunty Pua Kanaka'ole Kanahele's TEDX Talk "Living the Myth, Unlocking the Metaphor" called on me as storyteller to be grounded in my personal resourcefulness. 

"The movement towards the North Node is a continuous process, not just one decision you make. For me, I needed to get lost, and found, many times--- I divorced and remarried the same man.  I write and do astrological counseling, which is my true vocation, but I have ‘followed several gods home’. I continually need to recommit to ever deeper levels of grounding and persistence in my work and life. Serenity and home life is very important. I know I survived a difficult family karmic inheritance, yet I strive to act out the highest octave of the Libra Sun which pulls me towards tactfulness and deep thinking.  And that South Node in Scorpio still tries to seduce me in every way you can imagine."  - Elizabeth Spring

Such joyful music and dance came from musicians and dancers adding a flavor of fun and faces that was missing from the Safety Pin Cafe.

People came to sit and listen and participate in the 'oli E Ho Mai, and held onto their grounding stick 'aunaki. The water, metaphoric and literal, flowed and the Praire Front was blessed with hearing her name in its sacred form. The land, the sky, the wind and the community found their place in that space of common magic.

And before all was concluded, a sweet family we met when first we opened the Safety Pin Cafe years ago sat with me to fold a water catcher made from the flier that announced the event. Four unfolded water catchers with packets of Red Hibiscus tea bags went home with dad and daughter; there were cousins who needed to learn to fold water catchers.

How perfect was that for an ending.

Many thanks. Mahalo Piha, Ancestors and Audience!

xo Mokihana and Pete