Aloha and Welina kakou,
Welcome (back) to the on-line workshop wa'a where we began to explore the practical, personal and collective journey of using the Hawaiian Moon Calendar to notice our relationship with Mahina, the Moon. Back in 2011 my husband Pete and I created this blog and this virtual space to share our practice of living with the Hawaiian Moon Calendar. We were newly excited and informed (in the early years of practice) by the renewed value that my kupuna my ancestors knew to be 'sustainable practices' of being Earth and Heaven influenced beings. My kupuna related to the whole of creation as surely as they understood that water and air are necessary for life.
Contemporary life has distracted us, most of us, from the values and practices that are foundational -- that is, some things are greater than ourselves, our believed entitlements. In 2007 those distractions and beliefs that were my world washed out with the tide. Homeless. Health bereft. Humbled. While we relearned what was sustainable, Mahina the Hawaiian Moon rose from the ocean over the horizon off the Eastern shore of O'ahu as we made our bed for the night. From our car which was our home for many months at that time, Pete and I literally began our journey of counting on the moon. We have rebuilt a life, and rooted ourselves in a new island-based community in South Whidbey Island in the Salish Sea (Pacific Northwest America/Washington state). Our practices as elders in training (Makua o'o) are magic made manifest like the braided cord.
Hilo 'Ia a Pa'a ... the phase comes from the Moon Phase Project. I'm using it here to describe the noticing and journaling process we wish to encourage as the Lunar New Year of the Green Goat (Chinese New Year) is freshly beginning. We will be braiding the knowledge of noticing what happens where we (you, me, all you gathering here) live while Mahina, the Moon, is in the thirty phases of light and darkness.
For the next twelve months, beginning with March, 2015 we will:
Notice
Share
Record
and then
Compare and consider the implications of climatic conditions/changes for us as Indigenous Peoples. We are all Indigenous to the place we call home. If we will notice what Nature is doing where we live we will braid a tight cord of knowledge that can become wisdom if we apply what we have observed.
On September 23-27, 2015, a Pacific wide lunar conference called "Aimalama" will be held at the University of Hawaii at Manoa on the island of O'ahu. Kalei Nuuhiwa's website describes the upcoming conference here.
What we would like to do here with this Count on the Moon blog/on-line workshop is involve people in the process of making connections between moon phases and growing/Nature's 'output' to prepare us for inclusion (in a meaningful fashion) with other practitioners throughout the Pacific.
From our community in South Whidbey Island in the Pacific Northwest we invite you to join us. Please come back often, and interact with us from wherever on the Planet you are.
How exciting it is to work hard at something that will sustain and feed you.
Aloha,
Mokihana and Pete
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