Hawai'i 5 O.M.G. Part 3. Love will show you the way?

We stand in a large circle in the back yard of the farm holding hands, a collection of friends, family neighbors, strangers, volunteers…and the coerced.  It is in every way an idyllic setting, the nearby Anahola mountains frame the afternoon sun, the lush green ground cover surrounded by strategically appointed tropical flowering plants, hibiscus flowers, plumeria, ti plants, and palm trees house the song birds which love them.  Here, in their home, the owners of the farm celebrate their vows of commitment among their Kaua’i family, their ohana.  Not quite a wedding, they call it “Our Lovefest”. 

What follows is not exactly a celebration of love, it is closer to a love bomb.  Ever wonder what it feels like when one of these goes off?  This is not the same as what you felt when you laid eyes on your first love.  Instead, consider it the emotional equivalent of trying to drink from a fully pressurized fire hose shoved into your face.  With all that love coming at you, it is easy to get drenched; but difficult for any to get inside.    

The circle becomes two concentric rings around the couple as we begin to sing, “I open my heart to the love which surrounds me.”  Those are the only words of this song, so after a few times through, even the most reserved and tone deaf among us joins in.  It’s a nice piece of call and response group harmony lead by the local adult choir director and self-appointed defender of our nearby beach; it is really quite fun, light-hearted and genuinely beautiful.  Were this our only moment of cosmic Kaua’i quasi-hippiness it would be quite touching, with just the right amount of weird.   However, this is just the warm up.  Things are about to go much deeper.

Before coming to Kaua’I, I was not aware of the particular branch of Sufi Islam practiced in the Hawaiian Islands and elsewhere.   This is Islam Light on a diet of de-ionized water, flowers, and love.   What began in the 60’s as an offshoot of the Peace Movement in Berkley, CA came to Hawaii and found root in the many people who rejected mainland traditional values and sought alternative approaches in finding life, finding god, and finding love.  Evidently, California simply wasn’t weird enough.

One way the Hawaii Sufis celebrate life is through devotional singing.  This could be a simple song chant with just a few words which will be repeated over and over with only a few minor changes in pitch or rhythm.  The singing and harmonies can be beautiful, but they can also last longer than “Inna godda da vida” on a broken tape deck.  The point of the song, or prayer, is to not focus on the changing words and evolving meaning of the song, but to lose yourself within the singing of the song – to become the song and vibrate as one voice with others around you. 

This is my attempt to put the otherwise repetitive (and rather simplistic) song in perspective.  I come from a religious practice where you arrange yourself before some stained glass, stand up, sit down, mumble a few phrases, sing a few tunes, fall asleep during the sermon, wake up and then go have coffee in the basement.   But even my church basement wasn’t as deep as this.

We dance in large circles, and in small, spinning while clasping our neighbor's hands.  We chant/sing the simple phrases repeatedly to the strumming guitars and the beat of hand drums.  I used to think that there was a globally accepted length of time that people could look into each others' eyes, but here they’ve set a new standard.  I don’t know why, but staring deeply into the orbs of a total stranger for 2 minutes and singing, “all I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you” over and over again, is perhaps too big a dose of Aloha for this Midwestern boy.   Normally, I can go with the flow of just about any cultural party ritual, but I must admit that I balked a little here.  Faking it was probably not going to get me through this one.  Perhaps this is because I am not in a foreign country; all of these folks look like me or my parents, people I grew up with – the hugs feel genuine but the vibe somehow feels phony.   

To those who resonate with this binge and purge love, this effusive display of unfettered emotion, I apologize for my sarcasm.  I clearly am closed off, have entrenched barriers to acceptance of myself and others and have outdated standards for how long I should know a person before I spend a considerable length of time staring into their eyes.  

At its heart, the ritual here is about stripping away all the cultural crap which keeps us from connecting to each other and the divine.  There is no deeper meaning here, no hidden agenda when asking someone to look at you through the eyes of love.   It simply is what it is -- a festival of love.  So why do I feel so icky? 

This could have been just a weird little hippie, Sufi, Kool-aid experience on Kaua’i.  All the makings were there for both a fun afternoon and a great story if I could have been able to swallow any of it.   What got stuck in my throat was the disparity between how our boss acted on that day around his friends and how he treated his volunteer staff.   The details are for another time, but let me say that it is because of his “aloha” that we left early – and I am not one to back out of a commitment. 

The leader of our little ritual continues, building to a big finale, which should have happened about 20 minutes prior.  Arranging us in two concentric circles around the happy couple, we move forward and then back away while singing “Deeper! Deeper! Into the heart of Love.”  When this continues beyond what any of us think should be a reasonable length of time, Shari leans over toward me and in her usual dry tone says, “Baby, I don’t think I can go any deeper”-- my thoughts exactly.

  

Next up: Bali Hai may call you.