Ceremonies help us remember to remember

"Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life. In many indigenous communities, the hems of our ceremonial robes have been unraveled by time and history, but the fabric remains strong. In the dominant society, though, ceremony seems to have withered away." - Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Created from the memories of deep knowing the protocol of respect for place, and the people and beings who were here first feed the design and essence of home-made ceremony. Challenged to walk a journey with both feet intentionally on the skin of our Island Earth Home, we remember to remember.

On the place the People called 'the prairie front' my husband Pete and I bring our home-made ceremonies, the stories that hold life together, braiding ke'ia with kela, the here together with there. We do it as an everyday practice in spite of the assaulting common product worn by those who wrongly assume their consumption will do no harm. Teaching through example we reel from the triggers of fragrances. We call on the 'ohe, the bamboo to teach us remind us about strength and flexibility.

"We cross borders without regard, ignorant or arrogant of the protocol native to the transitional spaces that take us from this place to that place. Traditions remembered and practiced would maintain and pass along the right things to do, at the right time, and in the right frame of mind. Have we all become wanderers with passports unstamped with the memory of teachings from the Ancestors and Nature? There are rituals to remember and common magic to induce respect for the beings and places that share this planet." 

- from the Introduction" of my medicine story The Safety Pin Cafe 

"We follow the Chinese New Year ... once Makali'i the Pleiades is seen rising on the horizon, the next New Moon the follows marks the beginning of the New Year." - Kalei Nu'uhiwa (Tsuha) Kaulana Mahina

With the moon in her Ku po (phases newly illuminating after New Moon) I stand this post up with a ceremonial and physical boundary setting. Together Pete and I asked 'ohe and the many-times used cedar lattices to help with applying their lessons: Flexible and strong, there is a border to cross consciously, it is in place. We remember to remember that, and give thanks to the wind who is visiting, too. Amana ua no.