It was a last minute trip, one last thought before we leave, to jump over to Molokai for a few days this week. We booked it last week, and found ourselves on 12 seater plane early, very early, on a Monday morning. (As if Mondays aren’t chaotic enough as it is.) The plane was late because the fuel truck was late, and one of the airline’s advertised safety features was that they ‘always have two pilots on each aircraft!!’ It’s the little things, I guess.
We took off in the dark but landed to the fragile sunshine breaking blue through the rain clouds. It was beautiful and idyllic, until we promptly found that our rental car had never been confirmed, our Airbnb host still hadn’t contacted us about where we needed to go, and Joe had never received a reservation confirmation about a day trip for the next day. We’re all about taking life as it comes to us and pushing adventure, but this was a little much even for us, and everyone had been up since 4am and it started to rain.
But we snagged one of the last cars, and picked a random direction to turn, and then another, figuring that if we went the wrong way (or even if we didn’t) we’d run into the ocean soon and have to stop or turn around. At least that is an easy task on a small island without a stoplight, with only two grocery stores, and (by my last count) five restaurants. (We did two the first day.)
So we headed east, the road curving closer to the coast and the rain starting to clear, until some sun broke through and the highlands of Maui stood purple on the horizon, surrounded by wisps of white clouds, bright against the clearing rain.
It’s good to visit places like Molokai for many reasons, and that view was not the least of the reasons.
Molokai feels far more of a Pacific Island then Oahu. There are no four lane (or six or eight lane) highways, we have to remember to bring cash most places, and half the time our phones don’t work. But these places, places like Molokai, are important for more than just giving us that Pacific Island feel.
The truth is that often we like to think we’re more important than we are. (People do that. Not me, of course. Or you either, probably.) We come into people’s lives to save them, not to be with them, not to live with them. We come into our relationships to give the other person what they need that we already have. I mean, thank goodness we have more wisdom, or more patience, or more facts then they do. Won’t they be glad when we tell them what they’re missing?!
And we come into places like Molokai in the same way; at least I often have, and my people have as well, and probably most of yours too, all throughout history. We are fresh off the heels of Columbus Day, after all, and Thanksgiving, a day of thanksgiving from a rescued people that went on to take over the country.
So sometimes, because of how our parents and their parents have lived, or maybe because of just who we are, our default mode is one of the hero. We come to save people, from their mistakes, from their lifestyle, from their ways of thinking. We come to save these places: from their disorganization, from their too rural countryside, from their difficult animals and plants.
And, in our rescuing, we forget to stop, to appreciate, to look around. And most of all, we forget to be silent. We forget to close our mouths and close our phones. Instead we talk, we check things, we explain. We explain to people how life would be better if they had more than two grocery stores, or if they did their roadwork on a more regular schedule.
Of course we all love to help, and it’s not always a bad thing. (After all, it’s what kept me alive that summer my AC went out, when I walked in front of that car, or when I broke down on the side of the road.)
But in this season of Advent now, let’s remember who can actually do the saving. And let’s keep our wonderful knowledge and our know-it-alls and our many varied restaurants to ourselves, and come just to sit.
So that’s what we did, for a while. We stopped, drawn in by that purple highland view, pulling over and out. And the breeze hit our face on the beach that stretched out along the east coast, looking so close to Maui that we could swim to it, where the local fisherman congregated and gave us the shakas when they left, passing us in their old, dark colored trucks.
The waves, made heavier by the winter currents, flashed foam in the sand divots left by our footprints, and animals that are likely rarely disturbed, lived, not for us, but for someone or something else, silent in their still homes.
Their homes were like many of the homes we passed, filled now and previously with people who consider Honolulu the big city, who know their neighbors and probably their neighbors, and their grandpa’s neighbors, and his neighbor’s neighbors.
But these people and these views don’t wait for us or want us. It is not in a state of waiting. It is complete in its solitary beaches, complete in its misty views, complete in the low mountains that surround lush valleys, and that hold almost every color in the rainbow; purple and silver bushes, red red dirt, and dying yellow grasses against the clouds.
And, every once in a while, from the balcony where we sit, in the house we finally managed to find, a whale spouts out gallons of sea water from its lungs, it’s sleek, dark back slipping back under the water’s flashing surface.
No, this place doesn’t wait for us or want us.
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