Letters for Tuesday — December 21, 2004

• Zonta mahalo

• Winter Solstice

• Off to Iraq

• Life and abortion

Zonta mahalo

Mahalo; Garden Island/Zonta Elderly Affairs.

What a wonderful, thoughtful, and pleasant surprise! On Dec. 16th, I received a visit; at my senior housing-unit from Patricia, a worker and representative of Elderly Affairs; presenting me with a most welcome and appreciative, $50.00 K-Mart gift card!

Patricia informed me, that the $50 K-Mart gift card, was also on behalf and in conjunction with: “The Garden Island/Zonta’s Christmas gift and snack fund!”

P.S.” I am “Sam”, the senior; at senior housing, whose story you told in the Fri. Dec. 17th issue of The Garden Island. And, although the name “Sam” is fictitious, your gift was real — as real as Christmas and Santa Claus! Mahalo, Nui Loa Ke Akua; on behalf of all of the senior “Sams and children Sams”, that your gift touched and made Christmas a lot merrier!

Aloha

“Sam”

Winter Solstice

The pre-dawn sky is barely showing light as I leave for work these winter mornings. But what a delight awaits me when I come upon the twinkle of holiday lights decorating residences and businesses; white icicle lights cascading down like snowflakes, colored bands of light spiraling up trees, dozens of creative expressions chosen to express the holiday season. Mahalo to all of you who so cheer my early morning drive.

So many interwoven threads comprise this holiday time, as we each celebrate according to our faith, our traditions, our cultures, our family practices. One of the pieces making this particular season so special for me is what I like to call a “nature holiday.” Winter Solstice is the turning of the Earth’s seasons. All during the fall, days are getting shorter, the sun is getting further away, until this shortest day of the year. Then we see the cycle turn, the days gradually lengthen, and the sun’s warmth come to us again.

Among all of your other celebrations, remember this Tuesday, Dec. 21, the day of Winter Solstice. Take a little time to spend with nature. In whatever way you give thanks to the Creator of Life, you may want to include a little gratitude for these ever turning cycles and patterns of movement of the Earth and Sun, which create the conditions enabling us to live on this amazing planet.

Maile Janai

Waimea

Off to Iraq

How can a little one be made to understand? My daddy’s gone off to a foreign land. To fight an enemy he or she is told. But still being so small there is no enemy; their little minds could conceive or hold. Whom is an enemy, who a friend?

To children all people are people, just big or small, too thick or thin. God bless their souls, when they ask why? Will daddy return and if so when? As time by itself, has no bearing at all, to these little friends. With each new day, there brings new hope. For there too is pain and hidden suffering for the mother.

As hope is difficult, faith is lacking. Hearing the worst, trying to believe the best. The home front battle is surely more then a simple test. So take that child, and show her the morning sky. After the previous nightfall had said good-bye. Ask her or him if they see the stars. Same of the mother do you see the planets, with mars. No, the small one says they are gone. I say yes, but you are wrong.

The stars are there, even if you can’t see. That is the way by faith, you see. That you and your mommy must believe, of the return of your soldiering daddy. For faith is believing, in something unseeing. Like unto God that you pray, before a night of sweet dreaming. So this night pick out a bright star my little one.

Cast your wish upon it and pray. And even although you cannot see it each day, it will be there. Like that of you daddy, will come home and forever will stay. As great faith with prayers, can cast firm mountains to fall into seas. God will hear and bring home another soldiering daddy.

Jerry Long

Lihu‘e

Slow down and look

Tis the season to be merry and most of the time I am but recently my second cat got hit by a car and died.

I live on Kalihiwai Beach and when the surf is up it is packed. I have nothing against surfers because I have two sons that surf. All I ask is when driving please watch the road and not the surf.

I have small grandchildren and keiki that cross the road. I just want everybody who comes down to enjoy the beach and please respect the families who live here and go slow and don’t trash the beach, don’t break your beer bottles, don’t burn of sear the trees, don’t drive on beach unless fishing, it’s a state law. We must preserve the beach for future generations.

Chris Pa

Kalihiwai

Life and abortion

We tend to frame our discussions about life within the cultural milieu we are involved in. But having a perspective on history may give us a more sober insight into how we got where we are. So it is with the dramatic case of abortion. Abortion has been around from the beginning of time; sometimes it is an event that happens without choice, as in the tragedy of miscarriage. Bearing a child takes a toll on a women’s body, physically and mentally. The sacrifice has always been greater to women over their life spans. While men have very little responsibility for bearing children, women know that it is not as simple as having a baby-it is supporting a human being over the entirety of life and being there for them.

It makes no difference if abortion is legal or illegal, you see. It is because poor women were dying as the result of desperate measures to abort that this society we are in decided to mitigate the tragedy. The rich and well-connected will/would always get an abortion if needed. The concept of being “pro-life” is a broad spectrum, it is not simply about babies.

For an effective change to this broad spectrum we need to begin teaching children that life is conceived by an act of the imagination. In other words, life begins with a vision of what is to come. Conceiving life has no beginning; not one life has come from something dead. Without nurturing the idea that to create a life is a sacred, breathtaking experience we will keep floundering. Both girls and boys, men and women, need this vision.

Women have to be respected, and respect themselves, for the miracle that their bodies produce a baby, something lost now due to the patriarchal illusions over thousands of years.

David Richarde

Lihu‘e