Prayer Wheel

A meditation on life. Tibetan prayer wheels are devices for spreading spiritual blessings and well being.

Traveling to One’s Vision

Each time I have connected with Puanani Burgess, she has gifted me with a story. I share her gift with you….

The photo is attributed to Ama Johnson and Monte Costa.

This is a photograph of the Hokule’a, the long distance canoe that has carried us back and forth to our place of origin in the Pacific. It is the canoe that Hawaiians, having been taught by our cousins in the Pacific from the Satawals, to navigate without instruments, like our ancestors, that has traveled over thousands of miles by being able to read the winds, waves, sky, birds and other animals. I use it to talk about the difference between vision and mission. Nainoa Thompson, the Hawaiian who was taught to navigate in the old way, stood for hours and days at a lookout on O’ahu, being exhorted by Mau Pialug, the Master Navigator, to look beyond the horizon, to see as far as Nainoa could to be able to see the island that he was going to, especially if he’s never been there before. Mau explained that unless Nainoa could see the island he was going to that he has never been to before, that he would never be able to get there. It seems to be a paradox, but it isn’t. You need to see where you’re going clearly, or you can never get there – that seeing is the vision. The canoe that you build to get there and the crew and supplies you put into the canoe are the mission – the way you get to the vision. I thought you would appreciate seeing this photograph. Whenever I see how small that canoe is and how vast the ocean is, I realize what an enormous feat of heart, mind, spirit and body it is to travel the long distance to one’s vision.

Let’s LABEL our entries in this blog

Please join us in adding labels (tags, categories) to your entries in this blog. There’s a space for labels at the bottom of your “new entry” page. You can make up your own, but the more we use shared labels, the easier it will be to search the gallery for the type(s) of creations we’re most interested in. We offer the labels below for your reference:

• REALITY STATE – non-fiction, fiction, imagineering*, magical realism**
• TIME – past, present time, future, other time***, timeless****
• MEDIUM – text, graphic, video, audio
• LITERATURE – novel, poetry/lyrics, short story, creative non-fiction, drama, humor, prose poem, myth, literature
• VISUAL ART – painting, drawing, sculpture, graphic, electronic art, other visual art
• VIDEO/PERFORMANCE – dance, performance, presentation, animation/flash, videographic poem, movie
• AUDIO – music, spoken word, nature sounds
• NONFICTION – commentary, reflection, instructional essay, human interest, journalism, developments/trends, review
• ANNOUNCEMENTS – announcement, classified ad, educational opportunity, award/contest, resource(s), proposal, reference/biblio/link(s), organization, activity
• INTERACTIVE – ritual, prayer, game, virtual reality, interactive

Blogger doesn’t let us post more than 200 characters in the Label field, so it may take several postings for us to get all these listed in the “labels” column in the right-hand margin….

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* imagineering – writing about the future as if it has already happened in a way that empowers and/or invites people to live into that future; fiction that ultimately intends to be non-fiction

** magical realism – seemingly realistic seamlessly mixed with magical elements

*** other time – fictional or other-dimensional worlds with their own time

**** timeless – talking about something eternal or simply without reference to its past, present, and future