Moloka'i

Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master.

Surrounded by darkness yet enfolded in light

I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death....is the true measure of the Divine within us.

No. Grief and anger doesn’t shock me.” Catherine paused. “Rachel, do you remember that day at the convent when we saw the old biplane? Remember what I said?” Rachel laughed without amusement. “I don’t even remember what I said.” “’Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom He has given wings.’ I recall that so precisely because I’ve had time to consider my error.” She smiled. “God didn’t give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up. I’ve come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death…is the true measure of the Divine within us. Some, like Crossen, choose to do harm to themselves and others. Others, like Kenji, bear up under their pain and help others to bear it. I used to wonder, why did God give children leprosy? Now I believe: God doesn’t give anyone leprosy. He gives us, if we choose to use it, the spirit to live with leprosy, and with the imminence of death. Because it is in our own mortality that we are most Divine.

...she bid me to look out on the lawn at the leper girls who were running on lame feet, playing croquet with crippled hands. "There is beauty," she said, "in the least beautiful of things.

Learn how to smile in the cannibal pot and life will be so much easier.

But it's a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life." -Damien

No land is more beautiful, and therefore more powerful. That is what I believe in, Aouli. I believe in Hawai'i. I believe in the land." -Haleola

What's it like? Being married? Cold feet. Middle of the night you're sleeping, suddenly, wham, you've got ice cold feet warming themselves on the back of your legs.

After a while the fear became a constant, cold companion, a simple fact of existence.

An aching vacuum inside her sucking the air from her lungs. She hung her head and wept fiercely, the emptiness inside her growing larger not smaller; she felt as though it would grow so large it would suffocate her just as surely as the sea would have

She had never been afraid of the dark, but then she had never known a dark like this before.

Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom He has given wings? I recall that so precisely because I've had time to consider my error. God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up. I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death...is the true measure of the Divine within us. Some choose to do harm to others. Others bear up under their pain and help others to bear it.

...and all they could do was sit, sleep, eat, and be reminded day after day, night after night, of their disease and eventual death.

None of the patients could say the experiments didn't yield some benefits. It was the way the experiments were conducted that grated: with cold, clinical detachment. Masks, gloves, and carbolic acid were the order of the day fora ll staff, and while this may have been prudent it only made isolated people feel even more isolated.

They toured the new hospital, the renovated and expanded McVeigh Home, and the (named without apparent irony) Bay View Home for the Blind and Helpless.

she would follow her father over the horizon and down the other side, where the world lay hidden.

Then Rachel said, "Mama used to tell me that God saw everything, knew everything, even what was in our hearts." "Yes," Catherine agreed, "especially there." "So, He'd know, wouldn't he, what kind of pain was in your mama's heart when she took that medicine." She didn't wait for a reply. "So why can't you trust that God knows enough not to blame her for what she did.

And sometimes she would dream again of being Namakaokahai'i, her waves rolling across burled coral beds, scattering moonlight, cresting higher and higher the farther she traveled over the reef. She was a colossus of water and motion soaring toward the black crescent of 'Awahuua Bay, her soul perched on the curling lip of the wave, riding it in the only way she could now; she felt the mana, the power in her waves, felt the rumble in her ocean depths.....

How stupid could she be to think a clean person would love her -- would risk death and decay and banishment for love!

Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom He has given wings.'...God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up...I've come to beliece that how we choose to live with painm or injustice, or death. . . . is the true measure of the Divine withing us. Some, like Crossen, choose to do harm to themselves adn others. Others, like kenji, bear up under their pain and help others to bear it. I used to wonder, why did God give children leprosy? Now I believe: God doesn't give anyone leprosy. He gives us, if we choose to use it, the spirit to live with leprosy, and with the imminence of death. Because it is in our own mortality that we are most Divine.

God didn’t give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up. “I’ve come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death . . . is the true measure of the Divine within us.

I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death...is the true measure of the Divine within us. Some, like Crossen, choose to do harm to themselves and others. Others, like Kenji, bear up under their pain and help other to bear it.

By now the streets of Kalaupapa were filled with people racing for high ground - sick people crying "Tsunami!" as nature played yet another mean trick on them, God's last best joke at their expense. It was, after all, April Fool's Day.

- he took her in his arms and cradled her; offering her not God's comfort but his own, merely human, consolation.

It slowly dawned on the volunteers that they were not patients but subjects; separated from their friends and community in Kalaupapa, they felt like outcasts among outcasts.

There is beauty in the least beautiful of things.