Orthodoxy and Hawaiian Culture
April 5th, 2010 | 3 Comments
In a Bright Monday interview with Matushka Jenny, Michael Odegaard explains the appeal of Eastern Orthodox Christianity for native Hawaiians. A convert to Orthodoxy who traces his Hawaiian lineage back 96 generations, he predicts a beautiful coming together of worlds as these two ancient cultures find each other.
Topics include:
- Liturgy as Hula
- Relics and Mana
- Ecology and Faith
- Life as Sacrament
- Individualism and Community
April 21st, 2010 at 5:05 pm (#)
For hundreds of millions of years all the lands on planet earth were covered with ice and all of the living things were forced to live in the sea. No animal (including our ancestors and cousins, the sea otter) had the use of language. Thus, there were no gods. When the planet finally got close enough to the sun to melt the ice land became available and the animals made the transition to the land. Our predecessors, the female sea otters chose to live at the very tops of the giant trees to escape the snakes. To live at that height they were forced to reduce their size and weight thru rigorous diet and excercise. The male otters, however, would not diet or excercise as rigorously as the females and were thus unable to climb up to the safety of the higher, thinner branches. They were forced to live at the lower elevations were the snakes could and did prey on them. This left the human females with no males to form colonies or troops
with and thus they had no way to control territory. They were forced to live separate and solitary lives because if they were ever caught in a troops territory they would be attacked. This meant that women would have to live solitary lives far apart from each other and to do so mother and child had to separate as soon as the child had learned to survive. The only way the child could learn as much and as quickly as possible was by and through the use of language. And so the women began the development of language, the most important invention the world has ever known. Note that the human female used language for hundreds of millions of years before the human male finally was able to speak. Note, too, that when the human male finally learned to talk he almost immediately began lying. The women were anguished at the males for lying because there was no reason to lie. Yet the males persisted so the women would banish the males from their camps by driving them away. Nevertheless, the males continued to lie and one of those lies were that there were such things as gods, devils, angels and miracles. Note that for almost a billion years there were no such things as gods. It is only after the human male learned to talk (and lie) that religion began.
April 21st, 2010 at 5:29 pm (#)
Interesting theories, Kamana… Good to meet you though. Are you in Kona?
May 18th, 2010 at 6:20 pm (#)
All he says is so true—orthodoxy is an organic faith–connected to the WHOLE man– the WHOLE universe–a “whole-istic” faith–one of the primary reasons I converted.