Mana?O?I?O, Paulele (Faith) Journeys

By James Sadler

The images that surround us give meaning to life. I have been most fortunate to have spent my life surrounded by the worlds most beautiful imageshiking the trails of ancient and modern Hawaii in my youth, a sunlit summer in Rome, and further tours, most recently culminating on a wet British Roman wall.

The stories I include here are not linked together in any particular way. They include moments in the lives of my mother and me that span the Third Reich and Republic of Germany and Hawaii, whose legends, wonders, and disappointments have deeply influenced me.

My stories are centered on one principal event in my life, the participation in the Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, simply a Jesuit spiritual program commonly called Ignatian Spirituality, which has altered my life for the better. I never once explained the program. The quotes I include from St. Ignatius of Loyola and few of his most famous devotees are intended as merely a framework. I firmly believe St. Ignatius of Loyola would have it no other way.

I am a Catholic man. I am a gay man. My faith life was first formed by Missouri Synod Lutheranism; the scars have given me the needed push to try a different, more faithful, and kinder faith. I did not initially go willingly.

These are my stories. They may bring a smile, and they may bring anger. I hope and pray they bring hope in others to try Ignatian spirituality for oneself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524509675

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by James Sadler.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2016909965

      ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-0969-9

         Softcover      978-1-5245-0968-2

         eBook      978-1-5245-0967-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Rev. date: 6/29/2016

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CONTENTS

Introduction

1.    Ke Akua Ho’omaika’I Oe Hawaii Nei

2.    Inspiration from a Tragic Queen

3.    Pig God, Mystic Bowl, Sacred Rain

4.    Home of the Goddess Pele

5.    A Tidal Wave from New England

6.    A Bitter Prussian Wind

7.    A Pause under a Wide Magnolia Tree with My Daddy

8.    The Night the Dead Marched

9.    A Mighty Fortress Is the Pastor’s Wife

10.    It’s a Good Day for an Exorcism

11.    The Call of Silence in Bodie

12.    The Roman God

13.    Go Boldly, Faithful Trekker

14.    A Lonely Prussian

15.    Who Is Coming for Tea?

16.    Cathedral Arch

17.    Dignity

18.    You Turned My Mourning into Dancing Psalm 30:11

19.    St. Anne, Help Me, I Will Become a Monk

20.    The Retreat House

21.    The Heart of St. Peter’s

22.    Sacred Stories

23.    Our Lady of Wittenberg

24.    Book Mess General Episcopalian Seminary

25.    The Wall

26.    The Magis of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

27.    Profound Cartoon Pussycats

28.    A Prayer to Blessed Martin the Reformer

29.    A Few Final Words from a Former Castaway

Introduction

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Resistance Is Futile

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola are hazardous to how you view your faith life. They confront your perceptions; they may even change your view of God forever. In the following text, I will give no details about how the Exercises are actually undertaken. To experience them is to do so on your own, in the privacy of a retreat with a skilled director. The honest truth is that St. Ignatius of Loyola is incredibly dry without two very essential ingredients, God and you. With these two, the Exercises are brought to life. The following are my stories, tales of my life, bookended with paraphrased quotes taken directly from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola that I completed formally in the summer of 2014. Here I am simply a storyteller. I add the quotes from the Exercises in hope that my readers gain the curiosity to know more about how to be, as St. Ignatius of Loyola puts it perfectly, contemplatives in action.

We ought to desire and choose only that which is more favorable to the end for which we are created.

The most important qualities in the person who enters into these exercises are openness, generosity, and courage.¹ (23:6)

I begin with a few introductory quotes with the hope that they will excite and hopefully give a smile:

Let us think about the image of a symphony, which implies accord, harmony, various instruments playing together. Each one preserves its own unmistakable timbre … indeed; the uniqueness of each is greatly enhanced. [Francis is speaking about Christian ecumenism.] (Pope Francis, October 9, 2013)

Do not forget to reflect on God’s gifts that flow naturally from human consciousness and human society such as civilization, music, art, entertainment, film, radio, radio, television, etc. (Louis M. Savary, The New Spiritual Exercises)

The dream became a reality and spread throughout the stars. (James T. Kirk, Captain of the USS Enterprise, TOS)

We had a dream, we’d go travelin’ together, We’d spread a little lovin’ then we’d keep movin’ on. Somethin’ always happens whenever we’re together We get a happy feelin’ when we’re singing a song. (The Partridge Family, 1970, opening credits)

Wherever the Jesuits go, revolution quickly follows. (William Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse)

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Ke Akua Ho’omaika’I Oe Hawaii Nei

²

[St. Ignatius of Loyola’s] worldview was firmly based on five chief truths of God’s revelation: God’s propose in creating human beings; … the Incarnation of his son; the Redemption by which Christ restored humankind to God’s grace … full satisfaction of each person’s capacities and desires in the joy of heavenly vision.³

This is an exclamation of wonder and surging emotion, uttered as I reflect on all creatures and wonder how they have allowed me to live and have preserved me in life. … Likewise, the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars and the elements; the fruits, birds, fishes, and animal? (189:2)

* * *

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,

A tale of a fateful trip

That started from this tropic port

Aboard this tiny ship.

The mate was a mighty sailing man,

The skipper brave and sure.

Five passengers set sail that day

For a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour!⁴

The view is overpowering and compelling. The vision of its loveliness is easy to bring to my mind, especially when I am faced with a bleak city day. With little effort, all I have to do is close my eyes, and the view, the beauty of Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, Hawaii, is effortless to recall. Directly in front of my now-seeing eyes and a little to the left rests Fisherman’s Island, better known to countless television viewers as the island of the distraught and wonderfully campy castaways on Gilligan’s Island. For their tropic port is the Ala Wai yacht basin at the entrance to Waikiki, just a few miles on the other side of the island. Farther on and directly behind Fisherman’s Island is Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station, a victim of the attack on Pearl Harbor. To the base’s left sits a mountain that is reminiscent of a giant mythological creature making its way to the sea. Farther on to the right begins the Koolau⁵ mountain range, falling almost perfectly vertical after their slow ascent from the other side of the island.

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At one point they exceed three thousand feet and are lost in the clouds that so often cover the windward side of the island, clouds that bring with them refreshing and cooling, virtually daily rain. These mountains are indented with deeply fluted valleys overflowing with waterfalls. Their explanation is a tale of them being carved by the massive canoes of King Kamehameha I’s army that conquered the island of Oahu in 1795. A legend of Hawaii lovingly told to me by my auntie⁶ Amy. For me, the Hawaiian god’s creation exceeds anything told in the book of Genesis. This is the view that welcomed me to Kaimalolo Place, Kaneohe,⁷ in my kingdom state of Hawaii in 1964, when I was three.

I am a self-assessed German Georgian haole. My father, an anthropologist and a colonial, first arrived in the Hawaiian territory in the 1940s, to be greeted by two Waikiki beach hotels (the Royal Hawaiian and the Moana), an active train and streetcar system, and peace. I have a cherished slide of Dad riding on the Oahu railroad in 1946 with a view just past what is now Sea Life Park on the southeast bend of the island. A picture lost in time because even the train tracks are now gone. There was in the 1940s only one lonely road to the small community of Kaneohe and then onto Kaimalolo Place, the street we did eventually settle on and where we first encountered Hawaiian mysticism. Dad was forever enchanted. Being a dedicated boy from Cartersville, Georgia, mainland USA, my father was quite proud that Hawaii literally was, at least physically, more south than the South.

To us, my father was a good and loving man; to the world, a stereotypical Southerner. The royal palace of the darky Hawaiians was off-limits to me culturally until long after his death. Sixty-two when I was born, my father died when I was ten. I have stopped telling the time line of my life because it is hard for people to process that my grandfather did indeed fight in the American Civil War. Today William, of Cartersville, Georgia, has become my great-great-grandfather for the sake of believability. Ute, my mother, can be best described as an innocent war bride. With limited English, my German-born mother was taken first to the state of Georgia (where she was enthusiastically given her first uniquely Southern compliment, I kid you not, which was Well, honey, you are better than a Yankee girl!). After the essential birth of her two children in the fatherland of Germany, for she was ever so proud of her Junker⁸ family from Danzig, Germany (Gdansk, Poland). My über-Prussian mother was taken to Hawaii when she was thirty-nine. The four of us arrived