Living Lands of Hawai'i
Broken by the US military, a Hawaiian park ranger finds healing in a living volcano.
After 23 years in the US military left him broken, Native Hawaiian park ranger Keoni Kaholoaʻā finds healing in Kīlauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes, and in Pele, the elemental deity who lives within.
Kīlauea, on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, sometimes erupts as often as every few weeks. New land is still being constantly made. For Native Hawaiians, this is not geology, this is Pele, the volcano deity, elemental force of fire and creation and a living ancestor whose presence is felt in the lava, in the steam and in the volcanic rock itself. Her poetic name - 'Ka wahine `ai honua' - means the woman who devours the land.
Keoni Kaholoaʻā spent his youth in the remote Waipiʻo Valley but was told by his family that there was nothing there for him. He left Hawaii at seventeen to join the US Army. Over twenty-three years of service, including two tours in Iraq, he gave everything he had to the military. When they discharged him, he came home broken and not knowing how to survive.
What he found, slowly, was a deeper connection to the volcano, and through it, a relationship with Pele. This relationship set him on a path to healing.
On this journey, Keoni remembered his grandmother telling him, years before, the meaning of their family name - Kaholoaʻā - flow of jagged rock. At the time, he moved on without thinking about it. It took years of sitting in this landscape, listening, feeling, learning, before he started to understand what it means and how it connects him to Pele.
Journalist Charlie West walks with Keoni through Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and hears the story of what it means to find himself in the land and its maker - a force responsible for destruction and creation, in equal measure.
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Heart and Soul
Personal approaches to religious belief from around the world.