Ke Alahou, Volume I, Number 5, 1 ʻApelila 1980 — "The Great Adventure" [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

"The Great Adventure"

by The Rev. Abraham Akaka (February 24, 1980, concJensed for Ke Alahou)

Through the ages the grea{ adventure for men and nations has been to seek life and light, to struggle against sin and evil, to expand the parameters of their existence, to uplift and enrich their times. In Answer to this elemental quest of Man, Jesus was sent from God's Love — "that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have abundant and everlasting life." -■■■■■ : ■< V- - - Perhaps the greatest sailing adventure to salvage a saving remnant from a doomed world was that of Noah. Christianity and Crisis points out that ~ in a time mueh like ours — when people lived as if they were gods and goddesses unto themselves, forgetting the Creator and Sovereign giver of the Moral Law over all Creation and thus doing evil continually, — Noah built an Ark — a boat that could survive the geocidal flood that was coming. Skeptics ridiculed Noah,

But our Lord Jesus always gives mankinei a ehoiee — the ehoiee of being a victim or a victor. ...

laughed him to scorn — as many ridicule eco!ogical missionaries now, For Noah to succeed in shifting the attitudes back to anthropocentric values was too mueh to expect, It required conversion of the deepest kind concerning the immediate and ultimate meaning of life. So the skeptics as well as the innocents of that time drowned — while the prophet of doom who believed in God and lived by God's leading survived. Today, the problem is not only that of how people treat eaeh other, but also how human beings treat other life. In the story of Adam and Eve, God placed them in the Garden of Eden to dress and keep it — to manage it well, to keep it ecologically sustainable. Man today is very successfully making this planet ecologically unsustainable, whieh may necessitate a new kind of Noah's Ark, a Space Canoe bound for another planet. But our Lord }esus always gives mankind a ehoiee — the ehoiee of being a victim or a victor. We will be victims if we are obsessed with self. We willbe victors if our eoneem is for others and our planet. Even if we build space islands to hang beyond the polluted atmospheric shore of this earth — what poor substitutes that would be to picking opihi at Nahiku, surfing at Wainie'a Bay. hiking and skiing in the Rocky mountains, fishing for salmon fn Alaska. looking over the vast grain fie!ds of our own middle west and mainland Ohina. And so the ancient urge to adventure* continues in our generation that was in Abraham long ago. When people think of great voyagers and adventures. they usually 'lhink of t"he great"age of exp!oration and empire building — when Italian-born Christopher Columbus in 1492 discovered America andopened the aew vvorld to Ihe use of Europeans. when Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan bo!dly sailed his small saiiing craft across faraway seas and became the first man to sail around the world. But brave as Magellan and Columbus and others

were in thelr time we native Hawaiians are proud and grateful for our ancestors who about a thousand years before Magellan and Columbus were sailing their double-hulled canoes thousands of miles from Kahiki to Hawaii and back again. They, like Abraham long ago, had eome to this new land of promise — bringing with them their plants and animals, their skills for establishing their life in this new homeland, seeking to build ā more stable and enduring life with the help of their gods. We owe a debt of deep g.ratitude to the members of our Polynesian Voyaging Society who have sought to recover some of the ancient knowledge and skills of" our kupunas in eanoe building and navigating by building a counterpart of the first dquble-hulled canoes name "Hokule'a." The first voyage of the Hokule 4 a in 1976 was successful. The second voyage in 1978 met with tragedy when the "Hokule'a" was swamped in high seas. The lot of the pioneer in every age is one of trial and success, trial and error — until there are no more errors. The Land of Promise is always a strange country — a land mto whieh the pioneer goes — without knowing exāctly where he is going. But though the exact destination is not clear, the purpose usually is. God giveus Hawaiians, and the whole humanrace. another ehanee to write another and better chapter in the history of oiir native Hawaiiān people, tobuild another

. . . . The "Hokule'a" is symbolic of this ehoiee —

decade better than the last one. The "Hokule'a" is symbolic of this ehoiee — put to Noah and the skeptics of that pre-f!ood day, piit to Abraham and his tribe of ancient times, put to kupunas w'hen they first set out to find newlartd on whieh to settle. Will we-flfove to actualize the dream, 6r do we }ust let it fade away? As we face a new and uncharted decade. the same opportunities and challēnges that face other races and natiohs face us. This issiie of Polynesian existence is a enieial one. What happbns to Polynesi»n life and our land, to our lifestyles artd 6ur use of the lands we still possess? Crucial decfsiohs men and nations are making today are not being formed in a vacuum. but in the vortex of vlolence. And in this storm, God gives us the ehoiee of etther healmg or holocaust. The resurrectioii of our T,ord lesus Christ, means that we Polynesians em rise from the dead atid respond to new opportitnities in overy field. Our new Department of Hawaiian Affairs ean stimulate home aijd business ownership among"our nafive people. The newcensus canrestore idenfity to and give us the oppoftunity to suhive and peryst as a people in qur homeland. This ean help us td*be heard in the pol!tkal and economid arenas. \vork mole effectivelv with all other races in rfevelopinc "THF !

ALOHA STATE.. . THE ALOHA NATION. . . THE ALOHA WORLD" — a world of international stability rather than upheaval, The Hokule'a might also inspire the composition of sojne nevv sopgs and dances. So like Noah, Abraham, Columbus, Magellan, our kupunas, and other great adventurers of the past — we turn to Him who is Sovereign over,alLCreation, who sets the Stars in their places, and shelters us from thē stormy blast. Grant safe journeying for the Hokule'a and crew, for planet eartK .and its passengers, to give Light and Life to all geople*