Barack Obama Takes Office, So Does Aloha

In coming months President Obama will be faced with recognition of the 50th anniversary of Hawaiian statehood. It is worth reflecting on what Hawaii’s spiritual leaders at the time were hoping would happen.
On March 12, 1959, when news that the Congress of the United States had passed an act enabling Hawaii to become the Fiftieth State, many people gathered to give thanks in Kawaiahao, the old stone church in downtown Honolulu, which had been erected by the early missionaries. The next day its pastor, Reverend Dr. Abraham Kahikina Akaka (1917-1997) brother of U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, conducted a thanksgiving service in which he expressed so well the feeling of the Hawaiian people toward their new responsibilities that his speech was quickly printed and widely quoted. The text of this prophetic speech is as follows…

“ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL” — these words have a fuller meaning for us all in Hawaii today. And we have gathered in this Mother Church of Hawaii, our Westminster Abbey of Hawaii, to give thanks to God, and to pray for His guidance and protection in the years ahead.
Our newspapers have been full of much valuable historica1 data concerning Hawaii’s development and growth and aspirations. I will keep the copies of these stories as long as I live and for my children and grandchildren after them. For they have called to our minds the long train of those whose prayers and hopes and sacrifices through the years were fulfilled yesterday. There remains the formal expression of our people statehood, and the entrance of our islands into the Union as full-fledged member.
I would like to speak the message of self-affirmation this morning, that in the days ahead we take courage to be ourselves, to be the Aloha State.
On April 25, 1820, one hundred and thirty-nine years ago, the first Christian service of worship was conducted in Honolulu on this very ground. Like our Pilgrim Fathers who arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, so did the fathers of a new era in Hawaii kneel in prayer to give thanks to God, who had seen them safely on their way after a long and trying voyage.
Gathered around the Reverend Hiram Bingham on April 25, 1820, here at Kawaiahao were a few of our kupunas [grandparents, ancestors] who had come out of curiosity. The text for the sermon of that day, though it was April and Easter time, was from the Christmas story. And there people heard these words for the first time: “Mai makau oukou, naka mea, eia hoi, he hai aku nei au ia oukou i ka mea maikai, e olioli nui ai e lilo ana no na kanaka a pau. No ka mea, i keia la i hanau ai, ma ke kulanakauhale o Davida, ke oha no oukou, oia ka mesia ka haku.” “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior which is Christ the Lord.”
Although our grandfathers did not realize it then, the hopes and fears of all their years through the next century and more were to be met in the meaning and power of those words, and from that beginning a new Hawaii was born. For through those words, our missionaries and people following them under God became the greatest single influence in Hawaii’s whole development — politically, economically, educationally, socially, religiously — so that Hawaii’s real preparation for statehood can be said to have begun truly on that day one hundred and thirty-nine years ago on this spot.
Yesterday when the first sound of firecrackers and sirens reached my ears, I was with the members of our Territorial Senate in the middle of the opening prayer for the day’s session. How strange, and yet how fitting it was that the news should burst forth while we were in prayer together. Things had moved so fast. Our mayor, a few minutes before, asked if the church could be kept open, because he and others wanted to walk across the street to the sanctuary here for prayer when the news came. By the time I got back from the Senate, this sanctuary was well-nigh filled by people who happened to be near when the sirens started ringing — people from our government buildings nearby. And as we sang the great hymns of Hawaii and of our nation, and lifted up our voices in psalms and prayers, it seemed that the very walls of this church spoke of God’s dealing with Hawaii in the past, of great events both spontaneous and planned that they had seen here. For the love and power of God has been a refuge and a guide for our people through the past century and more.
There are some of us to whom statehood brings great hopes; and there are some to whom statehood brings silent fears. One might say that the hopes and fears of Hawaii are met in statehood today. There are fears that statehood will motivate economic greed toward Hawaii, that it will turn Hawaii into a great big (as someone has said) spiritual junkyard filled with smashed dreams, worn-out illusions — that it will make us lonely, confused, insecure, empty, anxious, restless, disillusioned — a wistful people.
There is an old mele [chant] that reminds me of fears such as these, and the way God leads out of these fears. “Haku’i i ka wahi o ka lua, pa i ka lani, haahaa Hawaii, moku o keawe i hanau ia… po puna, po hilo, po i ka uahi o kuu aina…. ola ia kini, ke a mai la ke ahi.” “There is a fire underground, but the fire pit gives forth only smoke, smoke that bursts upward, touching the skies, and Hawaii is humbled beneath its darkness… it is night over Hawaii, night from the smoke of my land… but there is salvation for the people, for now the land is being lit by a great flame.”
We need to see statehood as the lifting of the clouds of smoke, and the opportunity to affirm positively the basic Gospel of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. We need to see that Hawaii has potential moral and spiritual contributions to make to our nation and world. The fears Hawaii may have, are to be met by men and women who are living witnesses of what we really are in Hawaii, of the spirit of aloha, men and women who can help unlock the doors to the future by the guidance and grace of God.
Self-affirmation is the need of the hour. And we can affirm our being, what we really are, as the Aloha State by full participation in our nation and world. For any collective anxiety, the answer is collective courage. And the ground of that courage is God.
We do not understand the meaning of aloha until we realize its foundation in the power of God at work in the world. Since the coming of our missionaries in 1820, the name of God to our people has been ALOHA. One of the first sentences learned from my mother in my childhood was this from Holy Scriptures: “Aloha ke akua.” In other words, aloha is God. Aloha is the power of God seeking to unite what is separated the world — the power that unites heart with heart, soul with soul, life with life, culture with culture, race with race, nation with nation. It is the power that can reunite where quarrel has brought separation; it is the power that reunites a man with himself when he has become separated from the image God within.
Thus when a people or a person live in the spirit of aloha, they live in the spirit of God. And among such a people whose lives so affirm their inner being, we see the working of Scripture: “All things work together for good to them who love God. . . . From the aloha of God came his son that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly.”
Aloha consists of a new attitude of heart, above negativism and legalism. It is the unconditional desire to promote the true good of other people in a friendly spirit, out of a sense of kinship. Aloha seeks to do good to a person, with no conditions attached. We do not do good only to those who do good to us. One of the sweetest things about the love and aloha of God is that it welcomes the stranger and seeks his good. A person who has the spirit of aloha, loves even when the love is not returned. And such is the love of God.
This is the meaning of aloha. I feel especially grateful that the discovery and development of our islands long ago was not couched in the context of an imperialistic and exploitive national power, but in the context of aloha. There is a very deep correlation between the charter under which the missionaries came — namely, “to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to cover these islands with productive green fields, and to lift the people to a high state of civilization” — correlation between this fact, and the fact that Hawaii is not one of the trouble spots in the world today. Aloha does not exploit a people and keep them in ignorance and subservience. Rather it shares the sorrows and joys of people; it seeks to promote the true good of others.
Today, one of the deepest needs of mankind is the need to feel a sense of kinship one with another. Truly all mankind belongs together, for from the very beginning all mankind has been called into being, nourished, watched over by the love of God who is aloha. The real Golden Rule is aloha. This is the way of life we must affirm.
Let us affirm ever what we really are — for aloha is the spirit of God at work in you and in me and in the world, uniting what is separated, overcoming darkness and death, bringing new light and life to all who sit in the darkness of fear and the shadow of death, guiding the feet of mankind into the way of peace.
Thus may our ‘becoming a state mean to the nation and world; and may it reaffirm that which was planted in us one hundred and thirty-nine years ago on this ground: “Fear not for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”

- ABRAHAM K. AKAKA