One night years ago, I found myself sitting in a Puna shack staring at a glowing lantern on a table. It was one of those spool tables that hippies and college students always have.
Five friends of mine and I were sitting with a lady astrologer who was about to give a reading. Her angelic face shined from the lantern, she smiled and bid us join hands and close our eyes.
What she said then moved me and I was transported to another place. This is what she said:
“Aloha everyone, surround yourself with light and then picture that light surrounding the room, now surround the neighborhood with your light. Now send the light around our whole island. Feel the white light encircling the whole world. Now surround the solar system and now have your light go out to the stars and beyond, surrounding the universe with healing light.”
I was carried away. I don’t remember anything else that night, just that opening prayer.
It was what they used to call New Age, it felt good, like how aloha is supposed to feel. Nowadays it might be considered hippie-dippie, but I think we need a little hippie-dippie right about now.
We need what the hippies had at Woodstock, where 300,000 people sat in the mud and rain, hugging each other, feeding each other and clapping to the music. A quarter million people huddled together and not one bad vibe.
It was a time of dancing freely and laughing, one brief shining moment when more than half the country shared a single vision. A time of open arms and innocence, when the world was one big playground.
Boy, we could really use that right now. Back then they called it peace and love, here we call it aloha and it is alive, it’s just sleeping. Time to wake it up.
We now see this strange violence erupting in our country, like a dark cloud moving through towns and cities. We see the flags at half mast, lowered much too often.
It is time to join hands and start sending our light to those across the way. Time to take a moment and put our hearts together and send our light to the people and places that are in shock all over our land.
Surround those poor, grieving churches with your light. Surround the saddened schools with light, the Las Vegas concert arena with light, and all the city streets where innocent kids fell, with healing light. Send it to light the darkness in our own neighborhoods, make Hawaii aloha again.
Send light to melt ignorance and fear and to dissolve the differences between us. Have it change the Second Amendment, to give us the right to bear love to our fellow man.
Let’s join hands around this old spool table we call the world and send out our healing light and aloha.
We need it now more than ever.
Dennis Gregory is an artist, writer and musician who mixes truth and humor in his biweekly column. He can be reached at makewavess@yahoo.com