The Man Who Planted Trees

One of the most poignant stories to provide and answer to the oft asked question, “What can one person do?”, when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds agains them, is the story of Elzeard Bouffier.  The story is called, “The Man Who Planted Trees“.   

It is a story about the efforts of one man, who set out to restore a destroyed forest that he loved so well before the destruction of World War 1 France.  

The trials and difficulties. The shear joy of the challenge. The tenacity to keep going. The vision of what could be, overcoming the odds and despair of the moment. So many lessons we can all learn from.

Read this amazing story.  Enjoy it. Meditate on it.  Mull it around as you go through each day, encountering your own personal difficulties – and bearing those of others you know well or at a glancing blow.  

Then determine to reach down, deep within your own Kukakuka'la and do what you can to be as an Elzeard Bouffier in the lives of others.

Best success and may YOUR Oaks grow mighty and strong in the replenishment of your landscape.

Kukakuka'la: on Blogspot

"Let's talk story today."

In the Hawaiian language the word - kukakuka - is used between friends, who know each other well, to encourage remembrance between friends - with open vocalization - of the events of their past.

Saying and writing the paths we've trekked, the people we've connected, the events we have survived, keeps them all freshly alive in our memory. As we tell our friends our story, it is passed on for others to know.

The Hawaiian language uses suffix endings to attribute specifics to the root.  In the case of kukakuka, to add the " 'la ", adds a time frame of the present; ie, now, today.  Thus the translation of kukakuka'la, is to say, 'Let's talk story, today.'

This specific puts an air of immediacy - urgency, if you will - into the need to sit, talk, share, story.

In this way we feed the heritage of the world in which we exist.

Kukakuka'la.

Refracted Life

A Journal of Change: Refracted Life

Just as a PRISM refracts light -cleanly separating the previously ‘white-light’ into the magnificent – and clearly obvious- variety of colors we know as the SPECTRUM.

LIFE is also refracted – separated into a ‘spectrum-of-sorts’. This spectrum – that constantly runs together due to the hectic pace of today’s life – is constructed of the TIMES, PLACES and PEOPLE that pass through our life.

The PRISM engaged in the separating … is called CHANGE.

Until light passes through a prism, we don’t really know the variety and wonder of the various parts that make up light. In the same way, we live most of our life with little true knowledge of the variety that makes up our life; the What we can be moment. We live life on a day-to-day basis, mostly in a blur. Most of the time we’re glad to just get through it at all. Little time is made available for closely examining its various parts.

Now-and-then, we get refracted.

As a result, the refractions [separations of living reality from our hectic manifestation of prejudiced perception] begin to reveal the previously hidden elements of life and enable us opportunity for a glimpse into how our refracted life, reflects upon others.

It is Change – in our lives – that acts as our agent of vision. It is Change that brings clarity. It provides us a narrow glimpse of the variety of life; what it is; and the power the reflections produced have in the lives of other people.

It is the refraction of life that shows us the rainbow of possibilities.