Haleakala

 

Haleakala

“Simply I learned about Wisdom, and ungrudgingly do I share – her riches I do not hide away; For to men she is an unfailing treasure; those who gain this treasure win the friendship of God, to whom the gifts they have from discipline commend them.”  Wisdom 7:13-14

            Steve and I came to Maui with an extremely special “divine” activity lined up – seeing the resurrection-reminiscent sunrise over the Haleakala crater. Our attempt at “divine” provided a little “simple wisdom” I can ungrudgingly share.

            Following book, blog, and pamphlet recommendations, we woke ourselves, and our children, up at 2:30am the morning after a full day of travel. Then drove the 2-hour journey south from our hotel to the Haleakala National Park. The jewel of the park is at the peak of the volcanic mountain Haleakala “The House of the Sun”, and what the guidebooks and websites declare is a sunrise experience that should set any of your spiritual wrongs aright. It did help set a few of my many spiritual wrongs aright, but not in the way the guidebooks predicted. I’ve learned. Simple wisdom: Books, pamphlets, and advertisers make holy-path right-setting sound prettier, faster, and more spectacular than it really is.

            Waking children, husband, and self up at 2:30am after a full day of travel is one way of learning this simple wisdom: no body fares well on too little sleep – especially parents. However, being “religious extremists” that we are, we had read much ahead of time and at least knew that we were venturing into an extremely early, extremely cold, extremely beautiful sunrise experience and we were extremely determined, extremely expectant to be immersed in an extremely divine sunrise experience. Without coffee. Side note: this dear beloved child of God is an “instant human, just add coffee” sort in the morning. I'm an early riser, but before coffee (and sometimes even after), I am not divine and should not attempt anything divine in nature. Alas, at 2:30am when we woke, nobody was making coffee, not even me.

            The sunrise was spectacular. I can honestly write that I saw a ribbon of soft glowing rose trim along the black horizon ridge around 6am. The ribbon widened and brightened over the dark jagged silhouettes of crater edges, and soft billows of foggy clouds below. Around 7am, the sun, a pinpoint laser beam, broke through the rose trim at first, then gradually altered the dark skies from deep blues and purples into shades of guava juice pinks that color-shifted from Mai Tai, to champagne, to mimosa variations of orange-yellows. Soft clouds and edgy crater silhouettes were colorfully drunk with sunbeams.

            But, such an incredible view and experience, was very “spiritually distracted” by the noisy pile of tourists at the main outlook point vying with phone cameras, elbows, tripods, foot-long telephoto lenses, and vigorous hopping activity to get both the most clear photo-op and warmth through movement. I was shivering my coffee-less ‘okole off behind many of them, attempting to comfort my crying, frozen, tired 6 year-old who really never wanted to be dragged into THIS extreme divine experience in the first place. As she put it on the airplane: “I can’t wait to get to the beach, lay down in the sand, and RELAX!”  Simple wisdom learned: My 6 yr old instinctively knows how to seek the divine and find it easily, with far less hassle. Childlike simple ways (not extremist) are the gentle path into the divine.