Thursday, our Emmaus Encounters: Building Community on the Road pilot/planning group explored Hawaii’s monarchic history and political present-day. We visited Washington Place, Hawaii’s historic governor’s mansion, and the setting of deposed Queen Liliuokalani’s house arrest. We toured Iolani Palace, the only former seat of kings and queens in the US. Then, chief of staff to the mayor of Honolulu, Sam Moku, greeted our group and showed us around Honolulu Hale, or City Hall.

 

Our group learned of a rapid succession of political events in the 19th-20th Centuries: Hawaii’s unification as a nation, its emergence on the international stage, its annexation by the United States. Many countries vied for access and influence in Hawaii; so, on the one hand, who is to say what would have happened if Hawaii had been claimed by the British? French? Japanese? 

 

But on the other hand… and there’s always another hand… 

 

So many details of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy – acknowledged as a crime by President Bill Clinton in 1993 – hurt our hearts to hear. We stood feet away from the piano that Queen Liliuokalani received as a birthday gift from the same society of merchants that overthrew her two years later. We gathered in the room of her first house arrest, selected specifically because it was the hottest and least well-ventilated in the palace. 

 

From Sam Moku, we had the chance to fill out what’s becoming an increasingly clear picture of a new generation of Hawaiians, seeking to reclaim Hawaiian language, culture, spirituality, and ethics. Our group shared a sense of hopeful inspiration at this trend. Discussion in the group began to scratch the surface of the question, What are the implications of this reemergence for building community in ministry? 

 

Today is Hawaii Statehood day. We honor it as a group while also feeling an ache, having come to more deeply understand the trauma that endures in Hawaii, resulting from a coming-together that resulted not from mutual covenant, but by force.