01/29/2019
Many of our Ohana Project followers are already aware that we are no longer meeting as a Sunday community. This year we celebrate 15 years and last week we had a celebration to commemorate it. Here is one last post from Matt Echohawk Hayashi:
As I have loved you, love one another.
The kids. They started as infants, as prayers, as dreams... Back when we started in 2004, Sava, Kekoa, Kaileigh and Evayla were babes in arms and the rest of our cute horde were still just stars in the sky.
For me, the lasting image from our OP 15th anniversary/end of an era party was the huddles of kids laughing and chatting, not wanting to leave the moment they were sharing, even after we closed the doors to the Senior Center. Something about the way they were looking at each other made it so clear, they knew they were family.
His name shall be The With-Us God.
There were so many moments at that party that affirmed what the Spirit has done in the life we’ve shared for all these 15 years. And while its natural thing to focus on the times we fell short of over the years (so many times!), or on the things we should have been but were not (also a long list), last Saturday I was constantly reminded of the things we have always been: a welcome.
We’ve all been on both sides of the welcome. No score keeping, no measuring up. Just an authentic embrace reminding each other that even at our best, our accepting of each other is a mere shadow of the wild embrace of God. To hear all the stories of feeling loved and welcomed…felt quite holy to me.
I am willing. Be clean.
In some ways, Ohana Project itself was like a prayer request from the beginning. We wanted something we didn’t know was possible, and even it it was, we weren’t sure if we were the right people to do it. My favorite picture of Jesus was when he responded to the audacious statement by a l***r, that if he was willing, Jesus could heal him. Jesus reached out his hand and, defying all religious laws and sentiment, he didn’t just agree to heal him, he touched him.
We asked for a community bold enough to love each other like family, and courageous enough to not hide our faults and doubts. We asked that even in our selfishness and silliness, we might become people more like Jesus, more giving, more willing to suffer, more willing to dance. We asked for pretty radical things… looking at all of us, even us, I think Christ did reach out and touch us.
We have to celebrate and be glad, this brother of yours was dead—and is alive again.
Ohana Project has been more of a journey than an institution, or even a service. My hope has been that on that journey, we’d learn not just more about love, but how to be loving, not just about faith, but how to be faithful. In that way, I guess we were like any other church wanting Jesus to be real in their lives.
2019 is transition year for us. Things will be different, some of that change is really sad. Some, I’m sure, will be a relief. But, that transition is not the end. Just like The With Us God has been faithful to us for all these years, we will continue to be found in the peace of God. Trouble and sorrow will stay with us a bit longer, but we have tasted and seen that the LORD is good. And that goodness will follow us all our days. 2019, like all other years, regardless of what we see or perceive will be a witness to the undefineable, scandalous love of GOD.
Let us not get tired of doing good in the world.
With much aloha,
matt
