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  • Writer's pictureJaime Howell

Sweet Singing Samoa

Written in the inspiration of a victorious samoan sun that helped me through a particular cold and grievous winter in Aotearoa. Words, errors , and photos belong undeniably to Jaime Howell


Thank you to the warmth and beauty of the Samoan people and for the power in their song. It fuels a swelling to imagine and create a school for young adults, a school of belonging where young people are given access to wise elders and the awareness tools of art and vision, of leadership and cultural regeneration.



We are welcomed into our forgotten church.


Island of Savaii

In this place i heard pacific waves

the tropical father sun

the bounty of earth mother

take flight in their song,

ascending toward a Christ portrayed with white staff, lamb and skin.


The red royal tie of the ministry speaks from the pulpit

to a pool of soft brown smiles, olders and young ones, absent middle ones and small children on hard wooden benches, bewildered boys, bent headed as to what is this all about.


Leaving Sunday Church

In front of me a coral reef of immaculate white hats and dresses carries us to all the places humans touch and are touched by the Spirit.


The Spirit comes through the music

through the communitas

redemption through heart songs.

The men boom

the voices of woman swoon,

together a symphony away from the tyranny of self centeredness and the turbulent waters of a western confused grab at freedom


In all this beauty I take plunge, rewrite the story...

Heaven is not separate from the earth



The Doors to Faith

Heaven is made of earth and Adam and Eve had to leave Eden.

The Gods and Goddesses of all things brought them to the edge,

then pushed them,

a threshold, a jump shift non return moment from

chronos to kairos that we are all aire to.


Don't look to the west as messengers of flight, we have hustled progress, we got tired and fidgety on benches in the church, got skeptical in the shadows and unseen news happening outside the reaches of the clanging bells.


Maybe we became arrogant to think we could navigate free will, be master's of totality consciousness, an arising universe of mind?

Overestimating the gravity of greed and underestimating the gollam'esk drive of the dark and bent. Inducted into the communion of consumption, many of our children are lost, and most old ones live in boxes.



It made me think of the power of "Blues" music as an organic soulful refuge that can bring meaning to anyone who lives in the tyranny of an oppressive mind?

Loss touches all, death know no preference.


Samoan warm water, coral and sky

Now I find myself imagining a different kind of church

where we learn to defer gratification

learn to live with less

learn to dance well with the inevitables of pain and participate willingly, even joyfully in the sorrows


We atone for the blindness

A beach off the beaten track on Savaii
Riding the boom'in bus around the coast road

and learn to honour hurts, to see with new eyes in the blessing of the tears we shed, those two movements go together, (Honouring pain and seeing with new eyes, read Joanna Macy for that)


We are learning to be community once again. Communities of common treasure; music, breath, movement, maybe the gospel lives closer than we think.


My skin is white, raised on the privileged tits of an industrial growth society.

I've been blind and hungry my whole life

yet the redemptive spirit is a birthrite,

a royal road to belonging,

it lives in us all

deeper than language

not dependent on history and reason

not conditional on injustice, although I do not lightly pass the necessaries of atonement or pretend shit did not happen and still happens.



Passing through sunny villages, chiefs and churches

This is a time of growing up,

a time defined by a roar to take responsibility and cease creating dramas inside and out.


In this church the young adults are present.

I feel them moving their un-inhibited bodies to the wild beats of the earths rhythms.

Our aging wrinkling skins need that youth fire.

And the youth are hungry to be met.



They ache be met with demonstrations of aliveness. To swoon to swell in the mystery, to know that the olders around them are still connected to an adventurous spirit. That despite the temptations of deadening and fragmenting, you too can fuel the fires of a wild and unruly aliveness. There is more to living than any one human can ever know and it is an art of living that can dance that not knowing well.


No more sweeping awkward shapes under conforming carpets.

The house of gods and goddess are open to all, they speak in symbols and metaphors, mythopoetics in story, poem and heart songs. In spontaneous authentic movements, and a tongue brave to ask essential questions about being free.






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