LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE MARCH-SEPTEMBER ISSUE | Page 38

It was then when a spiritual experience found me on the Big Island, not
at ecstatic dance but in the volcano visitor center. Next to the brochures
was a painting of Pele, the goddess of this volcano. She lived, the
placard said, in its crater.
The painting represented her as if she were the volcano. Her long hair,
curly like my own, formed the fire rivulets that ran beneath, and
sometimes broke, the earth’s surface. She sat in the lotus position,
meditating with a Mona Lisa smile before a subterranean lava lake,
holding a flame in her hands. The goddess looked like me to me, but not
as worried.
It was the first time I saw an image of a deity and wanted to worship.
The pamphlet was right—common sense was not enough. The waves
were so big, the volcano so unpredictable, the islands so isolated, the
lava so sharp, that to live here, a person would need more than common
sense. They would need more than Pono’s pamphlets. They would need
deities.
The volcano did not care whether it communicated violently or
nonviolently. After its outbursts, nothing was processed. No workshop
could make its space safe. Gods and goddesses couldn’t help us or save
us, but they could give us someone to beg, or to blame.
*Names have been changed.

38 | P a g e