Sunday Mālama ~ a way to explore your value of caring
‘Mālama’ is “taking care” and more: It’s the respect of stewardship, Aloha in compassion, and “helping without hurting.”
“Sunday Mālama” in our Language of Intention came from the 2007-2008 MWA Coaching program archived here.
I call Sunday Mālama my mana‘o meaning that it shares a deeper view of my thoughts, beliefs, and convictions with you, my Ho‘ohana Community.
Thus, Sunday Mālama is also an invitation to share your mana‘o if you wish to.
A sampling of titles were:
- In Search of the Ultimate Freedom
- Looking to the Source of our Hawaiian Values
- Abounding Grace: Found First in Forgiveness?
- The Open-Minded Contrarian
- You can do it for each other, why not for me?
More recent articles, continuing the Mālama exploration, are now on Talking Story in this index (which you can always access via the sidebar listing of MWA values).
We can all use a refresher with Mālama, and I have found that most Sunday mornings are a good time for me to do so: It adds perspective after I am done with my Saturdays, usually devoted, in part, to more of the practical relevance of a Weekly Review.
Mālama can lead to Mālamalama, which is the Hawaiian word for enlightenment:
In their Hawaiian Dictionary, Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert define mālamalama as the “light of knowledge, clarity of thinking or explanation, enlightenment” where those things you consider thoughtfully, and in a self-attuned way, will wonderfully become “shining, radiant (and) clear.”
Your path is an enlightened one for you when along the way you are taking care of certain things; things you can easily identify which are connected to your personal well-being. You serve them, protect them, and honor them, and in doing so you feel better. You become better along with them.
It is those things we deeply care about that are the things most important to us, and thus caring for these things —or these people —can drive us to high performance levels which take the form of unselfishness and accepting responsibility unconditionally. From Managing with Aloha:
One of the other propositions we just know to be sure, is that everything is “better” when it is healthy in mind, body and spirit. The value of Mālama urges us to be the caretaker of good health, caring for ourselves, for others and for those things that somehow cannot care for themselves.
So this Ho‘ohana Aloha backstory was prompted by my Sunday Mālama for today: A Joyful Jubilant Learning encore, about Learning My 9 Boxes ~ Meet Mr. Lincoln.
May there be a Mr. Lincoln in every student’s life.
Yes, he was nice. Yes, he was kind. Yes, he was patient. Yes, he was very, very good at explaining the mysteries of Algebra. However my breakthrough came the day that he explained something extraordinary to us. He said that math and numbers are two different things which happen to work together well, and we could use numbers for more than just math. It sounds incredibly obvious, but back then this was like a pronouncement of permission thinking sent straight from heaven.
