The Makahiki season is the ancient Hawaiian New Year festival, in honor of the god Lono, of the Hawaiian religion. The season is four lunar months long, from October or November until February or March. On March 18, 2019, Barbara Service joined Kahu Kaleo Patterson and Rev. Ha‘aheo Guanson and others from different religious groups at Waiawa Correctional Facility for this year’s closing ceremony.
Ha‘aheo explained that we were not an “audience” but there to support the participants. who are inmates at the prison. Others from the Cathedral who have participated in the past include Barbara Vlachros and Anne Murphy. It was a very moving ceremony, which will be long remembered.
For several years the The Cathedral, along with other parishes in the diocese, has provided financial and other support to men and women leaving prison to assist their integration back into the community, in a program called the Diocesan Prison Ministries Project. As part of its ministry, for example, they provide back packs to all prisoners when they are released, containing clothing, toiletries, and other things of use in the “real world”.
For more information on this ministry, go here.