[Prefatory Note: This poem was initially published in TRANSCEND Media Service (TMS) on April 14, 2025. It is by the Hawaiian poet, Puanani Burgess, who also engages in healing and reconciliation activities. It made me think that we who have brought children into the world have often been complacent when it comes to giving them names, which can be lifelong gifts or unwanted challenges. When we name our child it ideally manifests love and our hopes, offering guidance at the unconscious levels of being, and if lucky, of becoming, telling us of who we are and wish to be. I thank Puanani Burgess for making me think of naming as our initial, sometimes pre-natally expressed, act of parenting.]
Choosing My Name
Puanani Burgess
When I was born my mother gave me three names:
Christabelle, Yoshie, and Puanani
Christabelle was my “English” name,
My social security card name,
My school name,
The name I gave when teachers asked me for my “real” name
A safe name
Yoshie was my home name
My everyday name,
The name that reminded my father’s family
That I was Japanese, even though
My nose, hips, and feet were wide,
The name that made me acceptable to them
Who called my Hawaiian mother kuroi mame (black bean),
A saving name
Puanani is my chosen name
My piko name connecting me back to the ‘āina
And the kai and the po’e kahiko
My blessing, my burden,
My amulet, my spear
Puanani Burgess
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Hawaiian Word Definitions:
- kuroi = black
- ‘aina = land
- piko = belly button
- kai = ocean
- po’e kahiko = ancestors
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“Choosing My Name” is a poem written by Hawaiian author, Puanani Burgess. It can be found in her book, Growing Up Local: An anthology of poetry and prose from Hawai’i.
Puanani Burgess (1947 -2024) was a poet, priest, aunty, and friend to many. She was a community activist in the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement for over fifty years. As the designer and facilitator for Building the Beloved Community – a process that brings ceremony, storytelling, and circles of trust and respect – Aunty Pua shared Native Hawaiian practices throughout the world to bring healing and reconciliation. She served as the Myles and Zilphia Horton Chair for the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee and as a community scholar in residence at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawai’i. Aunty Pua was an ordained Zen Buddhist priest in the International Daihonzan Chozen-ji.
“You want to make a difference? Then start by looking within.” – Aunty Puanani Burgess
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
An eminently elegant post! Thank you (Mahalo…Arigatoo Gozaimasu), Dr. Falk.
Dear Professor Falk,
Kids are lost, generation after generation, here in the US, because there is no human order in the upbringing of youth in caretakers’ and public settings care due to the American state religion and its cults and sects. It will take a load of interfaith effort and individuals to correct this, with minimal resources, since they already have all the resources available. They do not have doctors and nurses on call (for their local population), and they will need to hire a wide range of qualified individuals for the care of the abused children/child population by the cults and sects (generation after generation).
In all reality:
Children need to be under public oversight and medical oversight daily and mandated health oversight that can monitor child abuse and neglect, which is IMPOSED on families BY THE CULTS AND SECTS OF THE AMERICAN STATE RELIGION and their diabolical energy because them and their lay-people are accursed and have Devil himself and diabolical energy among themselves because they abuse the Ancient and Apostolic Church Order. Still, we all must continue (as humans) among and with them. BUT HOW? They are in diabolical order (“ecclesiastical” and civil diabolical order), as humans.
Diabolical Abuse of the Ancient and Apostolic Church Order means death to the human continuation, and they all can read the 1909 Berlin Declaration and what all that meant and why, and all happenings before and after that.
I would submit them to the Orthodox Rabbis, who understand what is going on, and what society and humans need to continue and not come to a complete end and collapse among and with the wicked and accursed.
Also, they are getting rid of the students left and right, which means they are getting rid of science, research, and human progress just as well.
What will they do about Nuclear Warming and nuclear destruction of the protective planetary layers, which have created oceanic Mass / Global Heat and Temperatures that are getting out of control?
They will regret that they have kicked out Abrahamic, and in human conscience and spirit, students and have interrupted their studies and the students’ continuation.
In all reality: Obnoxious lay-people are in diabolical foolishness, in whores and spirit of the whores — whore fakkers they are and are stupid – their confusion and wickedness are in plain sight to anyone who has conscience.
Be in disbelief whenever you can. Who and exactly what are they targeting—WITHOUT STOP? Can they be stopped? And exactly why?
They need to stop prosecuting academics and students. Protests are not nice, and the diabolical circumstances of the entire human continuation are not nice either.
Human continuation can be irrevocably destroyed, gone, just because they are eliminating the students, and that for irrational reasons.
They cause grave harm to humans in their existential contexts, irrevocably.
They will NEVER BE FORGIVEN, by any means– they will be accursed. They are in diabolical gospels and works of it.
K.F.
Dear Professor Falk,
The link I did not include:
AMERICAN STATE RELIGION
Kundalini Warning (FULL) — Andrew Strorm – YouTube
THE CULTS AND SECTS OF THE