Aloha all! This year I wanted to remember Ty in the most special way possible, which I realized was to float a lantern for him in the largest Buddhist Lantern Floating Ceremony outside of Asia. The specialness of the ceremony is incredibly hard to articulate in words or in pictures. Imagine how it feels to wade into the warm Hawaiian ocean as the sun sets with thousands of fellow humans around you, all honoring those we have lost.
There was a small group of five of us with CommuniTy, but we were amongst tens of thousands of our Honolulu community. We saw old friends and made many new friends! We didn’t officially volunteer through the organizations who run the massive event (Shinnyo-en and Nā Lei Aloha Foundation) because then we would not have been able to float a lantern. However, we stayed for awhile after the ceremony ended and picked up trash on the beach left behind.
Afterwards, a few of us actually got interviewed on what the ceremony meant to us, and we of course talked about CommuniTy and Tyler’s story. Then we got ice cream and “talked story,” as they say here, about those we have lost and loved, and how we can always honor their legacy in spirit! The experience was extremely special, peaceful and powerful. Ty would have loved it.
-Rachel Saul
View past CommuniTyler events in Honolulu: 2014
