“When things look the worst, that is the time we can do our best work.” That is a quote from Ernest Holmes – the teacher, healer and great mystic. Why would it be so? I am pondering this now, as I have been bombarded this week with “the worst.”

I believe that we do our best work because we are forced into it. If we choose to accept the call, we are forced to go very deep into ourselves to connect with something greater and more powerful than what we are experiencing. We are forced to surrender into the mystery that we cannot understand in the moment. We are forced to trust – to have faith.

In this surrender, what occurs for me is a deeper understanding of what is true. Something within me – call it Spirit, call it God sits with me and holds me in its embrace. Perhaps this is Grace. Yes, I think that is what it is and Grace can only be understood in complete surrender.

I believe that the Universe is always our my side. It is always calling us deeper and deeper if we listen. I also believe that pain and joy are two sides of the same coin. We cannot experience one without the other and it is all in how we look at it. Joy is pain and pain is joy.

I believe in life and it eternality. I feel it and know it is true. If we can “fling our thought out into the limitless sea of receptivity, letting go of all moorings…” I believe we do receive the “greatest reward.”

That reward is a knowing that is deep and, although it might be shaken here and there, it can never leave us. We are life. We are Wholeness. We are Unity. We are connected forever and ever.

The deep loss of losing someone close to us is enveloped in a shroud of love and peace and deep comfort. It’s there in our feeling of helplessness, of despair, of loss. It is there. It never goes away. I trust this. We get to call on it whenever we require it. It answers. I am grateful. Amazing Grace how sweet it is.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita