Love does change everything and my life drastically changed for the better and highest the day I met and consequently fell in love with Patrick Feren. My most distinct recollection of those first few days of meeting Patrick was when I upon leaving his acting studio, (We met in New Mexico, when I was his acting student.) turned around looking back at him at the end of the hallway and I said something like thank you for such and such. He simply said, “24/7, Rita,” meaning he would always be there for me.  And, he has been ever since.

Another recollection was about two months before I ever met him formally. He was presenting at an actors’ gathering. I remember seeing him in the front of the room. Something within me jumped in recognition. I remember thinking, I will get to know this guy.

What you might not know about us is that I wrote a screenplay about three years before we met that followed our relationship almost to the T. I wouldn’t know until much later how powerful the subjective mind can be. As Ernest Holmes wrote, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed. From a knowledge of mental action, we know that a constructive idea planted or buried in the subjective mind, tends to grow into a real condition.”

I celebrate Patrick Feren today over 20 years later. I am so grateful to share my life with him. I have to say that we grew up together. We learned to live fully, to take risks, to support ourselves fully, to fulfill a dream we both had collectively and individually and mostly to come to know God through our practice of the Science of Mind and Spirit. I am eternally grateful to Patrick for bringing me into this great mystic teaching.

Yes, we live an amazing life, but it was never a bed of roses. We struggled. We had seeming failures. We spent nights crying. We were in poverty. We’ve been sick. We’ve even fought at times.  Can you believe that???

However, one thing we always knew through all of it, is that our relationship wasn’t any of these things. It had a Divine destiny that we were living together. Our relationship based in unconditional love went beyond us out into the world making changes, changing other lives, bringing love, changing ourselves.  I am so grateful that I took the risk 20 years ago to change everything I knew about life that wasn’t working for me, yet felt comfortable, and jump into the new, the unknown, the right.

Love is a journey back to ourselves. It shows up in our relationships. When we look and feel them truly, we can see who we truly are. We can keep them the same or change them. We can let go or we can stay.

Happy Birthday to the most amazing Spiritual Being I know. I love you Rev. Patrick! I am so grateful you were born. There is a song called “Amazing Things.” Yes, you are doing amazing things and you will continue to do amazing things…forever and ever-expanding.

Listen to “AMAZING THINGS” HERE

Love and Aloha from your other WHOLE.

Rev. Rita