Last night, my best friends beautiful daughter made her transition. It’s been a very deep and challenging week since her car accident on Sunday night. I’ve been in here in L.A. helping in any way I can. That has meant many things at different times; however, it has not meant picking up my pen and writing this blog. Today, I feel like I must communicate. If you have missed me at all, thank you for your patience.

I want to ask a question. I’ll start with a quote by our dear Ernest Holmes one of the great mystics of life. “There must come a time in our experience when we speak the conviction that is within us. This conviction of the Spiritual Universe in which we live is real and powerful. The light cannot be borrowed from another. Each has been furnished with a divine torch whose wick burns from the oil of our eternal and ever renewing substance of faith in oneself and in others.”

How can we help others in their time of need when we do not know what we stand for. There have been many tragic moments in the last few years. Nora’s transition has struck and the very core of every belief one could have, and still, I have not felt one moment of doubt in the philosophy I profess to believe in. My wick of faith is strong. Although I am grieving and feel deep pain for her passing, I am convicted in the very essence of our tenets. “We are Spiritual beings living in a Spiritual Universe governed by our use of the Law of Cause and Effect.”

In every moment I feel at an even deeper level that something greater than we know is happening right now. In the history of our planet it is the first time that the three great calamities are occurring at the same time: economic, violent conflict, climate. We are going through a massive shift in consciousness that is affecting the core of our earth along with our life here.

What I know at even a deeper level today is that we need to decide where we stand. We need to know who we are. We need to see through the conditions and turmoil to the essence of God and Spirit within ourselves and everyone else. We need to take a stand within our own hearts and ask ourselves, not “what do I believe in,” but “What do I really know?”

Right now, I do not claim to understand why a nineteen year old being of love and light, Nora left this plane of action. I do not claim to understand her parents’ pain. However, I am finding great peace in not understanding because beyond it all I know that some mystery is unfolding. As I find my place in it, not anyone elses, but  my place, I know that the answers I need will appear at the exact right time. I know I have what it takes to be me here. For this, I am so grateful.

I am grateful to be here on this plane of action. I am grateful to show up where I am needed and to live my true self in every instant. I am grateful to not understand but to have faith that all is always well and that God is in everything and that my very breath and your very breath is eternal. I remain steadfast and I know that if I am ever in need in such a way as my dear friends are right now that I do have the tools, the friends, but most of all the deep love and faith that is the very God within me to walk through it all of it with tears, love, faith all rolled together as the very fiber of me.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita