It’s Mother’s Day! I know that it is a day of many feelings. When I think of the word “mother,” I know that we have had as many different experiences with this word as there are people on this planet. The idea of mother brings up many different feelings depending on those experiences. When we compare our experience with the prototype of mother as nurturer, loving presence and giver of all, we might come up against a contradiction, or we might totally embrace the word. It’s all relative to each of us and our individual experience. I respect these differences.

I do want to say Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers today, including myself, my mother and to all those who have nurtured me. Being a mother is probably one of the most difficult, while at the same time most rewarding experiences that one can have. I have felt both these feelings and I am grateful for it all.

Ernest Holmes, writer, philosopher and mystic once wrote, “No mistakes have been made, none are being made, and none can be made.” I used to think that he meant that there never was a mistake, that I had always acted perfectly in the moment. There is some truth in this, but as I delve a little deeper into this statement and find that what he really meant was that we are not bound by our mistakes. In other words, if we keep reiterating our mistakes to ourselves or living them in mind, they will continue to repeat themselves in our life because we will have taken them into our consciousness as something from which we can never be freed. This would include the mistakes for which we blame others.

I believe that many mothers carry that burden. They might believe that something they did or didn’t do as a mother caused their children to be a certain way. I guess this is as true or false as we want to make it. I would prefer to know that I have always done the best I can with the information I had at the time. I would prefer to give my own mother, no matter the experience I had with her the same blessing.

In the end, we are all responsible for ourselves and what we do with our life. We are all responsible for what we do with what we’ve been given. I choose to take what I have learned from my own mother – all of it – and grow and expand into the best mother I can be to me.

A mother said to me, the other day, when talking about her child who was excelling at something, “She did that better than I could ever have done.” I just merely said, “Evolution.” Yes, evolution is suppose to move us forward. We are supposed to know more and be more than our parents. It is because we are here to express the Divine and bring it out in our own particular way. Evolution moves forward because of Intelligence moving forward within each of us.

Our parents, our mothers, were our vehicle to bring us here, but we are on the path of our own unfoldment. The sooner we can let go of what has been and get into what is and where we are and what we want to be, the quicker we will progress into our greatest expression. We can mother our own dreams because within us is the eternal Mother that nurtures all. It is Spirit. It is guarding us, directing us, protecting us and saying yes to all our dreams. It is the sacred womb of all creation and it is just waiting for us to use it. The only way we can do this is with the power of our awareness of it. The power of allowing it to work through us. The power of our attention on it and all that it does through us.

We have everything within us to fulfill our purpose. And, yes, we do, know what our purpose is. It is this moment and how we are choosing to show up. Are we the best mother, nurturer of this moment, because this moment will lead to the next and the next. We will always be what we are now.

Robert Bitzer, mystic and early pioneer of the Science of Mind and Spirit, wrote, “What you think in this moment determines whether you will create unpleasantness or success. You can strike out boldly emancipating yourself from the bondage of past recollections good or bad, and create in this moment the quality of experiences that really belongs to you. You were born to unfold the divine pattern, just as the seed unfolds the tree. The progressive individual never gives in to difficulties but instead rises above hem so quickly that they cannot impress themselves upon his or her subconscious. …The ability to change your mind is your greatest asset.”

So, I invite us all on this Mother’s Day  to make a commitment to ourselves to be the best Mother to ourselves that we can be – to be patient with ourselves, to cultivate self-love, to nurture what is important to us and follow that joy that leads the way. There is a Power within us – the great Nurturer and Mother, our Sacred Womb where all our dreams are planted – that is our guarantee of perfect unfoldment. It is always listening to our deepest desires, hearing our most true thoughts and acting upon our feelings. It is present to us, and when we are present to it is when the miracles of life present themselves.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita