No matter the outcome of the upcoming election, whether I am blue or red or no color at all, there is something I must know now. What is that something? I must know that no matter what transpires, all is well. If the Universe is always conspiring in our favor, and I believe it is, then whatever the outcome is would have to be for our highest good even beyond what we see on the surface.

Joseph de Maistra, a French lawyer, diplomat, writer and philosopher of the 18th century was quoted as saying, “Every nation gets the government they deserve.” I am taking this statement and translating it to what we call in Science of Mind – the Mental Equivalent. In order to manifest the life that we desire, we must have a mental equivalent of it. We must create a spiritual prototype for it. We must believe we can have it. We must act as though we do have it. We must walk through life as if it is already true.

I just listened to an impassioned speech by the Sikh American civil rights lawyer Valerie Kaur, who is known for her speech “Breathe and Push.” She speaks on the rise of racism and hate crimes after September 11, 2001 that was peaked for her when a Sikh friend was murdered. As a mother she asks herself about the rise in racism today “What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb. What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born.”

If we are a country waiting to be born and if we are a country that has the government it deserves, then it seems that the next best thing for all of us to do is to nurture the values that will bring about a birth filled with compassion, love, respect for diversity, mercy, justice, freedom and even more. This should be our mental equivalent. Can we envision it? Can we live as it now even before we see it?

One of the most disturbing things for me that is occurring right now is our ability to turn against each other in the wake of the elections and COVID19. When I hear us talking about how we are afraid of each other and the possibility of illness just because we come from somewhere else or fear because our skin is a different color or we have a difference of opinion, I can see how we are a microcosm of the macrocosm. If we want a loving, intelligent government then we must provide the love and the intelligence to everything we are. We must think things through from the highest place, before we act.

With the election, less than two weeks away, what are we doing to provide a more loving country? Are we in good relationship to our families? To our neighbors? To ourselves? Are we willing to allow people to have a different opinion and still have peaceful conversation with each other?

I voted last week and posted on FaceBook to encourage others to do the same. The only question posed to me was “Did you vote for the good guy or the bad guy?” One person’s good is another person’s bad? Can we handle that? How do we listen without judgment and still voice what we believe? How do we stay in love? Can we seek to understand without judgement?

I invite us all to perhaps look at this time with different eyes. There could be more than meets the eye. As Ms. Kaur stated, “is it a tomb or a womb?” Childbirth is usually painful and at the every end, as Ms. Kaur said, we are demanded to breathe and then to push. Having experienced it myself, I know we are demanded to surrender to the new life that is coming. As we breathe in all that is occurring in our world, can we push through it into a higher expression of ourselves? Can we surrender ourselves to our highest and best selves? The way we choose to look at the world, and the way we choose to act in every moment will create our mental equivalent and everything that follows.

I invite us this week before the election to open our hearts, speak our word with compassion, listen with an open mind and breathe and push all the love we have through into the world, into the new, into life.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita