I am a being of choice. That is my gift as a spiritual being. I am a being gifted with the highest Intelligence because I am Divine. I am a being with a gift called Imagination. This is the highest faculty or a mental power that I get to use to create my life experiences. You have these gifts and more. We are gifted because of our Divine Nature. This year I feel that I have used my gifts well, and I am grateful for one of the most amazing, challenging and loving years all rolled into one.

This morning as my beautiful husband, Patrick and I opened our gifts, I had a realization. As we looked back on 2021 and all that has occurred, why would we focus on the challenges unless we could find a gift in them? For example, we have lost, through death, many people this year. Why would I remain in a state of lamentation about these dear people? Would that honor them? I don’t think so. I could focus on their deaths and the loss that I feel, or I could focus on all the gifts they were and still are in the world. I choose to focus on the gifts today.

As I look back on 2021, there were so many gifts? I am reminded of those gifts today. So many good things happened. I invite us all to focus on the good things that happened in your life. Let them grow in your heart. You might say to yourself that there wasn’t any good, or that the bad overshadows the good. Nothing can overshadow the Good unless we allow it to.

Sometimes, people ask me what to do with the pain they feel in their bodies because of illnesses that they are suffering from. I have felt pain on plenty of occasions. The only place I can go is within and surrender it up to my higher mind. I can feel myself let it go. I do not try to figure out why something in my past caused it. If I need medical attention, I get it; however, at the same time, I just keep surrendering and remembering who I am. I am not meant to suffer and neither are you. I had this experience just this week. The pain is gone now. For me, pain is my punishment for something I think I did in the past or my unforgiveness for something that I think someone did for me.

Let me return to the gift of imagination. I invite us to use this power for our Good and the Good of the world. What can you imagine? What can you imagine before it appears? I remember a time when I wanted so much to take my seven-year-old granddaughter to Seaworld. We didn’t have a lot of money to fly her out to California and take her, but I kept imagining that it had already happened, giving gratitude for it. I pictured those whales leaping out of the water and the look on her face, as she sat next to me. It didn’t take long for the event to take place. It was the Power of my love and gratitude working through the Field, the Law, that brought it to me. I know it.

As we close in on the end of 2021, I invite us to bless it – all of it, to find the gifts and to use our imagination and power of Choice to create an even greater 2022.

On this holy day of Christmas, I am grateful to live at this amazing time with all its challenges. As Gregg Braden put it, “Chaos is a signal for evolution.” I choose to evolve. I know that gratitude and imagination will take me deeper into my Divine self. Merry Christmas everyone!

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita Andriello-Feren, Healer, Teacher, Co-Spiritual Director CSL Kaua`i.