Subject: Sharing a Heartfelt Message Date: Friday, January 12, 2018

Dear CEN Family of Santa Barbara,

I'd like to share a unifying message from Rev. Larry at Unity in the midst of what is happening with our family in Montecito.

SHOW ME THE GOOD! This week our community has again been rocked by disastrous events. A parched landscape, scarred by fire and desperate for moisture received a month of rain in a matter of minutes. Stripped of its capacity to hold the "gift of water" it became an unstoppable torrent of mud and water that left destruction and death in its wake.

We hear of these catastrophic events nearly every day. They occur with regularity around the globe. When these disasters happen in another country, state or continent, we are touched by the news but the distance buffers its effect on us, almost like we are reading a fictional account. It is quite a different matter when these events are happening in our own backyard. The proximity intensifies the actuality and the impact, with the stark reality that this is happening here, and now and with us, or to people we know and care about.Our hearts ache for all those who have suffered in this recent tragedy, and we offer our prayers for comfort, strength and courage as they dig out from under what has befallen them, and those who most painfully come to grips with the reality of precious lives that the earth has claimed.

For such a time as this, when our capacity for acceptance and understanding are stretched to the limits of our faith, we seek more deeply the refuge of a Greater Knowing. "Show me the Good!" may be our cry in the face of seemingly purposeless suffering and loss. We so earnestly want to believe in an all loving Creator and beneficent universe, and yet our human capacity fails us to reconcile tragic events with a higher order of Good. We may feel like Jesus in the Garden, holding a bitter cup that we would gratefully exchange for a preferred reality of our design. And then, perhaps in moment when we think not, there comes a Grace filled moment. And in this moment a portal opens, followed by a compelling intuition that clinging to human understanding will cost us something even more precious; blocking access to the infinite, living, loving Presence of God. And with this recognition, we do the seeming impossible. We surrender our will to the Infinite Will and Wisdom of God.

If we are to grow in capacity to be with life, to find peace that passes human understanding, to be available and accessible to Divine Inspiration, we must surrender our demand for rational explanation or justification. We either trust in the Mystery and the Wisdom of its Ways or we rail against Life, oppose the stream of what is happening and suffer our own resistance.

I do not say these words lightly, and I realize how truly challenging and seemingly impossible is this call to surrender our need to know why. To do what is demanded by this singular faith in a higher power to the exclusion of personal volition will likely be the highest bar we must clear in a lifetime. And yet, we deeply sense that such a shift can also be the most powerfully transformative moment in a lifetime.

Know that I am with you as we wrestle with understanding and make our way upward and inward to a place of peace that belies the facts, and assures the Eternal Presence and Love of Spirit is at hand. From here, we can be of greatest benefit to ease the pain and commence the healing.

Join us at our services on Sunday when we will delve more deeply into this spiritual challenge, and return to our sanctuary Sunday at 2 PM for a SPECIAL PRAYER VIGIL IN OUR SANCTUARY.

With love and compassion, Rev. Larry