Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Eddie Rodriguez.

Five years away from a pension, Rev. Eddie Rodriguez walked away from an assured livelihood with Bellsouth, and stepped onto the path of “meaning and purpose” he had been looking for. For the last twenty years, based in south Florida, he’s worked worldwide as an interfaith minister. “I am challenged," he has said, "to find what we all share in common, regardless of different religious beliefs and cultures, and that is Love.” It was his profound connection to the book Conversations with God by Neal Donald Walsch that spurred him to make the change, and to embark on a personal journey that led him to become Rev. Eddie. “I remembered the words ‘it is not about making a living but making a life,’ and ‘life begins at the end of your comfort zone’.” “Taking a risk was at the heart of beginning my career as an Interfaith Minister,” Rodriguez says.

Below are some of the nuggets from the call that stood out for me ...

• [Explaining what led him to leave his job and leap into the unknown]: I admitted to the [Conversations with God discussion] class. "Fear is what is keeping me here. Everything in my life has been based on fear and I’m going to resign." I had to lead by example and I’ve never looked back.
• I can find purpose in my life. I just have to let go of fear.
• When you declare that you are love [or anything], then the opposite shows up, so that you can firm up your resolve about your declaration.
• It’s easy to be loving and kind when everyone else around you is being that way. But it’s harder when the opposite shows up. I’m grateful for those who show up differently because it provides me the opportunity to be very firm with how I’m choosing to show up.
• One day at school the white kids and the black kids went into two different lines. Then it was along religious lines, people were always separating from each other. I always knew there was an underlying oneness to us all.
• Before I read Conversations with God, all I thought about was survival. Making money and providing for my family. And then, I declared myself to be wisdom, understanding, and compassion.
• I felt that the book freed me and opened me up to a life of possibility. I wanted other people to feel what I felt—pure joy and the ability to create a life of purpose.
• At the end of the day, it’s all about love. Love and life and togetherness.
• I imagine that at each wedding, the bride is my daughter; at each funeral, that is my loved one.
• The lean times, the challenging times, helps one stay firm in their faith. Move towards knowing, rather than just hoping or believing.
• [on being an interfaith minister]: It’s about what people have in common. I stay true to my process that we are all One.
• When people forget they’re not supposed to like each other, they really do. Let's choose to focus on what we all have in common.
• My favorite thing to do [if I can really say that] is preside over a funeral service. It’s a reminder of how precious life is. In the west, we are in a death-denying culture. I tell people: Let’s not consider our own death or death of our loved ones. Their last loving act is to gather their loved ones together iin a room to remind people how precious life is.
• It’s not dying that is our greatest fear. It’s living that is. I encourage people to invite the angel of death beside you every day, so you can live more fully.
• The divine lives within me, within you, within all.
• My invitation is if you find yourself somewhere, anywhere in the world and you notice that something is missing, perhaps the only thing that’s missing is the love that you’re not giving. Love is really who we are. It’s our essence. Express that.