Photo of beach in Phillipines taken by Brian Franchell

“You can learn a helpful lesson from the lowly oyster. He is normally a very placid fellow, but occasionally little grains of sand work their way inside his shell and begin irritating him. Naturally, he tries to get rid of them. But when he discovers he can’t do this, he settles down and produces one of the most priceless and beautiful things in the world. He turns the irritation into a pearl. So, no matter what the difficulty, the loss, the financial adversity; if you are feeling negative, get busy pearling.”

“By the ‘all things work together for good’ principle, any experience of life can become the best thing that ever happened to you. Haven’t you said or heard someone say, ‘I was certainly upset about that challenge, but now as I see it in retrospect, it was the best possible thing that could have happened’?”

“Why not pick out the most difficult thing facing you right now and say: I know that this is the best thing that could happen to me, for I know that in the happening there is revealed a new lesson to learn and some new growth to experience. I know that within me is an unborn possibility of limitless potentialities, and this is my opportunity to give birth to new ideas, new strength, and new vision. I accept the reality of the difficulty but not its permanence. I am not at the end of anything. I am simply between opportunities, between jobs. I know that in the movement of ‘it has to come to pass,’ something wonderful is on its way to me far surpassing anything I have ever known before. And if I should feel the slightest irritation of fear and anxiety, I will say to myself, ‘All right, let’s get busy pearling.’”

Eric Butterworth, Spiritual Economics, pages 128 – 130.