Midweek Faith Lift
February 18, 2026
“Acceptance is Key”
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
February 11, 2026
Once a farmer lost his precious watch while working in his barn. After searching high and low among the hay for a long time, the old farmer got exhausted. However, he did not want to give up the search for his watch and asked a group of children playing outside the barn to help. He promised a reward for the person who could find his beloved watch. The children hurried inside the barn and searched the entire stack of hay to find the watch. After a long time of looking, the children got tired and gave up. The farmer gave up hope of finding his watch and called off the search. But one little girl asked the farmer to give her another chance. The farmer did not want to miss any chance of finding the watch, so he left the girl in the barn. After a short while, she came out with the watch in her hand. The farmer was happily surprised and asked how the girl succeeded in finding the watch while everyone else had failed. The girl replied, “I sat quietly listening for the ticking of the watch. In silence, I was led to the sound.”
"Silence does for thinking what a suspension bridge does for space. It makes connections." - E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Silence is golden - unless you have kids - then silence is just suspicious.
We are well into our exploration of The Sacred Human with a huge thanks to Su Podraza-Nagle, who did an excellent job. Living from the inside out is a huge shift in consciousness as she highlighted so clearly in all her talks. The example of Lazarus’ resurrection illustrates that this discovery of our true divinity is a process that we learn to live into; it is not a one and done. We begin today with silence as a gateway to our inner life, the place where consciousness makes its most significant shifts and growth, the place where we are most uncomfortable. No one likes the silence of the tomb; it reminds us too powerfully of the limits of our humanity….we have a deadline! And who likes to be reminded of that, eh? The King James version of this story says that when Jesus instructs them to roll back the stone, either Mary or Martha says, “But my Lord, he stinketh!” Lazarus had been in the tomb for 3 days and well, you get the picture.
The theme of this next chapter of The Sacred Human is the first Law of Love, which is acceptance. We have explored how our emotions are about fully experiencing our human life, feeling them deeply without getting lost in them. That is not an easy journey because getting lost in our feelings is something we do so easily, like breathing, that we don’t always realize we are lost. We don’t realize that “we stinketh!” Others may call us out for our “stinkin’ thinkin’” but how quickly do we defend or explain ourselves to support our position or justify our feelings? I do it on a regular basis and I tend to see myself as “spiritually mature” or “spiritually evolved!”
If acceptance is the first law of love, how in the world does that work? I want to believe that I love and accept myself just the way that I am right now. And in my head, in my intellect, I do! In many ways, I do. But, and it is a big but, the reality is that there is also a part of me that does not accept myself in so many different aspects of my human expression. Just go try on a bathing suit, Deb, and you see how quickly that self-acceptance fades into feelings that “stinketh.” Into feelings and words of self-criticism….you have no will power, Deb, what’s the matter with you that you can’t say no to more ice cream, to another glass of wine, another piece of really good bread? Oh my how it “stinketh!” My head says, “choices have consequences” and my human self wants an escape hatch from the tomb of my humanness and my “stinkin’ thinkin’ !” How can I escape the limitations of my humanness? How can I truly accept myself how I am right now? Don’t like that question much!
Acceptance is the key to self-love! The first gift of love is acceptance. Well, apparently, it is much harder than I thought! The paradox of this dilemma is that the silence of the tomb is also the key to recognizing the edges of our stinkin thinkin, those edges where we really don’t love ourselves. Those are the edges where we believe we need to be fixed to be accepted or loveable. Whoa! The key to self-acceptance is to stop this business of self-criticism and the grasping for a way to “fix ourselves.” I have learned that it is not in the latest diet plan or in fitting into clothes I really like! Or to change one’s sexual orientation or the color of one’s skin, or one’s temperament. How in the world do I find my out of this tomb? How do I live from the inside out on this one? And we all have our tomb…it is part of the human condition!
Well, dear ones, the devil is in the details, because like the little girl listening in the silence for the ticking of the watch, I had to sit in the silence over several years of silent retreats to even become willing to hear the ticking going on in my own head about my body. I had to hear the constant patter of negative self-statements to realize the edges of self-acceptance for me. And here’s the rub….while the silence revealed the edges, it also began to show me the way out of this pattern, the path of freedom and self-acceptance. What if the message I hear in the silence of the tomb is that I don’t have to change one thing?? Nothing, nada! And what’s more, neither do you!!
I will not be one iota more loveable or worthy of love if I fit in a smaller size, am less self-critical, and on and on. And furthermore, there is NOTHING any of us can do to be worthy of love and unconditional acceptance.
Ponder that as you wish someone in your life would make a change so that you might love them more!?!
The truth is, the spiritual truth, is that we are all completely worthy and acceptable of love exactly as we are right now! We say that and mean it, but for most of us, our head and our heart are not together.
As Rosemergy says, on p. 35 of The Sacred Human:
The paradox is that at the same time we are being accepted,
we are called to “come up higher.” A vision is held of us as we are destined to be.
There is a balance between acceptance as we are in the moment and a vision of what we can be. The one who loves us knows we can be more than we appear, but there is no pressure to live in this new way.
The key lies in the words: acceptance and no pressure. When we accept ourselves, we have the courage to look at the darkness in our souls. We, as Rosemergy says, “exhibit the integrity to admit our mistakes to ourselves and to others.” Less of us is hidden and more of us revealed. We may not be the best version of ourselves in each now moment of our humanness, but we offer to the world, to each other is authentic and genuine. We share both joys and triumphs as well as anguish, guilt, insecurity and failures.
This is the rich tapestry of our human life in all its varied and incredible dimensions. It is our shared human experiences that teach us about the light within, our divine nature. We just have to be willing to sit in the silence, however uncomfortable, long enough to grasp the truth of both our humanity and divinity and how we dance with both. And it is not just with deep, heavy issues, it is with simple things, like a lost watch or car keys, in my case! Before Thanksgiving, I could not find the spare key to Todd’s car which we were taking to Lincoln, NE. Had I just paused for a time in the silence, I would have remembered where it was, but my human self was into problem solving, which means making more problems! I had a locksmith make a copy of his electronic key which deactivated the automatic buttons. Several trips to the dealer later and $240 later, his electronic key was restored and I remembered where I had put the key! LOLOLOL!!
"For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." - 1 Corinthians 13:12
"Silence is the sign of perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. Those who can preserve their selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence -- not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the shining pool -- those, in the mind of the person of nature, possess the ideal attitude and conduct of life. If you ask us, 'What is silence?' We will answer, 'It is the Great Mystery. The holy silence is God's voice.'" - Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa), The Soul of the Indian
And God’s voice always says, “I love you!”
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb