Midweek Faith Lift
March 4, 2026
“Accepting Others-Really??”
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
February 23, 2026
What If Cats and Dogs Had
Opposable Thumbs' Day - March 3
This wacky observance was the brainchild of Ruth and Tom Roy, known for creating off-the-wall holidays. Humans hold many advantages over other species, but one of our greatest powers is the precise grip made possible by opposable thumbs. Without them, we couldn’t write, turn a handle, or even hold a self-help book. The question of pets having thumbs touches on one of life’s essential mysteries: what do we do with the power of skilled manipulation - grasping, shaping, and controlling our world.
Yet the question itself—what if cats and dogs had opposable thumbs?—acts like a Zen koan. It isn’t meant to be answered, but contemplated. It asks us to consider how power reshapes responsibility and leads to increased wisdom. The question ultimately turns back on us: not whether we can manipulate skillfully, but what we choose to do with that ability—whether our capacity to influence the world is guided by wisdom, compassion, and restraint, or driven by convenience, dominance, and habit. Skilled manipulation gives us power; how we direct that power reveals our values and, in the end, the kind of world we are creating.
“People are beautiful. All people, of all shapes and sizes. The fact that we are living, breathing organisms that happen to have opposable thumbs is nothing short of brilliant." - Connor Franta, A Work in Progress
“Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right?" - Hill Hicks, stand-up comedian and satirist
"Could it really be that opposable thumbs were invented so we could
text message?"- Diane Lane, actor
Affirmative Prayer for Today: We acknowledge that in our human life there are many twists and turns in our spiritual journey. We stick out our thumb to catch a lift in one direction and life takes us somewhere else entirely. We pause, breathe, and open to love, to acceptance. We learn all we are able to learn from each plot twist with ease and grace. Amen.
As you contemplate what your cat or dog would do with opposable thumbs and whether or not Fido or Fifi would even need you any more to open their food, ponder how they would now treat you given this new power?!? It is something to ponder, isn’t it? We have been on a journey to explore all the aspects of our humanness and how and what about these parts of us are sacred. We want to realize the sacredness of our humanity and the wonder of our divinity. Last week we added another dimension of our humanity to our repertoire: spiritual tongue twisters! “Words wisely woven within work wonders!” This week, we weave in more wisdom as we grapple with opposable thumbs! How spiritual is that?!? And you thought it was limited to how “our thoughts shape our reality?” No, it is all about our thumbs! Whatever would we do without our thumbs?
One of the most powerful human signals of acceptance is thumbs up! No words needed, just a gesture that communicates volumes! Acceptance, approval, go ahead, keep going, I understand, I get it, and on and on! Thumbs down is an equally powerful gesture to signal that something is not ok, stop, pause and course correct. We communicate an awful lot of information with our thumbs. It is even an emoji which I use a lot in response to text messages, rather than sending more words. Virtual thumbs to communicate! Imagine that!
What we have been learning is that every part of our human journey is also an integral part of our spiritual journey. Even when it is messy, frustrating, difficult and emotionally fraught, it is still part of our spiritual journey. We are waking up to that spiritual reality for ourselves, but it is also true for all of us, awake or not! We believe and teach that every living being has a spark of divinity within them, as much as they have opposable thumbs on the outside! Sometimes, it is MUCH easier to see the thumbs on the outside than the divinity on the inside! Disguises can be almost impenetrable!
As Rosemergy says, we experience a physical birth, but we also experience a spiritual birth or an awakening of our deeper nature. We take a lot of detours and we wear a lot of disguises in our spiritual/human journey. We frequently invest a lot of energy in perfecting our disguises which makes it more difficult for all of us to see and believe that we are more than we appear to be. It also makes it harder for the energy of God or Love to penetrate our defenses!
We have begun to really see how much more alive we are when we drop the disguises and realize that we no longer need them. When we fully feel and see all the gems of self-awareness and self-acceptance that are hidden in our mud, well life gets much more full, meaningful, and more deeply spiritual. Fear falls away because we no longer have to hide our human flaws; they are the key to fully expressing our divinity and being fully alive.
Alas, however, we travel in this life with human companions who also have opposable thumbs but no idea how to use them to say yes to the detours of life that ask you to wake up, grow, and transform into all you really are and can be! Why is that? Well, change is not easy and feelings can be really painful and it can seem easier to just stay angry or numb….but nothing buried really ever stays buried, does it? When I worked as a school psychologist, we would refer families for therapy because an acting out behavioral issue for a kid at school never happened in isolation. It is kind of like Jesus and the woman who committed adultery all by herself, right? More about that in a minute!
Families who understood this, families who saw the need to change and grow always sought the best therapists and did the emotional work needed to help everyone grow. However, there were those who found the least effective therapists because they colluded to keep the disguise of happy family! We would just note that the family went through therapy, but therapy didn’t go through them, so nothing changed and the kid just kept acting out, crying out for help. It was a powerful awareness to realize that the behavior of that kid was a cry of pain, a cry for help that said “do something about this to change things for my family!” Often, all we could do is provide a supportive teacher and a classroom where the child could begin to understand their own cries and learn how to survive if not thrive. It was not easy work, but worth it.
This is exactly the message of Chapter 6, “Accepting Others” that Rosemergy is highlighting for us. When we have done our own healing work our pain is diminished and we are able to hold space and be a calming presence for those who are feeling their pain. We are not triggered by their pain and we can step around our impulse to “fix” their feelings, offer solutions or mitigate their pain. We now have the capacity for compassion and empathy, feeling with another and not feeling for another, which is co-dependence, by the way! When we are present for someone whose emotional opposable thumbs are not working, we are empowered to truly accept them, right where there are, thumbs or no thumbs.
That is not easy, but that is what our sacred/divine human is called to do, and is able to do. No judgment, no advice, no sharing our own experience, just being present to whatever is there, no matter how ugly. No matter if it is directed at you, because, ultimately, it is not about you at all. Healing happens for you when you see and own your part, but that is your spiritual journey, and yours alone. No one else can take your spiritual journey but you and that is true for everyone! Remember the question from last week, “I wonder what this is really all about?” Hold that question with love and possibility as an opening for the energy of the Divine to unfold. And then just listen!
Let’s go back for a moment to what I like to call the story of the woman who committed adultery all by herself! Rosemergy says that:
Accepting our negative thoughts prepares us to accept the limiting thoughts, opinions and actions of others. When this occurs, God takes hold of our thinking nature and the “hidden thoughts” of God show themselves as intuition and creativity. Sacred Human, p. 71.
When a woman caught in the act of adultery is brought to Jesus, he knew the law and that she was to be stoned to death. Her captors stood ready with stones in hand to carry out the sentence. The response of Jesus was to kneel beside her and say “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8:7 One by one they put down their stones and walked away!
We are not on this journey alone, we are not in it alone, and what we say and what we do with each other really matters. We show up with the best version of ourselves, our human selves, we do our healing work and we then just open to grace, to Divine Love, to show us the highest and best way to use our human/spiritual opposable thumbs. Perhaps shaking hands in friendship with one another is the highest and best use of our opposable thumbs!
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb