Midweek Faith Lift
December 10, 2025
Peace, Life- Advent
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
December 2, 2025
A young woman named Lira carried a heavy bucket of water up the hill each morning. It wasn’t the weight of the water that burdened her; it was the weight of her thoughts. She lived inside old stories: I’m not enough, I’ve failed, I’ve missed my chance. One morning, she encountered an old monk sitting on a fallen tree, greeting the sky with a smile far too big for someone with no possessions. “What is your secret?” she asked - half irritated, half curious. “You can’t pour new water into a container already full," the monk replied, tapping the bucket she held. “But my bucket is empty," Lira countered. “Not the one you carry in your hands,” he said gently. “The one you carry in your mind.”
Lira defended herself. “I can’t just let go of my past.” The monk smiled, “You don’t have to let it go. You only have to stop drinking from it.” Something in her chest cracked open a little - like a seed deciding the soil was finally warm enough to sprout. She sat beside him, letting the wind move through her hair. She didn’t speak, but she felt herself surrendering - not to loss, but to spaciousness. To possibility. To newness. When she lifted the bucket again, it felt lighter. Nothing outside of her had changed; everything inside her had begun to.
And for some humor:
The young man at the construction site was bragging that he could outdo anyone in a feat of energy, strength or endurance. He made a special case of making fun of one of the older workmen. After several minutes, the older worker had had enough. “Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?” he said. “I will bet a week’s wages that I can haul something in a wheelbarrow over to that building that you won’t be able to wheel back.” “You’re on, old man,” the young guy replied. The old man reached out and grabbed the wheelbarrow by the handles. Then he turned to the young man and said, “Alright. Get in.”
Affirmative prayer for today: Divine Energy of Life, may I empty my bucket of consciousness so that Your Presence may fill me with Divine Peace as I become all that I am called to be.
We are exploring the Spiritual Power of Life and the theme of the Second Sunday of Advent, Peace. As we reflected last week, our human life is but a segment of the larger energy of the spiritual Power of Life and our challenge is to experience our human life within our human timeline as part of that larger dimension of Life. As we are weaving Peace and Life together, we remember the phrase "there is no way to peace, peace is the way,” a quote, most famously attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Just as we experience Faith as a living reality, not a static state, we recognize that Peace is also a lived reality, not a destination.
We want to think of Peace like Heaven, as a place where there we experience eternal happiness and a complete absence of conflict. We have been sold a “pig in a poke” if we buy that story! Peace is all about how you navigate conflict not about how you avoid it. Avoiding conflict usually results in all kinds of undesirable side effects including co-dependence, people pleasing, high blood pressure, unexplained angry outbursts, passive aggressive sabotage of our own happiness while thinking we will impact others and make them change, or at least pay for their misdeeds! It is like drinking a cup of poison and expecting the other person to die. We may have a lot of past hurt in our bucket, but as the monk told Lira in the opening story, we don’t have to keep drinking from it. I wish someone had told me that when I was a young woman, like Lira.
One of the aspects of this larger energy of the spiritual Power of Life that we are exploring is Vitality. The root word for vitality is vital which has two meanings: “essential or necessary” and the second is “having energy” and “the ability to thrive.” As we navigate the way of true peace, accessing our vitality is essential to realizing what will bring about peace within and peace without. As we pause to contemplate this energy of vitality, and breathe, we begin to recognize, like Lira, that holding a bucketful of past hurts and grudges gets very heavy over time and sucks the life, the vitality right out of us. We cannot fully embrace Peace or Life with a bucket this heavy; it is not possible. If there is to be Peace, we are vital to that realization. Something needs to shift.
Think for a moment about the second story about the older man, the wheelbarrow and the younger man. The younger man viewed the older one as less than, as less physically able and he for sure had a bucketful of himself, right!?! Now rather than reacting with anger or defensiveness, the older gentleman navigated this irritating conflict peacefully, mindfully and very skillfully. In the absence of reactive emotions, the older man was open to a very powerful and creative response, demonstrating the fullness of his vitality and wholeness despite the challenge of the young guy. I would love to have a candid shot of the young guy’s face when told to get in the wheelbarrow, wouldn’t you? Karma bites hard!
That brings us to another component of this aspect of the spiritual Power of Life that we call vitality and that is wholeness. As Rev. Linda writes in Divine Audacity, p. 192:
Wholeness means that nothing essential is missing. We are complete, containing all necessary components. We are whole, intact regardless of any material conditions that would appear otherwise. Our wholeness is assured by virtue of the life principle that is incorruptible, immutable and eternal. Vitality is natural to us.
We are whole and complete in that higher consciousness of Life that is the spiritual Power of eternal Life. We have to look with spiritual eyes to see that wholeness and maintain a peaceful energy and consciousness because the world would seek to diminish us. We stand in Faith about the Truth of who we really are: whole and perfect in the spiritual expression of Life.
Think of people like Hellen Keller, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstine who had a severe learning disability and numerous other supposedly “handicapped” individuals whose wholeness lifted them far above our human attempts to limit or demean them. We have many people in our own families and communities whose wholeness is not always obvious, but nonetheless, always present and true. Holding a consciousness of Peace requires us to hold this consciousness of wholeness for all people and all of creation. As Rev. Linda states: “Wholeness is not conditional….(it) is a spiritual reality, a truth principle at the heart of vitalizing life…the fullness of life, the essence of life fulfilled.”
Now pause and think of all the times that you have thought of yourself as “less than, too old, not smart enough, too fat, too thin, too tired, too angry, too forgetful, too gullible, too this and too that.” Do you want some cheese with that “whine?” The list can be endless unless we end it. Do we experience our human limitations? Every day, more than once a day if you are still in your body and have a pulse. Do we experience our Divine Wholeness that is the most significant aspect of who we really are? Yes, every day, but usually only when we make ourselves stop and notice it! What if it was the other way around? How would we show up in our world if our first impulse was to respond from our Wholeness and the fullness of Divine Life that energizes us with a big spark of vitality?
Realize that the human you will no doubt want to keep your story because that is a part of how you identify and define who you are. But you can dump what you don’t need to drink over and over again into a bucket you put on the shelf and revisit when necessary, if ever. Then your energy is lighter, just like Lira, and you are able to contemplate a whole new perspective, a whole new lease on Life, a larger Life that becomes possible for you. Eventually, you may even be ready and able to dump that auxiliary bucket as the spiritual Power of Life keeps filling you up to the brim.
Imagine if you will, that the bigger reality is that the Universe is just waiting patiently for you to find your voice, to find your own personal path of peace and to live into it in ways you can’t yet conceive! When each one of us does that, finds the full expression of our Spiritual Power of Life, then we truly will bring about peace on earth, because it can only happen through us. This Advent season, that is our calling: to empty out the old “Whine” and live into that new wine of our Christ consciousness, our higher self, our Life beyond life.
I leave you with the following, first from the Christian Scriptures;
Philippians 3: 13
"This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and striving forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the mark of the high calling of God."
And from the Wisdom Teaching of Judaism
"A human being is a channel for the Divine. Only when the channel is open and free of obstruction can holiness flow into the world." - Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, Letting the Divine Flow Through
May it be so….
Blessings on the Peace Path,
Rev. Deb