Lenore Bajare-Dukes  0:04  
Hello. My name is Lenore Bajare-Dukes. My pronouns are she and her, and I am a member of the congregational life field staff of the Unitarian Universalist Association in the Central East region. And I invite you now to get settled in and ready for a story for all ages. All ages. How many of you have already heard the story about the two pots or two buckets? Has one bucket that carried water perfectly and another bucket that had a crack at it? Well, I love this story, and I first came across it in a Tapestry of Faith, UU curriculum. I was unable to find an origin for this story when I was working as a religious educator. Some folks have situated it in India. I've heard citations of Buddhism. I've read some online citing Jewish rabbis. So if you know of the origin of this story, please do let us know. Well, There once was a person who kept a beautiful garden just outside their home, a garden that fed their family and even sometimes their whole neighborhood. Imagine big, red, ripe tomatoes, tall plumes of kale, sheltering pecan tree, gorgeous, full flowers. And every day this gardener, they would take two empty buckets yoked across their shoulder, down a winding path, across a patch of pavement where sometimes some children would play, and down to a watering place. Perhaps you have a watering place that you know of where you and your community go to draw water, or just be. Perhaps it was that place. In any case, the gardener would go every single day, in the morning and again in the evening, down to the watering place and fill two strong buckets to their brimful. And every morning and every evening, they would walk back up the hill, over the asphalt, along the winding path and back to their home, where they would carefully siphon out the water, tending to what was needed in their home, nourishing their body with their freshness and especially watering those gorgeous flowers. And the two buckets were full, and they were proud of the splendid garden that they helped to create. You see, this story begins before the story that you may have heard about the broken bucket. This story begins when that bucket was still solid and proud. Oh, but it was proud to do such important work and to do it perfectly, really, day after day, evening after morning, year after year, and the kitchen was full and the garden was plentiful, and times were good, even when they were going through a heat wave until and I don't quite know the day this happened, but the swinging back and forth, back and forth of the yoke had pushed and pulled, and these two buckets, well, one of them split open, and that's when the story of the broken bucket and the water bearer's garden begins. You see now, when the gardener walked to the watering place and filled up the buckets, the cracked one arrived back only half full for two years, this went on with a gardener delivering only one and a half full pots of water to the house. You know, I don't know this from the story, but I do wonder sometimes, what the gardener had to give up in doing this. Maybe they needed to ask a neighbor for an extra cup of water. Sometimes, to make up the lack maybe they needed to even learn who their neighbors were. Perhaps they had to plant a little bit less or maybe to adapt to find some hardy native plants that would thrive better with a little bit less active tending. Maybe their garden began to change. Well, at any rate, back to the bucket. After two years of feeling ashamed of its own imperfection, ashamed and also miserable that it was only able to accomplish half of what it really had been made to do, the bucket, in its shame, finally spoke up to apologize to the gardener. Because of my flaws, the bucket said, "you have had to do all this work, and you don't even get full value out of our efforts. I'm so sorry. And the gardener looked at the bucket and said, oh, oh, observe as we walk up the hill. Okay, really look. And so this time, as they both scooped up the water from the watering place into both buckets. The bucket with the crack in it took notice of the sun warming some wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it up some. Then they passed by the pavement and children were playing there, and peeking up from some cracks in the concrete was a beautiful, beautiful red rose. And look over there, next to the is that a basketball hoop that somebody has put up in our neighborhood, the bucket. Thought I never noticed that before I I always sort of had my head down. There's a nice little patch, patch of clover over there where some kids are sitting down and look, bees are humming around it, and butterflies are darting in and out, and they were between the neighborhood children who were playing, and it seemed to the bucket as though there was more sound in the air, a little more joy than there had been before. And then they come back to the home where they tended to their garden, and that did look a little different too. Few more butterflies around there, too, actually. And the bucket thought that it understood the lesson from the gardener, and it said, Thank you for showing me all the good that is still out there in the world despite my flaw. And still it felt sad because it had now leaked out half of its water load. And so once more, the bucket said, but I have to apologize for my failure. Do you know what the gardener then said to the bucket? They said, did you notice that the most flowers along our pathway were on your side of the path and fewer on every other side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, and so I changed what I was doing to work with you. I planted some sunflower seeds on our side of the path, and every day, when we walk back from the stream, you've watered them. I've stopped and enjoyed them and spoken with the children playing along that barren stretch of asphalt, and you've given now the clover what it needs to grow and thrive. For two years, I have been able to finally enjoy this walk. You know, without you being just the way that you are, we would not have had this beauty gracing our home. So it is not for you to apologize for being who you are. It is for me to thank you and help you see the ways in which that has given beauty and wild grace to this world.

Lenore Bajare-Dukes  7:11  
I wonder how the bucket felt in this moment, hearing all that had happened right under their feet. I wonder how did you feel when you were listening to this story? I wonder what is the part of the story that you needed to hear today? And most of all, I wonder, what if the thing that grows isn't the thing that you thought that you were planting.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai