Service

[Guest guest]

Carl Mercer Talking Stick WisdomIn the Service of LifeRachel Naomi Remenhttp://www.rachelremen.com/ In recent years the question how can I help? has become meaningful tomany people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider.Perhaps the real question is not how can I help? but how can I serve?Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality; itis not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your ownstrength to help those of lesser strength. If I'm attentive to what'sgoing on inside of me when I'm helping, I find that I'm always helpingsomeone who's not as strong as I am, who is needier than I am. Peoplefeel this inequality. When we help we may inadvertently take away frompeople more than we could ever give them; we may diminish theirself-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness. When I helpI am very aware of my own strength. But we don't serve with ourstrength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all of ourexperiences. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darknesscan serve. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and thewholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness inme. Service is a relationship between equals.Helping incurs debt. When you help someone they owe you one. Butserving, like healing, is mutual. There is no debt. I am as served asthe person I am serving. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction.When I serve I have a feeling of gratitude. These are very differentthings.Serving is also different from fixing. When I fix a person I perceivethem as broken, and their brokenness requires me to act. When I fix Ido not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity ofthe life in them. When I serve I see and trust that wholeness. It iswhat I am responding to and collaborating with.There is distance between ourselves and whatever or whomever we arefixing. Fixing is a form of judgment. All judgment creates distance, adisconnection, an experience of difference. In fixing there is aninequality of expertise that can easily become a moral distance. Wecannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we areprofoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. This isMother Teresa's basic message. We serve life not because it is brokenbut because it is holy.If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience ofmastery and expertise. Service, on the other hand, is an experience ofmystery, surrender and awe. A fixer has the illusion of being causal.A server knows that he or she is being used and has a willingness to beused in the service of something greater, something essentiallyunknown. Fixing and helping are very personal; they are veryparticular, concrete and specific. We fix and help many differentthings in our lifetimes, but when we serve we are always serving thesame thing. Everyone who has ever served through the history of timeserves the same thing. We are servers of the wholeness and mystery inlife.The bottom line, of course, is that we can fix without serving. And wecan help without serving. And we can serve without fixing or helping.I think I would go so far as to say that fixing and helping may often bethe work of the ego, and service the work of the soul. They may looksimilar if you're watching from the outside, but the inner experience isdifferent. The outcome is often different, too.Our service serves us as well as others. That which uses us strengthensus. Over time, fixing and helping are draining, depleting. Over timewe burn out. Service is renewing.When we serve, our work itself will sustain us.Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred,that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When weserve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose.Fundamentally, helping, fixing and service are ways of seeing life.When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life asbroken. When you serve, you see life as whole. From the perspective ofservice, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering andall joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally andinevitably from this way of seeing.Lastly, fixing and helping are the basis of curing, but not of healing.In 40 years of chronic illness I have been helped by many people andfixed by a great many others who did not recognize my wholeness. Allthat fixing and helping left me wounded in some important andfundamental ways. Only service heals. Reprinted from Noetic Sciences Review, Spring 1996