To be of service

“In recent years the question of how can I help? Has become meaningful to
many 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. It is not a
relationship between equals. When you help you see your own strength to
help those of lesser strength. If I’m attentive to what’s going on inside of
me when I’m helping, I find that I’m helping someone who’s not as strong as I
am, who is needier than I am. People feel this in equality. When we help we
may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give
them, we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and
wholeness. When I help I am very aware of my own strength. But we don’t
serve with our own strength, we serve with ourselves.  We draw from our
own experiences. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, and even our
darkness can serve. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others
and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the
wholeness in me. Service is a relationship between equals.

Helping incurs debt. When you help someone they owe you one. But serving,
like healing, is mutual. There is no debt. I am as served as the person I am
serving. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction. When I serve I have a
feeling of gratitude. These are two very different things.

Serving is also different from fixing. When I fix a person I perceive them to
be broken, and their brokenness requires me to act. When I fix I do not see
the wholeness in the other person or thrust the integrity of the life in
them. When I serve I see and trust the wholeness.

There is distance between whomever we are fixing and ourselves. Fixing is a
form of judgment. All judgment creates distance, a disconnection, and an
experience of difference. In fixing there is an inequality of expertise that
can easily become a moral distance. We cannot serve at a distance. We can
only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are
willing to touch. We serve life not because it is broken but because it is
holy. This is Mother Teresa’s basic message.

If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience of mastery
and expertise. Service, on the other hand, is an experience of mastery,
surrender and awe. A fixer has the illusion of being casual. A server knows
that he or she is being used and has a willingness to be used in the service
of something greater, something essentially unknown. Fixing and helping
are very personal; they are very particular, concrete and specific. We fix
and help many different things in our lifetimes, but when we serve we are
always serving the same thing. We are servers of the wholeness and
mastery of life.

Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that
life is a holy mastery, which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, 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
being weak, when you fix, you see life as being broken. When we serve we
see life as whole. From the perspective of service, we are all connected.
All suffering is like my suffering; all joy is like my joy. Fixing and helping
are the basis for curing, but not healing. Only service heals.”

Rachel Naomi Remen

Chris Blair

714-357-5899

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