We are finally back from our one-month-long, cross-country songwriters seminar tour. That’s why I haven’t been posting much lately. Too much to do on the road. But now I’m glad to be back and to write to you again. (I’ll post about about tour at a later date.)
And now … with all the horrible news about Hurricane Katrina, our wish is to help others through these difficult times. John’s brother, Kevin Braheny, brought this beautiful article to my attention, written by noted author, Rachel Remen. It helped me to re-read it…as I hope it will do for you too.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Noetic Sciences Review
Spring 1996
IN THE SERVICE OF LIFE
In recent years the question, “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 use 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 always helping someone who’s not as strong as
I am, who is needier than I am. People feel this inequality. 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
strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all of our experiences. Our
limitations serve, our wounds serve, 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 very different things.
Serving is also different from fixing. When I fix a person I perceive them as
broken, and their brokenness requires me to act. When I fix I do not see the
wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of the life in them. When
I serve I see and trust that wholeness. It is what I am responding to and
collaborating with.
There is distance between ourselves and whatever or whomever we are fixing.
Fixing is a form of judgment. All judgment creates distance, a disconnection,
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. This is Mother Teresa’s basic message. We serve life not because it
is broken but because it is holy.
If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience of mastery
and expertise. Service, on the other hand, is an experience of mystery,
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 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. Everyone who has ever served through the history of time serves the
same thing. We are servers of the wholeness and mystery in life.
The bottom line, of course, is that we can fix without serving. And we can
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 be the work of the
ego, and service the work of the soul. They may look similar if you’re watching
from the outside, but the inner experience is different. The outcome is often
different, too.
Our service serves us as well as others. That which uses us strengthens us.
Over time, fixing and helping are draining, depleting. Over time we 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 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 weak, when you
fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. From the
perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering
and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and
inevitably 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 and fixed by a great
many others who did not recognize my wholeness. All that fixing and helping
left me wounded in some important and fundamental ways. Only service heals.
Reprinted from Noetic Sciences Review, Spring 1996
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