Service: A Reflection

First, attraction, then
Love, then union. Beyond these --
Is serving in love.

                                                Jim Peterson

For me, and for many, spring is the favorite season, filled as it is with expanding daylight, warming, promise, new life, budding – in spring I have this sense of abundant opportunity and possibilities ahead.  It is a season when nature seems to explode from its dormancy with surprising strength and rapid growth before settling down to the more sedate pace of summer days.

The spiritual journey has some parallels.  We awake from the dormancy of our habitual lives to sense that there is something more.  We let go of what is old, let ourselves be re-formed in a new vision of what life is and can be, and reach the apex of union with that which is beyond, with the divine, with God.  We are alive and energized in new ways and filled with possibilities.

But then what?

I used to think that this experience of union was the final step in the spiritual journey, and indeed many wisdom traditions seem to stop there.  But just as summer follows spring, so something else in the spiritual journey follows the springtime experience of union.  And this is service.  Action follows true union as surely as summer follows spring.

I would make an analogy with romantic love.  When two people fall in love and it matures into a deep sense of union, what follows is a deep desire to tend to the needs, desires, dreams, and energies of the partner in the relationship.  What unfolds is mutuality and caring. That is, the springtime of union gives way to the summer of mutual serving.  And when this love expands, as it often does and is meant to do, beyond the twosome of the particular relationship to a wider love of others – family, friends, neighbors, humanity, and ultimately to all creation -- so does the desire for and draw to be of service.

In the Christian scriptures, in the Gospel of John (17:22-23), Jesus is reported to have prayed for his followers: 22“… [Father,] may [they] be one, as we are one, 23I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you … have loved them even as you have loved me.”  There is in this the sense of loving union that goes way beyond an individual, personal union with the divine to a union that encompasses a community of other folks. “I in them, you in me, completely one.”  To serve, then, is to extend love to the whole community.  To serve an other is to serve all and is simultaneously to serve oneself as well.  As humans we are built for community, for relationships, and we become most fully who we are and most fully alive in this communal context of mutual caring and love. 

But service is often hard.  It requires letting go of our egos as the center of our universe.  It requires sacrificing some forms of self-interest for the larger interest of the communal network of all life (human and non-human alike) within which we live.  And our ego does not like to be deposed from the top position.  True, a healthy ego is a human necessity, but the ego is healthiest when it serves the deeper self, the Self-in-community, rather than usurping the top spot.

The best antidote to ego-centrism is sacrificial service.  Service creates and strengthens relationships. It fosters loving connection. It cultivates the possibilities inherent in the springtime season.  Service can be seen as an intentional discipline that we choose, even as a prayer practice if you will.  Here are some suggestions for putting such a practice into place:

·      Reflect on the ways that you already serve others in your ordinary daily life: you do, already, in multiple small (and sometimes big) ways.  Celebrate this!

·      Reflect on the ways others already serve you; bring these ways to conscious awareness.  Be grateful for them and share that gratitude with those who have cared for you.

·      For those close to you whom you love, be intentional about showing that love in new, creative ways.  Perhaps (without calling attention to it) do something kind or helpful that is unexpected and beyond your usual ways of service.

·      Extend this same practice from time to time to those beyond your immediate circle – your neighbors, even strangers you encounter.

·      Consider what it would mean for you to serve in some larger context – the broader community, the nation, creatures beyond the human family, the environment.

·      In all this be gentle with yourself; serve where you can within the limits of your situation – you cannot do everything, but the one thing that you do is significant, precious, and sacred[1]. 

May you not only be drawn into union with others and the divine, but also may you respond from there with a genuine desire to serve in love!

[1] The word “sacrifice,” in its Latin roots, means “to make sacred.”  Imagine that!

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