The Spirit of Service “If I'm attentive to what's going on inside of me when I'm helping, 1 find that I'm always helping someone who's not as strong as 1 am, who is needier than 1 am. People feel this inequality. When we help we 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 1 help 1 am very aware of my own strength. But we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. . . .Helping incurs debt. When you help someone they owe you one. But serving, like healing, is mutual. There is no debt. 1 am as served as the person 1 am serving. When 1 help 1 have a feeling of satisfaction. When 1 serve 1 have a feeling of gratitude.”
"Serving is also very different from fixing. When 1 fix a person 1 perceive them as broken, and their brokenness requires me to act. When 1 fix 1 do not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of the life in them. When 1 serve 1 see and trust that wholeness.. .Fixing is a form of judgment. All judgment creates distance, a disconnection, an experience of difference.. .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.
"I think 1 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.. .Lastly, fixing and helping are the basis of curing, but not of healing.. .Only service heals."
"In the Service of Life, " Rachel Naomi Remen, Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco
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