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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.
 Rachel
Naomi Remen is one of the
earliest pioneers in the mind/body holistic health movement and the first to
recognize the role of the spirit in health and the recovery from illness. She is
Co-Founder and Medical Director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program featured
in the Bill Moyers PBS series, Healing and the Mind and has cared for
people with cancer and their families for almost 30 years.
She is also a nationally
recognized medical reformer and educator who sees the practice of medicine as a
spiritual path. In recognition of her work she has received several honorary
degrees and has been invited to teach in medical schools and hospitals
throughout the country. Her groundbreaking holistic curricula enable physicians
at all levels of training to remember their calling and strengthen their
commitment to serve life.
Dr. Remen is Clinical Professor
of Family and Community Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine and Director of
the innovative UCSF course The Healer's Art, which was recently featured
in US News & World Report. She is Founder and Director of the
Institute for the Study of Health and Illness, a ten-year-old professional
development program for graduate physicians.
She is the author of the New
York Times bestseller Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal,
Riverhead Books, 1996. Her newest book, My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories
of Strength, Refuge and Belonging, Riverhead Books, 2000, is a national
bestseller. As a master story-teller and public speaker, she has spoken to
thousands of people throughout the country, reminding them of the power of their
humanity and the ability to use their lives to make a difference. Dr. Remen has
a 48-year personal history of Crohn's disease and her work is a unique blend of
the viewpoint of physician and patient.
www.rachelremen.com
From : Noetic Sciences Review
Spring
1996
Reprinted
by permission
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© Pat Ware
