To Serve, To Be of Service
If you cannot find that which you seek inside yourself,
you will never find it without. This rule of the Goddess
also applies to Service. Service to self, service to community,
service to country, there are many types of service. Why
on Goddess’s green earth would anyone voluntarily step up
to “do service” to community? Why, indeed. The rewards are
few and far between. Thank you comes all too infrequently.
Glory? Honor? Respect? Sure, sometimes. But, all too often
service to community amounts to countless hours of blood,
sweat and tears “behind the scenes” and more often than
not for very little, if any recognition.
It may be easier to define what service is NOT. Service
is not a competition. One does not engage in service to
community in order to attract followers, to gain respect
within the community, to win popularity contests. This is
not high school, this is a grown up and continually growing
Pagan Community. When we seek to serve others we do so out
of love, not out of ego, and we do so from the depths of
a boundless and endless love for all.
I often attend a Healing Drum Circle that is hosted by Virgie
from the Ravenhawk Clan. At the beginning of every gathering
Virgie greets each and every individual personally. She
clasps your face between her hands, places her forehead
to yours, chakra-to- chakra, and she welcomes you to the
circle and thanks you for allowing her to be your hostess.
At the end of each drum circle she again thanks everyone
for coming and expresses her gratitude that we allowed her
the honor of serving us. Yes, service is an honor. When
we are allowed to serve others it is because they place
their trust in us. If we step up to provide this service
from the love that lives within our heart, that trust is
appropriately placed. If we step up to serve from a place
of fear and a void within our heart that needs to be filled,
then we are doing a dis-service to our community, and we
will not succeed.
Service is a humbling experience. When service is done well,
your heart is filled to overflowing with sheer, unadulterated
joy because you will have succeeded in sharing yourself,
through perfect love. The outward sign of success in service
is often the inability to hold back the flood of joyous
tears that refuse to be contained, because your heart is
full to overflowing and you feel like the luckiest person
in the world to have been given the opportunity to serve
your brothers and sisters.
There is no room for ego in service. When we are compelled
or “called” to serve, it does not matter to us whether or
not we are noticed, if we are recognized, if we even receive
a “thank you”. It does not matter who did what first. Without
ego taking credit or getting credit for the ideas that originate
from us is completely unimportant. The concept of “ownership”
no longer matters. Ideas originate like seeds that are planted
in fertile soil. Good ideas take root and spread and get
picked up and spread around by others again and again until
the originator of the idea fades from memory and it no longer
matters whose idea it was in the first place.
To serve, according to dictionary.com, means “to work for,
to be a servant to, to prepare and offer (food, for example):
serve tea”. A fine example of how to serve in our community,
our family, is when we facilitate a gathering – to be a
facilitator is to “prepare and to offer” ritual with the
intent of sharing a spiritual experience with brothers and
sisters of like mind and heart.
To be of ser·vice – There are many definitions and perspectives
on ways “to be of service”. To provide assistance; to offer
or give help: She was of great service to him during his
illness. An act of assistance or benefit; a favor: My friend
did me a service in fixing the door; and, my favorite, “An
act of devotion to God, as through good works or prayer,
a religious rite”.
So, IF you choose to serve your community as a part of your
spiritual practice, then please take the time to examine
your motives. Ask yourself why? Am I doing this because
I am seeking honor, glory recognition? Am I doing this because
I have something I want to share with my brothers and my
sisters? This is a critical self-examination and it can
sometimes be painfully revealing. If you do so out of love
and not from your ego, you will quickly find pleasure and
joy from nothing more than just being there and being of
service; if you feel as if you are “being put upon”, then
you are not coming from the perspective of love. If you
feel that you are being unjustly taken advantage of, then
you are not coming from a place of love. If you feel that
your ideas are being stolen and others are given credit
or are taking credit for your hard work, perhaps you need
to examine your motives before continuing to offer your
service to others. Here’s one last critical self-examination
question to contemplate before you volunteer for your next
great adventure as a service provider, “Am I doing this
because I want people to love me or to like me?” Wow! If
the answer to that one is “yes”, then you need to step back
to square one and begin to learn to like and to love yourself
before you have anything to offer others by way of service.
In Love and Light,
Lorna RedHawk
Servant of the CLANS
Past CMA Community Service Coordinator
© 2005 Lorna RedHawk. Feel free to publish in its entirety.
