Reveries
rev·er·ie
/ˈrev(ə)rē/
noun
a state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts; a daydream.
On Service
Helping, Fixing or Serving?
By Rachel Naomi Remen, Shambhala Sun, September 1999.
"Fixing and helping create a distance between people, but we cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected."
Helping, fixing and serving represent three different 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. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.
Service rests on the 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. 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.
Serving is different from helping. Helping is not a relationship between equals. A helper may see others as weaker than they are, needier than they are, and people often feel this inequality. The danger in helping is that 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 or even wholeness.
When we help, we become aware of our own strength. But when we serve, we don’t serve with our strength; we serve with ourselves, and we draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve; our wounds serve; even our darkness can serve. My pain is the source of my compassion; my woundedness is the key to my empathy.
Serving makes us aware of our wholeness and its power. 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: our service strengthens us as well as others. Fixing and helping are draining, and over time we may burn out, but service is renewing. When we serve, our work itself will renew us. In helping we may find a sense of satisfaction; in serving we find a sense of gratitude.
Harry, an emergency physician, tells a story about discovering this. One evening on his shift in a busy emergency room, a woman was brought in about to give birth. When he examined her, Harry realized immediately that her obstetrician would not be able to get there in time and he was going to deliver this baby himself. Harry likes the technical challenge of delivering babies, and he was pleased. The team swung into action, one nurse hastily opening the instrument packs and two others standing at the foot of the table on either side of Harry, supporting the woman’s legs on their shoulders and murmuring reassurance. The baby was born almost immediately.
While the infant was still attached to her mother, Harry laid her along his left forearm. Holding the back of her head in his left hand, he took a suction bulb in his right and began to clear her mouth and nose of mucous. Suddenly, the baby opened her eyes and looked directly at him. In that instant, Harry stepped past all of his training and realized a very simple thing: that he was the first human being this baby girl had ever seen. He felt his heart go out to her in welcome from all people everywhere, and tears came to his eyes.
Harry has delivered hundreds of babies, and has always enjoyed the excitement of making rapid decisions and testing his own competency. But he says that he had never let himself experience the meaning of what he was doing before, or recognize what he was serving with his expertise. In that flash of recognition he felt years of cynicism and fatigue fall away and remembered why he had chosen this work in the first place. All his hard work and personal sacrifice suddenly seemed to him to be worth it.
He feels now that, in a certain sense, this was the first baby he ever delivered. In the past he had been preoccupied with his expertise, assessing and responding to needs and dangers. He had been there many times as an expert, but never before as a human being. He wonders how many other such moments of connection to life he has missed. He suspects there have been many.
As Harry discovered, serving is different from fixing. In fixing, we see others as broken, and respond to this perception with our expertise. Fixers trust their own expertise but may not see the wholeness in another person or trust the integrity of the life in them. When we serve we see and trust that wholeness. We respond to it and collaborate with it. And when we see the wholeness in another, we strengthen it. They may then be able to see it for themselves for the first time.
One woman who served me profoundly is probably unaware of the difference she made in my life. In fact, I do not even know her last name and I am sure she has long forgotten mine.
At twenty-nine, because of Crohn’s Disease, much of my intestine was removed surgically and I was left with an ileostomy. A loop of bowel opens on my abdomen and an ingeniously designed plastic appliance, which I remove and replace every few days covers it. Not an easy thing for a young woman to live with, and I was not at all sure that I would be able to do this. While this surgery had given me back much of my vitality, the appliance and the profound change in my body made me feel hopelessly different, permanently shut out of the world of femininity and elegance.
At the beginning, before I could change my appliance myself, it was changed for me by nurse specialists called enterostomal therapists. These white-coated experts were women my own age. They would enter my hospital room, put on an apron, a mask and gloves, and then remove and replace my appliance. The task completed, they would strip off all their protective clothing. Then they would carefully wash their hands. This elaborate ritual made it harder for me. I felt shamed.
One day a woman I had never met before came to do this task. It was late in the day and she was dressed not in a white coat but in a silk dress, heels and stockings. She looked as if she was about to meet someone for dinner. In a friendly way she told me her first name and asked if I wished to have my ileostomy changed. When I nodded, she pulled back my covers, produced a new appliance, and in the most simple and natural way imaginable removed my old one and replaced it, without putting on gloves. I remember watching her hands. She had washed them carefully before she touched me. They were soft and gentle and beautifully cared for. She was wearing a pale pink nail polish and her delicate rings were gold.
At first, I was stunned by this break in professional procedure. But as she laughed and spoke with me in the most ordinary and easy way, I suddenly felt a great wave of unsuspected strength come up from someplace deep in me, and I knew without the slightest doubt that I could do this. I could find a way. It was going to be all right.
I doubt that she ever knew what her willingness to touch me in such a natural way meant to me. In ten minutes she not only tended my body, but healed my wounds. What is most professional is not always what best serves and strengthens the wholeness in others. Fixing and helping create a distance between people, an experience of difference. We cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. Fixing and helping are strategies to repair life. We serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.
Serving requires us to know that our humanity is more powerful than our expertise. In forty-five years of chronic illness I have been helped by a great number of 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.
Service is not an experience of strength or expertise; service is an experience of mystery, surrender and awe. Helpers and fixers feel causal. Servers may experience from time to time a sense of being used by larger unknown forces. Those who serve have traded a sense of mastery for an experience of mystery, and in doing so have transformed their work and their lives into practice.
Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. is Associate Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at U.C.S.F. Medical School and co-founder and medical director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program. She is author of the bestseller, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal.
A POEM FOR A DYING FRIEND
Banquet
For Ruth, 17 September 2020, San Diego, California
Meet me at the happy banquet of our memories,
I’ll find you there with a dance in my soul.
Greet me with an embrace too long overdue,
I’ll adorn you in light and joy overwhelming.
Celebrate with me this reunion of hearts,
I’ll fill your glass and cheers to your smile.
Let’s sit a while in this happy place.
I have too much love to share with you.
It’s good to see you again, dear friend.
I wrote this poem in a letter I sent to my friend, Ruth. While I was updating my security clearance forms for work, I realized some of the info for the folks listed had probably changed. I called my old coworker and friend, Joe, to get some updates on addresses and phone numbers. While catching up on life, Joe told me that Ruth, a friend and fellow teacher-volunteer with Student Leadership, was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. She was in hospice now and past the point of having visitors. Joe did say, however, that Ruth likes to receive letters and poetry written in cursive – it was Ruth’s mission as a teacher to keep cursive handwriting alive. Luckily for me, my handwriting switches between all caps and cursive on any given day.
I intended to write a simple, heartfelt letter and share one of my favorite poems from Rilke or Szymborska. But every poem I remembered or read had a line or two that didn’t quite feel right to send someone in Ruth’s situation. So, I wrote my own. After several hours of writing and 10 pages of drafts, I put together the above poem, which I called, “Banquet.”
We didn’t know how much time Ruth had, so I wanted to send it out the next morning. On Saturday, 12 September, I arrived at the postbox just as the mail carrier was emptying it. I handed my letter directly to her. She took it and that’s the last I saw of it.
Four days later, late in the evening on Wednesday, 16 September, I saw a Facebook post stating that Ruth had passed away. My first feeling was sadness. Next, the lawyer in me thought, wait for more official word. Then the selfish friend in me asked, did she get to read my letter? I began to feel regret that perhaps I moved too slowly. What if I had made it to the post office just 12 hours sooner? After some thought, I realized I did everything I could. I wrote my heart onto paper then sent it out the very next morning. If my words didn’t reach her in time, then maybe my love, my intentions, or my energy did. And maybe they were with her when she passed away into the next life. I was at peace in my sadness.
On 8:53 am the next morning, 17 September, I received a text over Facebook Messenger from Ruth’s sister, my former boss, and forever dear friend, Susan.
Hi Corey – your beautiful letter and poem in perfect cursive was the last note I was able to share with Ruth before she passed yesterday. Thank you for your kindness and perfectly chosen words. Sending love [heart]
I haven’t cried such deep tears in only God knows how long. I’ve never experienced such a profoundly joyful sadness in my life. I am broken, but the cracks of my brokenness have been filled with the most beautiful light of every color.
Cispus, the place I first met Ruth and where we became friends, was on my heart last night - before I even knew Ruth had passed. Toward the close of a therapy session earlier that evening, my counselor asked me to pick a place I felt most comfortable. Without hesitation I chose Cispus. At the Pavilion. Under the stars after camp, enjoying the Perseids shoot across the sky. Two rows of 12 mattresses and sleeping bags lined up in the grass, sharing songs and stories with fellow junior staffers after an intense week. In a guided visualization exercise, Jonathan led me back to that that place. And afterward - I haven’t felt that happy since longer than I can remember. After therapy, I went looking for the typed playlists from those nights at the pavilion. I thought they might be tucked in an old camp binder I had in storage. Instead I found a picture – and another incredible memory from Cispus – of four friends and me near that same pavilion celebrating successfully completing an instructor training course. I shared the picture, created a playlist from memory on Spotify, and listened throughout the night with a smile I couldn’t shake even if I wanted to. Without knowing, I was celebrating Cispus at the same moment Ruth was saying goodbye. I was celebrating Ruth. And my heart was full.
On the Meaning of LIfe
The Meaning of Life
A short story from It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It by Robert Fulghum
“Are there any questions?” An offer that comes at the end of college lectures and long meetings. Said when an audience is not only overdosed with information, but when there is no time left anyhow. At times like that you sure do have questions. Like, “Can we leave now?” and “What the hell was this meeting for?” and “Where can I get a drink?”
The gesture is supposed to indicate openness on the part of the speaker, I suppose, but if in fact you do ask a question, both the speaker and the audience will give you drop-dead looks. And some fool-some earnest idiot always asks. And the speaker always answers. By repeating most of what he has already said.
But if there is a little time left and there is a little silence in response to the invitation, I usually ask the most important question of all: “What is the meaning of life?”
You never know, somebody may have the answer, and I’d really hate to miss it because I was too socially inhibited to ask. But when I ask, it’s usually taken as a kind of absurdist move–people laugh and nod and gather up their stuff and the meeting is dismissed on that ridiculous note.
Once and only once, I asked that question and got a serious answer. One that is with me still.
First, I must tell you where this happened, because the place has a power of its own. In Greece again. Near the village of Gonia on a rocky bay of the island of Crete sits a Greek Orthodox monastery. Alongside it, on land donated by the monastery, is an institute dedicated to human understanding and peace, and especially to rapprochement between Germans and Cretans. An improbable task, given the bitter residue of wartime.
This side is important, because it overlooks the small airstrip at Maleme where Nazi paratroopers invaded Crete and were attacked by peasants wielding kitchen knives and hay scythes. The retribution was terrible. The populations of whole villages were lined up and shot for assaulting Hitler’s finest troops. High above the institute is a cemetery with a single cross marking the mass grave of Cretan partisans. And across the bay on yet another hill is the regimented burial ground of the Nazi paratroopers. The memorials are so placed that all might see and never forget. Hate was the only weapon the Cretans had at the end, and it was a weapon many vowed never to give up. Never ever.
Against this heavy curtain of history, in this place where the stone of hatred is hard and thick, the existence of an institute devoted to healing the wounds of war is a fragile paradox. How has it come to be here? The answer is a man. Alexander Papaderos.
A doctor of philosophy, teacher, politician, resident of Athens but a son of this soil. At war’s end he came to believe that the Germans and the Cretans had much to give one another–much to learn from one another. That they had an example to set. For if they could forgive each other and construct a creative relationship, then any people could.
To make a lovely story short, Papaderos succeeded. The institute became a reality–a conference ground on the site of horror–and it was in fact a source of productive interactions between the two countries. Books have been written on the dreams that were realized by what people gave to people for a summer session. Alexander Papaderos had become a living legend. One look at him and you saw his strength and intensity–energy, physical power, courage, intelligence, passion and vivacity radiated from this person. And to speak to him, to shake his hand, to be in a room with him when he spoke, was to experience his extraordinary electric humanity. Few men live up to their reputations when you get close. Alexander Papaderos was an exception. At the last session on the last morning of a two-week seminar on Greek culture, led by intellectuals and experts in their fields who were recruited by Papaderos from across Greece, Papaderos rose from his chair at the back of the room and walked to the front, where he stood in the bright Greek sunlight of an open window and looked out. We followed his gaze across the bay to the iron cross marking the German cemetery.
He turned. And made the ritual gesture: “Are there any questions?”
Quiet quilted the room. These two weeks had generated enough questions for a lifetime, but for now there was only silence. “No questions?” Papaderos swept the room with his eyes. So I asked.
“Dr. Papaderos, what is the Meaning of Life?”
The usual laughter followed and people stirred to go. Papaderos held up his hand and stilled the room and looked at me for a long time, asking with his eyes if I was serious and seeing from my eyes that I was.
“I will answer your question.”
Taking his wallet out of his hip pocket, he fished into a leather billfold and brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter. And what he said went like this:
“When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.
“I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine–in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.
“I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child’s game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of the light. But light –truth, understanding, knowledge–is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.
“I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world–into the black places in the hearts of men–and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.”
And then he took his small mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the bright rays of daylight streaming through the window and reflected them onto my face and onto my hands folded on the desk.
Much of what I experienced in the way of information about Greek culture and history that summer is gone from memory. But in the wallet of my mind I carry a small round mirror still.
Are there any questions?