Reflections on Service and Solidarity

One of my colleagues today asked me a question. "How has your transition back to regular life been?" At first I was taken aback. I mean, I was only gone for four nights and four days. It's not like I'd have reverse culture shock (which unlike reverse racism is a real thing) or something.

So I thought about her question and responded with the idea that somehow my trip to the border had turned out to be just what I needed. That sounds selfish doesn't it? But really, it was retreat-like in the way that I met so many wonderful people, including some of the most inspiring and powerful women ever. I never had to rush. My days were planned for me and all involved deep thought, intensive listening, and the chance to stand in solidarity with the act of service. If you know me, you know this is an environment in which I can thrive.

One of the most profound moments came in our final hours of reflection. As we sat in Eileen's living room in Tucson, one of our Welcome the Stranger members read Rachel Naomi Remen's essay entitled, "Helping, Fixing, or Serving." I don't think I could have picked a more perfect reading. It was so poignant to our experiences throughout our time in Tucson, Nogales, and Arivaca. And it was poignant to some other things happening in my life right now as well as I am working closely with a new immigrant mother and son in the Twin Cities. 

If I can focus most on standing in solidarity with others and serving along side them, I will be able to let go of my need to fix and help.

Remen says it best in this segment, "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." 

As you may imagine, Remen's essay is connected closely to Mother Theresa's philosophy of service as well as principles of Buddhism and thoughts around ego.

My four days with our Welcome the Stranger delegation and Loretto Co-members were full of service and acts of solidarity.  In Nogales we washed dishes side by side with recently deported men and women. We shared meals with children in need. We listened intently and took notes. We asked questions. We walked in the desert and distributed humanitarian aid. We held candles and sang in a vigil for people for have lost their lives crossing from one country to the next. And we broke bread together. Okay, I actually gave up bread for Lent but you know what I mean. 

We did not try to find a solution or solve a problem that is out of our reach. 

And so when Kathy read the excerpt below from Rachel Naomi Remen's essay, all the pieces fell into place for me. Do you struggle with the need to fix or help? 
If you have a few minutes more, read on. 

Serving is Different From Helping and Fixing

       English Hindi Spanish Tamil        

--by Rachel Naomi Remen (Mar 18, 2013)

In recent years the question how can I help? has become meaningful to many people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider. Perhaps the real question is not how can I help? but how can I serve?

Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength. If I'm attentive to what's going on inside of me when I'm helping, I find that I'm always helping 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.

--Rachel Naomi Remen, adapted from a transcript in the Noetic Sciences Review

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.
Helping, Fixing or Serving?, Rachel Naomi Remen, Shambhala Sun, September 1999.