A Life Of Service

[Matty]

I don't know if it's a service, so I won't try to make out to be service, but I notice people's values and intentions.

There's so many people who do things in a meaningful, thoughtful, or principled way, but others don't notice it. I guess, I notice people who serve others, often completely unnoticed and unappreciated. I will go out of my way, to go to the person I noticed and tell them that I saw them. Eg. A nurse being incredibly patient, kind, and professional with a belligerent patient. I'll comment that I noticed, without hiding my admiration.

I don't know why these moments seem significant to the people I speak with, but perhaps it's simply "being truly seen", or not being alone in their values/meaning, or something like that. It feels like it's encouraging, acknowledging, and appreciating people in the loneliness of their extraordinary virtue.

Anyhow, thank you all you wonderful carers, servers, protectors, and educators. You're the beating hearts in a suffocating world, keeping warmth and vitality in our community.

 

[aeon]

I notice people who serve others, often completely unnoticed and unappreciated. I will go out of my way, to go to the person I noticed and tell them that I saw them. Eg. A nurse being incredibly patient, kind, and professional with a belligerent patient. I'll comment that I noticed, without hiding my admiration.

Brother of another mother.

Good on ya, mate,
Ian

 

[Elder]

I don't know if it's a service, so I won't try to make out to be service, but I notice people's values and intentions.

In my mind this is one of the purest and most authentic services one can offer into the world.

 

[Elder]

I work in a service oriented field. One of the gifts I allow myself to own is an ability to see people's beautiful. I find myself drawn to ways of working that honor the spark of divinity, of creativity, of blossoming, within each of us and seeks to unburden people of the barriers and weights that keep that seed from flowering fully. I was talking with a colleague yesterday about this preference, which they strongly resonated with, and they called it "subractive" models. They shared a Buddhist story about a clay Buddha that fell and broke revealing a golden Buddha inside. My service is looking for and reflecting back the golden inside others as best I can from within my own clay shell.

 

[aeon]

By the time all was said and done, a total of three phones were donated to the women’s shelter.

-------

30 years ago, I volunteered for a community service project where the goal was to provide health checkups—and when needed, supplementary nutrition—for at-risk elderly and disabled in one of Chicago’s housing projects—Cabrini Green.

There were about ten of us—a couple of nurse practitioners, a couple of nuns, and a half-dozen “pack mules”—I was one of those—who carried backpacks filled with medical supplies and meal shakes. We all wore hi-viz vests.

We were regarded as suspicious by younger residents until they directly saw what we were doing. And then something magical happened—our group added another five members—gang members, with guns, who wanted to walk with us, because, as they said “angels need protection.”

I knew I was in a place that was, by any reasonable measure, not just unsafe, but dangerous, but I felt such an incredible calm. It wasn’t that I felt safe, but I felt such surety that I just felt still inside. I can’t explain it, other than to say I didn’t want anything bad to happen, but if it did, it would have been okay because of what I was doing.

I still think about that time often, because I’ve never felt that same feeling again since, and because I think and feel, in retrospect, it was one of the best things I have ever done. Best by whatever measure I consider, then and now.

-------

I saw something on television years ago that showed the disruption that occurs in families when a mother goes to jail, and/or prison. It gave me an idea, but I’m not sure where to start. I have time now that I did not have in the past.

I would like to be able to take family photographs on the days children and family are allowed to visit, so those family members, and the incarcerated mother, would have something to remember each other by during that time.

But more importantly, I would want to document that a mother’s bond with her children is inviolable, or at least support with evidence that is so.

I know I am an idealist, and I am unsure of myself, but I dream that a woman and her family are greater than the trauma of the disruption to that family and its relationships because of incarceration. I want to show and prove that with a photograph.

The sense I am naïve and unsure, combined with the fact my dream won’t go away, tells me I am on to something—but I’m not sure what it is.

Blesséd Be,
Ian