Serving Lovingly

When we imagine “growing spiritually” it is easy to think of that Instagram kind of spirituality- yoga, meditation, hot tea, massage -- There is a whole industry out there that wants us to believe that spiritual growth is about each individual seeker feeling peaceful and healthy and actualized. I confess, as someone who does yoga and meditates, this is an easy temptation to fall into. And while I do think I’m a better mom and a better minister and a better friend when I am calm and mindful and healthy, the past year has proven to me that my own happiness and health are not the best guideposts for our spiritual journey - no human I know is happy and healthy all the time. And more importantly, if my goal is only my own actualization, I am constrained by the smallness of my own life. What is the use of growing spiritually? Why does it matter?

Love is the doctrine of this church,
The quest of truth is our sacrament,
and service is our prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge in freedom,
To serve others in community,
To the end that all souls shall grow
Into harmony with creation,
Thus we do covenant with one another.

This is one version of a covenant read by many Unitarian Universalist churches all over the country. Notice that it says “Service is our prayer.” I think this is more than poetic, I think service really can be a form of spiritual practice.

Way back in the 1500s, Spanish Carmelite Nun, mystic and teacher Theresa of Avilla wrote lots of advice for her nuns, and though she lived in a very different time, the advice she gave them can still help us today on our modern spiritual journey:

“11. When I see people very anxious to know what sort of prayer they practise, covering their faces and afraid to move or think lest they should lose any slight tenderness and devotion they feel, I know how little they understand how to attain union with God since they think it consists in such things as these. No, sisters, no; our Lord expects works from us. If you see a sick sister whom you can relieve, never fear losing your devotion; compassionate her; if she is in pain, feel for it as if it were your own and, when there is need, fast so that she may eat, not so much for her sake as because you know your Lord asks it of you. This is the true union of our will with the will of God.”[From "Interior Castle]

In other words, if you are not able to attain a certain spiritual feeling in your practices, that’s okay. Those feelings are not the goal of the spiritual journey. Better to focus on compassion for others than achieving spiritual bliss. Even if your compassion for others brings up feelings that make you feel less than holy. Throughout the preceding passage she counsels us that the best way to be sure of our love of God is through our love of neighbor. And the best way to ground that love, to practice that love is through works of service and charity for others. In works of compassion, we unite our will with the will of the divine.

For the Atheists and agnostics in the group today, don’t worry -- science leads us to the same conclusion as the mystics. Research has shown that acts of helping others improve our own mental health and the good of society. For what do we grow spiritually? So that we can better serve, and we serve so that we can grow.

Part of what makes service so helpful on both the spiritual and ethical journeys, is that it encourages us to de-center ourselves. As my friend said, while we exchanged story after story about her own goals and needs constantly interrupted by the demands of her preschool daughter- “It’s not all about me.” I was also parenting a young child and I laughed with the shock of recognition, because while logically I had always known that was true, there’s nothing like showing up to work with tiny handprints on your shirt after a sleepless night, only to leave work early when the daycare calls to say your child has a fever, to really teach you in a deeper way that “it’s not all about me.”

It’s easy to do our work in a way that is, actually, all about me. We think we know what’s best for someone else, how to fix them, and if we “succeed” in fixing them it strengthens our ego- it makes us feel good about our image of ourselves. Unfortunately, building up the ego is not actually good for our spiritual growth, and in fact it’s often not good for the person we are trying to help. Your board has been studying “aspects of white supremacy culture” and one of them is paternalism- where privileged people enter a situation with persons of less privilege and give folks what we think they need, sometimes including strict rules or requirements. Our history is full of terrible examples of this, think Native boardinghouses, think colonialism.

The antidote to this is decentering ourselves. As we enter a situation where we see suffering, because we are moved and want to serve, we ask the folks right there “what do you need?”- trusting that the people who are most effected know better than anyone what they need in their own lives. We are not there to lead, but to support, to amplify, to serve. Our UUSC uses this model- we have grassroots partners around the world, and we trust their wisdom of their local situation, and their network of connections, and we go in with money and technical support for their grassroots work.

We are a congregation committed to anti-racism work, and decentering is critical here. When we reached out to Mothers helping Mothers in Elmira, we didn’t say “here’s a program we want to offer in your community” we said “please tell us what you are doing and how we can help” If we want to work to end anti-black racism, we have to center the ideas and needs of black people who are directly experiencing that racism, rooted in their direct experience and knowing and network. If we want to support disability rights, we center folks who are disabled by our environment, and ask what they need to participate fully. When we serve others, we are not the star of the story; our goal is not to be like Sandra Bullock in “the Blind Side;”  in decentering ourselves we become a supporting character.

When we take on an attitude of service, decentering ourselves, it not only makes us better allies, better at supporting others, but it is also an important part of growing spiritually. Jung says that the journey in the second half of life is about loosening the grasp of ego, realizing that it’s not all about us, and that we are deeply connected to one another and to something greater than ourselves.

Now there is a paradox here that I have been struggling with recently. As a white cis middle-class woman, I know that my work for justice needs to involve decentering myself. But, I also know that women over 50 are often invisibilized in our society. Consider the stereotypical mom, who selflessly gives up her own agenda for her children’s success- whether or not we have ever parented, this is an archetype we all have to deal with. In our youth obsessed culture, it’s easy for the experiences of older folks to be overlooked. It’s easy for people who do the quiet supportive work of service and care to be overlooked. It occurred to me that if we don’t center ourselves no one else will. So this is a challenge of serving lovingly- How do we decenter ourselves and advocate for ourselves at the same time? How do we be of service knowing that no matter how much we pour out our own personal life essence, there will still be hunger, and racism, and suffering?

The spiritual traditions offer us 2 pieces of wisdom about that. First, non-attachment to outcome. The practice of Karma Yoga in the Hindu tradition is about service, yes, about doing our work that makes the world go, yes, but it is about doing that work in a way that is not attached to outcome. Last fall I spent an evening in parking lot of the United Methodist Church where a community group  was handing out dinners, the food pantry was giving out food staples, and Project Grow was giving out tomato seedlings to anyone who wanted to grow their own fresh organic tomatoes. We ran out of dinners early, but because we had been rationing our seedlings too tightly, we did not give away as many tomato plants as we had hoped. Non-attachment to outcome looks like this- letting go, with some sadness, of the fact that other hungry people could were not fed, and let go, with hope and trust, of what happens to all those seedlings, adopted or not, once they left our hands. I do my part and let go- it’s not all about me.

The other wisdom of so many spiritual traditions is that we are not alone. Today’s message is not a call to do more; many of you have told us how you feel exhausted and burnt out, how you feel you have no more to give. I feed the person in front of me, I work to disrupt racism in the spaces where I live. I listen to the troubles of a friend, I serve as I am able, and trust that other people are doing the same, and that we are all woven together in a web of connection that holds us when we rest, and when we ourselves are in need. This is the moral of “Chickens to the Rescue” – the wisdom the chickens know - that the need is endless, and so they take their day of rest, hoping, trusting, that the other farm animals, and of course the farm family, will take their turn to serve.

“Live ethically, serve lovingly and grow spiritually.” The more I think about these 3 ideas the more I see that they balance each other like the 3 legs of a stool. Growing Spiritually help us become our best selves, and grow in connection to that which is greater than us. Living ethically helps us understand and discern who and what we serve, and helps us develop the integrity that is an important part of spiritual growth. Service embodies and grounds our ethics and our spiritual growth. It is where the rubber meets the road. Let us serve in a way that reminds us “it’s not all about us” – when we are serving we are not the hero of the story, we are the supporting characters helping the stars to shine. Service doesn’t have to be big Nobel prize winning acts, because it is the “small acts of great kindness” that support us in our ordinary lives, day in and day out. Let us serve in a way that is not attached to outcomes- a practice that helps our souls learn that we are not in control, and that we are part of something bigger. And let our practice include laying down our work whenever it is time to rest and renew and grow. We serve so that we can live and grow, and we grow and live so that we can serve.