In Service

A few weeks ago when Pope Francis was in the United States, he said, "Live authentically in a concrete commitment to our neighbor."  The following Sunday our pastor's sermon was on the duty to serve our fellow humans.

This week the scripture once again pointed to service, but this time to service to God.  You might easily summarize the text with President John Kennedy's famous quotation, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country," except substituting "God" for "country."

In his remarks, our pastor ran through a litany of things that we ask God for: to get the job we want, to get in the university we want, to get the promotion we want, to have the romance we want, to have or recover health, to receive an important reward, to bring rain, to have the rains stop...you get the gist.  I have heard God referred to as the great carhop in the sky that we constantly turn to in order to bring us something we want.

Without doubt some of us do pray, "God show me where you need me," or "Allow me to be of service." And, often that comes with a caveat.  When I was spiritual coach to executives in the 1990s, one woman tearfully said how she wanted to be of service, but wasn't getting guidance.  As we talked, she clarified, God wanted her to do something up north, and she couldn't stand to be cold. Really?  "Oh, God, please use me between 9 and 4 on weekdays and only in places that aren't too hot or cold or wet or dry."  I am not sure that is how the prayer to be of service goes.

When doing the spiritual coaching, I used to remind clients that when they prayed, they needed to listen at least as much as talk, but most of us who do pray tend to talk a lot more than listen.  When we do listen, it is with filters about what we find acceptable to hear.

Spiritual listening is like a muscle, which must be worked regularly to become strong.  I am finding that in my own life.  In the 1990s when I had my own business and more or less controlled my schedule, my spiritual listening muscles were strong.  I regularly received very clear and precise guidance from whatever it is out there that I call God.  I was quite comfortable with totally changing course on a speech right in the middle of it, calling someone I didn't know for a conversation, and even moving across the nation to a place where I knew no one and didn't have work.  Things always worked out.

As those of you who follow this blog know, I am in a 4-1/2 month stint in a different job, raising money for 20,000 charities in an annual giving campaign.  I love being of service.  I am one of a group of loaned executives working with groups of managers with whom we brainstorm, track progress, share ideas, and even cheer-lead as they run their individual campaigns.  I love it.  I truly feel like I am serving--I am serving the agency campaign managers, and I am serving the charities who will do service with the money we raise.

The more normal work schedule I now have allows me to do some other things as well.  I have done some things at my church on week nights, and last week I volunteered at a theater, which I used to serve.  But I need to give more of myself.  My listening muscles have grown flabby from lack of use, or maybe I stopped getting messages because I was so regularly finding myself needing to ignore them. (Neither my boss nor my clients would have taken well to me not showing up for an event I was leading because I'd been called to write that day.) I truly don't know if I stopped getting them because I didn't follow, or if I got so good at ignoring them that I no longer hear them.

This morning in church I noticed a line in our "prayers for the people" that I have missed before.  I truly don't remember it, but I think I was listening differently this morning, "Free us from lack of vision, and from inertia of will and spirit."  Ouch!  I am not sure, but I think "inertia of will and spirit" may be the result of flabby listening muscles. It took me a few weeks to physically recover myself from the long hours of my regular job.  I am now entering a stage of spiritual recovery in which I intend to recover my listening muscles.

Winston Churchill once said, "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."  Whether I follow Pope Francis's encouragement to "Live authentically in a concrete commitment to our neighbor" or this week's scriptural encouragement to be of service to God, which in the end is likely to be the same,  I think it doesn't matter.  What does matter is that I step into a space where I am focused on giving instead surviving.