Gazing in the Mirror

December 8 - Serving Life

The life I touch for good
or ill will touch another life,
and that in turn another,
until who knows where the
trembling stops or in what
far place my touch will be
felt.
~ Frederick Buechner

God gives some more than
others because some accept
more than others.
~ Ernest Holmes

At some point on my path through this Life I became aware that one of my expressions is "serving". I have "served" in many ways. Of course I have served family and husband since a very young age. I remember making breakfast in bed for my own mother in my childhood. I remember serving on student council and serving my high school band for my whole senior year as their Sweetheart. I remember being a reporter for a newspaper with Junior Achievement and serving on a student council experience at the city level in El Paso Texas. I was a Candystriper at a Catholic hospital. All of that service even before I had graduated from high school.

So it is little wonder that I feel that I am in the service of Life on a very deep level? Wherever I have gone, whatever I have done, I have served. When I became acquainted with a Religious Science (as they were called at that time) church that taught Ernest Holmes' Science of Mind philosophy I served the adult single's group by being on the planning committee and writing newsletters. I served in the sanctuary in the middle of the night to anchor a positive vibration during an all night vigil around Eastertime, if my memory serves me as well as I serve others.

I have served the cause of recycling through not only the for profit business that supports our family but through many outreach efforts that were much more about educating the public in general than about promoting our business. I have even given televised interviews about recycling, provided programs for whole groups of school children locally, and served on the board of directors for our local disabled sheltered workshop when that was one of their revenue and employment streams. I have taught the children of interior designers about recycled materials and assisted them in making crafts during a design conference in Aspen CO. And I have helped provide programs for the local Girl Scouts about recycling.

I have served the natural world by suggesting to my family that we join the Missouri Stream Team program in the year of its creation (when I first wrote this essay it was 2012 and that program was over 20 yrs old) and have mentored a second team and participated in the creation of a regional watershed association. For many years, I served the interests of science, biology and conservation yearly by going out on 3 different occasions between March and June each year to listen to and estimate the number of various species of frogs and toads on my local route. I only ended when support for that program ended at the national level.  I help my husband to steward the historic and natural aspects of our family farm located in a "wilderness" environment and have served on the board of directors for our local historical society.

I have served my children as the vessel in which their bodily forms incubated and also as their source of nutrition by breastfeeding them for an entire year. I have served my in-laws during the last few years of their lives, by taking them to doctor's appointments and supporting them in whatever ways I had the capability of doing. I served my immediate family following the death of my mother, caring for my father and sisters, and through executing their estate through probate. I am grateful for having the opportunity to walk alongside my loved ones in their final days until they reached that portal to the next expression of their consciousness where I could not go with them physically. I have served my youngest sister during her homeless years by providing emotional and minor financial supports to keep her alive until she was ready to re-emerge from her limbo state which even now is not complete but an ongoing process which has yet to return her entirely to the same reality that the majority of humanity commonly agrees upon. I went through the difficult process of obtaining some support for her after both of our parents were gone.

I continue to serve Spirit through many global meditation and energetic practices as well as through leadership in online communities. I was called to serve a practice for approx one year including guiding some of the weekly meditations. I was called to transition another community effort as well as to mentor one young man in particular when asked to do so by a Hindu man upon his own path of mastery. I believe I serve Spirit daily through my presence in this particular geolocation on the planet. I know that "to serve" is as natural to me as is breathing. I will be serving as long as Spirit finds places to express Itself through me in service to that Life that my form is in service to. How do you serve Life ?

~ perspective

There are so many ways that
I can make my life a useful
experience beyond my own
needs and desires and I am
grateful to be aware of and
avail my own self of such
opportunities.
I do not seek financial
compensation for my acts of
service and yet I do not deny
that Spirit may chose to
support me in return for the
spiritual service that I do.
I know that serving does not
have to mean doing something
huge because my serving often
includes many small or limited
acts that nevertheless are part
of the means for Spirit to alter
the way that the world is for
all people by a positive and
beneficial expression.
Serving Life is a way of seeing
life "whole" and it is the work
of my soul in givingness.
There is nothing "special" about
me simply because I serve
because anyone can serve –
it takes no special education,
it is not rocket science, it is
rather an impulse of the heart
and mind to give of the self.

#administration #biology #conservation #education #government #homelessness #meditation #mentoring #recycling #volunteer