Guidelines for Service

Wow, I really love this, Ron! I don't know who you are, but I do. What a beautiful and resonating set of guidelines. My heart "tunes up" with these. They feel like my most comfortable walking clothes. I feel so right at home in your words.


"To try to serve others is to be caught up in many tensions, some that beset from without and others that beset from within. How can we remain energized, effective, and true? Here are some guidelines for the long haul:

Be beyond ideology, be both post-liberal and post-conservative.

Have an unlisted ideological number! Refuse to be pre-defined by any ideology of the left or the right. Like Jesus, transcend boundaries, constantly surprise, refuse to be classified. Don't be 'liberal' and don't be 'conservative,' instead be a woman or man of faith and compassion and let that take you down whatever roads it takes you, whether others see it as liberal or conservative.

Strive to incarnate both the kenotic and the triumphant Christ.

Don't be afraid to be nothing and don't be afraid to be everything! Christ emptied himself and refused to claim any status or to stand out in terms of public titles, distinctive dress, or in any triumphant display of power. But he is too the Christ who rose triumphant from the tomb and who needs to be proclaimed publicly, with color, pride, and display. He is both the Christ of silent, anonymous witness and the Christ of chanting, public processions. Honor both.

Be for the marginalized, without being marginalized yourself.

Walk a fine tightrope! Take your stand with the marginalized, even as you are known for your sanity and capacity to relate warmly and deeply to every kind of person and group. Be known for your radical stance for the poor even as you are recognized for the wide scope of your embrace.

Lead without being elitist.

Be led by the artist, but listen to the street! Be a leader, an aesthete, an artist, a creative person trying to lead others forward, even as you shun elitism of every sort and ensure that every kind of person is comfortable around you. Be a leader, but with empathy, without disdaining others' culture, sentiment, or piety.

Be iconoclastic and pious at the same time.

Don't be afraid to smash idols and don't be afraid to bow in reverence! The problem is that the pious aren't liberal and the liberals aren't pious. Be both, one doesn't work without the other. Great hearts hold near contradictory principles, lesser ones do not. Help smash the false gods that need to be smashed, even as you are unafraid to kneel often and anywhere in reverence.

Be equally committed to social justice and to intimacy with Jesus.

Learn to be comfortable leading both a peace march and a devotional prayer! Do not choose between justice and Jesus, between committing yourselves to the poor and fostering private intimacy with Jesus. Don't choose between interiority and action. Dorothy Day didn't. There's a lesson there.

Be thoroughly in the world, even as you are rooted elsewhere.

Live in a tortured complexity! Love the world, love its pagan beauty, let it take your breath away, even as you root your heart in something deeper so that the realities of faith also take your breath away. Carry the tension between having a hopeless love for the world and a hopeless love for things beyond it. Love the world as you would a lover with some quirks of character and weaknesses that cause you pain. Pray a lot. Cry when you feel it. Sneak off to a church as needed and walk in the sun regularly. The church has secrets worth knowing, and the world is also beautiful.

Ponder, in the biblical sense, by carrying the tension inside the community.

Eat the tension around you! Mary pondered, not by thinking deep intellectual thoughts but by holding, carrying, and transforming tension so as not to give it back in kind. Like Jesus, she helped take sin and tension away by absorbing it, like a water-filter that keeps the impurities, toxins, and dirt inside of itself and gives back only pure water. Be a tension-absorber inside all the communities wherein you live. Absorb the bitterness, the anger, the hardness, the group hysteria, the lack of reconciliation, as a water-filter might. Then drink wine with a good friend to rid yourself of your own toxins.

Help incarnate a deeper maturity.

Go into dark places, but don't sin! Stand up for the God-given freedom we enjoy, even as you model and show others how that freedom can be carried in a way that never abuses it. Like Jesus, who went into the singles-bars of his time (except he didn't sin), walk in great freedom, go into dark places, but go there not to assert human autonomy but to take God's light there.

Make love to the song!

Forget about yourself and how others react to you! A bad singer on stage makes love to himself; a more popular singer makes love to his audience; a really mature singer makes love to the song. Service is the same. Forget about yourself, your image, your need to prove yourself, and eventually forget about your audience too so that you and your song are not about yourself or about your followers, but about God."

-- Ron Rolheiser


And, since he mentioned her above, and since we are coming up on the 12th anniversary of Revolution Consulting, these feel both appropriate and synchronous:


"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start within each one of us?"

"There is plenty for us to do, for each and every one of us, working on our own hearts, changing our own attitudes, right in our own neighborhoods."

"It is easier to have faith that God will support our big, global projects and supply our needs in the way of food and money to pay bills, than it is to keep a strong, hearty, living faith in each individual around us - to see Christ in him."

-- Dorothy Day

Who are the poor we are to serve?

It is important to remember that I am both the consecrated "healer" and the capitulated "in need of healing," and from that deep, holy place, true connection with others becomes more than a heart's desire, it becomes tangible reality. And I don't have to be the "good one" (which, as a motivation, usually has me be not so good), or the direct cause of anything, while everything good takes place all around me. My sacrifice (for my benefit) can be like the wick in the candle that lights a room full of candles, but God is the eternal flame, looking for me to spread Him to other wicks as I burn down. Some candles are small and simple; some are rather large and ornate. Both hold or hide from the flame exactly the same.


Who Are the Poor? (Henri Nouwen Society)

The poor are the center of the Church. But who are the poor? At first we might think of people who are not like us: people who live in slums, people who go to soup kitchens, people who sleep on the streets, people in prisons, mental hospitals, and nursing homes, people with no food or hope or water in the far reaches of the planet. But the poor can be very close. They can be in our own families, churches, or workplaces. Even closer, the poor can be ourselves, who feel unloved, rejected, ignored, or abused. It is precisely when we see and experience poverty in any place or in any way - whether far away, close by, or in our own hearts - that we need to become the Church; that is, to hold hands as brothers and sisters, confess our own brokenness and need, forgive one another, heal one another's wounds, and gather around the table of Jesus for the breaking of the bread. Thus, as the poor we recognize Jesus, who became poor for us.


Becoming the Church of the Poor (Henri Nouwen Society)

When we claim our own poverty and connect our poverty with the poverty of our brothers and sisters, we become the Church of the poor, which is the Church of Jesus. Solidarity is essential for the Church of the poor. Both pain and joy must be shared. As one body we will experience deeply one another's agonies as well as one another's ecstasies. As Paul says: "If one part is hurt, all the parts share its pain. And if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy" (1 Corinthians 12:26). Often we might prefer not to be part of the body because it makes us feel the pain of others so intensely. Every time we love others deeply we feel their pain deeply. However, joy is hidden in the pain. When we share the pain we also will share the joy.


The Poverty of Our Leaders (or, the big, ornate candles) (Henri Nouwen Society)

There is a tendency to think about poverty, suffering, and pain as realities that happen primarily or even exclusively at the bottom rung of our Church ladder. We seldom think of our leaders as poor or starving. Still, there is great poverty, deep loneliness, painful isolation, real depression, and much emotional suffering at the top of our Church as well. We need the courage to acknowledge the suffering of the leaders of our Church - its ministers, pastors, priests, bishops, and popes - and include them in this "fellowship of the weak." When we are not distracted by the power, wealth, success, and outward appearance of those who offer leadership, we will soon discover their powerlessness, poverty, and failures and feel free to reach out to them with the same compassion we want to give to those at the bottom. In God's eyes there is no distance between bottom and top. There shouldn't be in our eyes either.



So remember, as you go to "light" another or many other candles, in the offer of your guidance, help, or support, whether in your neighborhood or on the other side of the world, the "light" that you are willing to carry is not your own, but is borrowed from the Eternal One, and it requires your complete and sacrificial burning in the sharing.