"Service as a Spiritual Practice."

Now that's what I'm talking about. Not just the bad feeling that makes you feel good but doesn't actually put broccoli on the plates of the starving children in Africa, but actually doing something that actually gets something done, all in fellowship with God. That's what I'm interested in, and that's why I was excited about Deliberate Acts of Kindness by Meredith Gould.

Justice work-- cleaning up Gotham-- is kind of like cleaning your house in that it's a superhuman task that is never done-- or at least never stays done for long-- and this book promised to be a practical guide to how to cope with that fact, a book that recognized my humanity. It came out of Gould's experience in 12-step programs, which, although I realize they are no more effective than the Five Pillars or the Fourfold Path in getting me to enlightenment without divine intervention, just don't bug me as much, maybe because they start by admitting that we are powerless! In any case, the book is not so much based on as inspired by the 12 steps, and only has 5 chapters, if we're still counting things.

First, Gould, like Armstrong, defines compassion as it is found in many traditions. I think my favorite was Maimonides' 8 degrees of justice, which began with "1- To give grudgingly, reluctantly, or with regret" and ascended through very detailed increasing degrees of selflessness to reach its pinnacle at "8- To help another to become self-supporting by means of a gift, a loan, or finding employment for the one in need." This definition of the highest form of justice reminds me of the book When Helping Hurts, which I read a few years ago with a church group. The authors, Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, define three levels of generosity: relief, rehabilitation, and development, and argue exactly the same thing as Maimonides: that the ideal philanthropic situation is one where you are working yourself out of a job!

I really appreciated how Gould distinguishes between caring and codependency. Caring is without expectation of cooperation, appreciation or reward, and (this is what I loved) believes that "compassionate noninterference is sometimes the greatest gift of all." (p. 125) Codependency, on the other hand, rushes in to help whether help is wanted or not, gets its thrills from being needed, and runs on guilt, resentment and recognition. Ouch! Reminds me of what my husband always says: "You can tell you're being a servant when people treat you like a slave."

Gould goes on to offer opportunities to identify where I might serve most effectively. I feel that most people don't set out to be compassionate and then try to find a venue to express that quality; instead, they have a concern about a specific issue and are trying to figure out how to most effectively act on that. Still, I liked some of Gould's exercises here that focused more on one's manner of serving. For example, I'm more project-oriented than relationship-oriented, more short-term than long-term, and I like meeting visible immediate needs. For example: teaching inner-city kids art for 8 weeks? Yes, please! Serving on the board of the Barnes Foundation? Um, not so much.

Gould then digs into the nuts and bolts of service: how to survive committee meetings, how to navigate service organizations (which, sadly, turn out to be staffed by humans, just like every other organization that has ever driven you crazy), how to figure out what your job even is within the group. All useful stuff, if a bit much to take in all at once.

Gould brings up the issue of burnout eventually. I have to admit, I think she breezes through it a little too quickly. You have to start thinking about burnout the day you start to serve-- how can you scale your day, your week, your year so that your service is sustainable? Burnout is one of the reasons I was interested in her book in the first place, but I guess I didn't really need a book to tell me that the exhaustion and apathy I was beginning to feel was a red flag waving.

I really already knew what would help me:  slowing down, quitting a bunch of stuff, doing plenty of physical activity, and giving myself permission to enjoy all the blessings God has given me. I also got a kick out of noticing a new phenomenon in my world. I would become aware of a service opportunity and think with dismay about how that was the sort of thing I "should" get involved in, but how I absolutely could not at that moment stand it. The next time I checked, I would find that someone else had stepped forward and the need was filled! The first couple times this happened, it kind of hurt my feelings, because I was so used to thinking of myself as the center of the universe! But soon I learned to thank God for not needing my help to do His job, and by now it's happened so often I just laugh about it.

Ultimately, a life of service takes many forms, from social justice activism on a global scale to caring for one disabled relative. Participating in deliberate acts of kindness and receiving the kindness of God towards me might just be two sides of one coin. So if service doesn't feel like a spiritual practice but like codependency or just another exercise in sleeping backwards on the bed, maybe there's a better way-- a way that involves humility, trust, and a bit more of a sense of humor about myself!

Compassion Fatigue

When I was 8 years old, I slept on top of the covers, wrong way around on the bed. I had learned at an early age that the world was full of children (and, indeed, adults) who went to bed hungry, or who slept on dirt floors in refugee camps, and I was consumed with guilt that I, who had done nothing to deserve it, got a whole bed to myself and all the dinner I could eat. My guilt didn't prevent me from saying at dinner, as every child does, "Then send this broccoli to China!" But it did make it hard for me to get comfortable under my cozy covers at night. So I slept backwards on the bed, in solidarity with the little refugees on the other side of the world... or maybe in apology to them that I could not share my excessive comfort with their excessive need.

Ever since, I go through episodes where sayings like "None of us are home until all of us are home" are more crippling than challenging. My problem is not that I don't care; it's that sometimes I can't figure out how to care without ending up backwards on the bed again.

And that's why I couldn't finish Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, by Karen Armstrong, even though I had really been looking forward to it. (The link will walk you through all the steps, if you're curious.) Armstrong has made her name as a what she calls a "freelance monotheist," but to my mind, this book is most directly informed by Buddhist thought, which I find legalistic and therefore depressing. This style of teaching-- introspective, absolutist, insisting on "always, tirelessly, without exception" behaviors and "urgent, determined, consistent" maintenance of certain inward attitudes, all under our own steam, with no help from an empowering God-- seems to me like Bel and Nebo:

"The things that you carry are burdensome,
A load for the weary beast.
They stooped over, they have bowed down together;
They could not rescue the burden,
But have themselves gone into captivity." (Isaiah 46, New American Standard Bible)

This is the kind of thinking that got me in trouble when I was 8 years old, and I just can't go back. I became a Christian precisely because I couldn't bear the burden of constant monitoring of my own thoughts and attitudes, because I knew I needed help every single minute just to be a tolerable human being, because I knew that I had to receive as well as give, and that the well from which I drew had to be deeper than myself or any other created thing. Just as God says:

"You who have been borne by Me from birth
And have been carried from the womb;
Even to your old age I will be the same,
And even to your graying years I will bear you!
I have done it, and I will carry you;
And I will bear you, and I will deliver you." (Isaiah 46, continued)

For me, the first step in how to be good is to give up on the whole project and agree with Jesus that "No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:18). Eugene Peterson wrote a book called The Pastor: a Memoir about two models of church development, and they could well be two models of any kind of ministry. There is the Ptolomaic model, the one where the sun, the moon, and everything else we can see goes around us. Makes sense, matches our observations. But then there's the Copernican model, where almost everything does not go around us, but around the sun. That model has the great drawback of being something you can't see but just have to believe. But it is true. The earth, even my own small sphere of influence, does not revolve around me but around Someone who is truly tireless and consistent.  The starving and the refugees are not, thank God, dependent on my good intentions. They won't be fed and housed by my gesture of solidarity. Providing beds and bread for all of them was God's concern long before it was mine, and will continue to be His project long after I am gone-- or even if I just burn out and quit.