Dare to Serve

" James and John, sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus. 'Teacher', they said, ' we want you to do for us whatever we ask.' --'What do you want me to do for you?', Jesus asked. They replied, ' Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.' Jesus said to them, 'You do not know what you are asking.' Jesus called all of the disciples together and said, ' You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.' " [ Mark 10: 35-45].

 In my dysfunctional, childhood home, I did not receive peace. But I worked for peace, because I longed for peace.

I did not receive Love in that house. No one hugged me or said, "I love you."  But I gave love, all days, and in all ways, because I longed for love.

I did not desire power, in order to lord it over my family. I knew that I had no power in the family. I was the baby and the daughter. I was the one whom they overpowered, with their verbal abuse, their physical punishment, because they hated who I was. I endured their studied lack of affection, their medical and physical neglect.

The only power that I had was to annihilate their hate by pouring out my Love. I believed that I could neutralize their cruelty with the exercise of my Love.

When they tried to bribe me with their assets, money became insignificant to me. Money is not true power. Love is true power. And despite what they believed, money is not Love. Even as a child I knew that.

They wanted me to follow their rules, simply because these were their rules and they wanted to control me. But if the rules made no sense, if the rules went against God, their repeated recitation of their rules had no power over me.

They wanted me to believe them, when they said to worship "The Almighty Dollar", but instead, I whispered to myself, "You mean, Almighty God." In my whispering the Truth, their lies had no hold over me.

I decided to stop speaking, because I did not want to utter their falsehoods. I wanted to become invisible.

The more they wielded their power against me, the tinier I became, until I almost disappeared. I made myself as Nothing. I died to self. No one can conquer someone who is invisible, who has slipped away to absolute nothingness. If I gave them no inkling of my Self, they would have nothing to grasp onto, nothing to fight.

Except that silently and without complaint, I tended their gardens; I picked at their barely edible food and yet, found nourishment elsewhere; I mended their torn clothing; I painted their walls; and brought in flowers to beautify their ugly atmosphere. I sang songs when alone in my room; and I gently slipped out of their house and sat high up on a hill, under a sweet pine tree.

They thought that they had ultimate power over me. Even more, they secretly boasted of their superiority over others. But in the infinite depths of my Love, in my capacity to ignore their abuse of power-- but to love anyway-- I became the ultimate victor. They did not know that Love became my default mode and that, no matter what they did to me, I would not become them and hate them back.

The world thinks that power means the cruel influence of money. The world thinks that power means the ability to push others around, to make others bow down to them and to force their opinions on the weak.

I know that the only true power is the Sacred, not the profane.

I have gone hungry and so, knowing what that is like, I feed those who hunger and thirst.

I have been oh, so cold. And so, knowing what that is like, I clothe those who have no way to keep warm.

I have been unloved and even hated. And so, I love everyone as a brother or a sister. No One is my family. Therefore, everyone is my family.

I create such Redemptions in order to obliterate my family's supposed power over me, even now that they are dead and gone. The ghost of their memory shall not haunt me, as long as I have the strength to love and to serve.

Did they really have such power over me after all? Or, were they the ones who were weak?

Do you, would you, dare to emulate the Love I have given? Do you dare to vow silence, rather than utter falsehoods? Do you dare to leave father and mother and brother, and to go out into the world, armed only with your Love? Do you dare to serve others with humility, in order to vanquish the hate that is aimed at you because of who you are?

Do you dare to speak the Truth with Love?

(C) The Spiritual Devotional 2012. All Rights Reserved.