Seeds Of Service
ServiceSpace
--Sally Mahe
2 minute read
Nov 17, 2020

 

I wanted to thank Service Space for inspiring me to look for and lift up the "seeds of service" within URI. It's kind of a long piece, but I want to share it with the SSp community.

URI - Seeds of Service

Sharing the Sacred, Serving the World was the theme that drew hundreds of people to Rio de Janeiro for URI’s Global Summit in 2002. Coined by Sarah Talcott, URI’s Global Youth Coordinator at the time, sharing the sacred broadcasts URI’s commitment to interfaith cooperation among people of all backgrounds. Almost twenty years later URI’s life blood flows with attention and respect for what is sacred in our lives. Serving the world broadcasts URI’s fundamental principle of giving service for the common good. Almost twenty years later, the spirit of service energizes commitment to bring forth the best in one another and to serve the needs of the world.

Service can be incognito. It happens under the radar. We overlook its presence and its power if we don’t stop to notice and appreciate it. Through the years, millions and even billions of small acts of service, aggregate with hundreds of thousands of organized acts of selfless service throughout URI’s global community. When I asked CC leaders what sustains them in their work, many answered like Rico Ocampo, Director of Camp Anytown CC in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mom told me that when I say “estoy a su servicio” it means I am in service to everyone who comes my way. It means to give the best of what we have in our home.

Efforts to quantify hours of service accumulated by thousands of volunteer members in Cooperation Circles and people serving in countless other ways, have defied counting and tabulating. Like kindness, personal transformation and empathy, service proves hard to measure. A young CC member in Cambodia sang me her favorite song it’s not about money, money, money. An indigenous woman patiently explained Mother Earth’s principle of reciprocidad - giving and receiving is how the energy of life flows. Albert Einstein said it is high time that the ideal of success should be replaced by the ideal of service.

Enduring, countless, daily acts of service, propelled by generous hearts are seeds planted every day in URI’s global community. These seeds shoot joy and hope into the calamities and suffering that assail us. They burst forth as numberless acts of goodness and positive change. In all of our diversity they bind us together and make us one.

Sally Mahe
uri.org

 

Posted by Sally Mahe on Nov 17, 2020