Blue Boat Home
Preacher: Reverend Andrea Abbott
Blue Boat Home
Hymns :
134 Our World Is One World
125 From the Crush of Wealth and Power
1064 Blue Boat Home
Readings:
Opening Words 609 To Serve the People
“Singapore” by Mary Oliver
Closing Words: 494 The prayer of our souls…
A few weeks ago Arn and I did something we never thought we would do. We went on a cruise. We’ve traveled before but we had never had much desire to do so on a cruise since we’re not exactly into the things most people seem to like when they talk about cruises—not much for dancing, or karaoke, or games or shows. We’re very dull. However, this was a cruise that took in several ports in the Mediterranean including stops in Tunis and Algiers and we thought this would be an opportunity to see places that might be difficult to get to otherwise. It started soon after Arn retired, so we saw it as a sort of celebration of that and, to top it off, it was very reasonably priced. Only after we had booked and paid did it occur to me that it might be so reasonably priced for a reason. Who, in their right mind, goes on the Mediterranean in January? Arn informed me after all plans were made, that up to the advent of steam vessels, no one traveled on the Mediterranean in winter. But by then we were committed and kept telling ourselves that the advantage would be that we wouldn’t be fighting hordes of tourists.
There were enough other optimists, or nuts, as you might say, to fill the ship, however and the first day was to be a day at sea. As it turned out, there were three days at sea since, at the end of the trip, we were unable to put into port because of high waves and so we got quite a bit of time to look at large grey waves sliding up and down, enormous walls of water that made the ship shudder and bang as it rode from trough to trough. The ship was huge and had all the modern bells and whistles so that we were never in a bit of danger, but we did learn what a rubber ducky in a bath must feel like.
We enjoyed the extra time at sea, doing what we might have done in our own living room. We read. And read. And read. We were fed and cosseted, our room was cleaned and the dishes done by others. No one needed us for anything; no one interrupted us. It was a pleasant sort of limbo.
Meanwhile, back at home, many things were happening, like regime change, but we were in our watery bubble and so, while Rome burned, or at least smoldered a little, we fiddled. Perhaps I should say were fiddled to since there was a really nice string quartet which played every afternoon. We hadn’t thought much about important dates when we picked this trip. We were a bit hermitlike and didn’t go out of our way to get involved but we did share a table a dinner sometimes and exchanged a little small talk. What struck me most was the desire most people seemed to have to keep the conversation on the most innocuous footing. Talk was almost all about places people had been and places people were planning to go. The most frequent question we got after, “Where are you from?” was where were we planning our next cruise. It was like joining a society we hadn’t know existed, a floating club of people who were only home long enough to wash their dirty laundry and set out again.
Since this was my first experience of this, I have no way to know if this is the norm for travel conversations. It was certainly safe but I also wondered how much it reflects the national divide, how much it reflects our inability to talk about serious things in a constructive and respectful manner. Or how much it reflected that fact that we were there, making a statement by our absence from important events.
Stalled as we were in a sort of dream like state, we had plenty of opportunity to observe our fellow travelers, both the paying guests like ourselves and the crew which seemed as numerous as the guests. To Arn’s disappointment, we weren’t offered a chance to see the inner workings of the ship, so our contact with the crew who actually ran the vessel was really minimal. They seemed a no nonsense lot, mostly Norwegian, who probably regarded us as inconvenient cargo. The staff that planned the logistics of our excursions, however, was American or British, young and attractive, subtly herding us to our different destinations. The people we had the most contact with was the staff that waited on us at meals or cleaned our rooms. They were mostly Filipino and Indonesian, with some Eastern European staff as well. The passengers were overwhelmingly American, some Canadians, some British.
I have to say that, though I was glad I’d gone, was glad to see the ports we saw and will shamelessly foist our pictures and tales on anyone too slow to evade me, the whole experience left me more unsettled than I had expected. First, there is the matter of being waited on. The staff was unnervingly attentive. The staff was bright eyed, eager young people from the third world while the guests were, almost to a person, older, some quite elderly, and first world. Like me. I could hardly plead that I was different, that my expectations of the world were not that I was entitled to be pampered and cosseted because I was an American, that I longed for a world in which every person had worth and dignity. I was there, just another passenger with my actions speaking much louder than any words could have done. So my guilty liberal conscience and I floated around on a sea of misunderstanding.
I did reflect that for many of the people waiting on us, theirs was probably a sought after job which offered a steady income and a chance to see the world. And, because we are always seeing others’ lives as snapshots, not as the long videos they are, I thought there was room for those lives to change, for our waiters to become the waited on as they advanced in life, just as many of us who were being waited on had, possibly, at one time waited on others. What we couldn’t see in the snapshot that was our voyage was the pasts and the futures of those present to us. We couldn’t see the difficulties that many of our fellow passengers may have overcome and we couldn’t see the possibly bright futures ahead of our housekeeping staff.
Still, being served with all its implications of “servile” and “servitude” bothered me. I thought how our economy has changed so that the “service sector” is the sector that has experienced the most growth and though the service economy encompasses a wide variety of activities, a lot of it has to do with one group of people doing the serving and another group of people being served. Unavoidably, there are power differences in serving and being served. That has been some of the charm in being served, some of luxury of being the one whose wishes are being fulfilled, rather than the other way around, an affirmation of one’s status, if only for the duration of a meal. And, for those who are the servers, it is also the case that their status as people who must fulfill other’s wishes says a great deal about their relative power and importance. Since our economy has changed, does this mean that service will take on a different meaning? Will service be seen through a different set of assumptions? Or does the power difference between server and served mean that more and more of the next generation will be forced into a subservient position?
I thought about how different this idea of relative status and service is within the religious definitions of power. Most religions are very different in their applications than in their beliefs, but within the rituals of most major religions, there is an acting out of the core beliefs of that religion. If the bishop, in his embroidered robes with his jewel encrusted hands, washes the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday, for example, we can see the core belief of service hidden in the theatrical performance. And the core belief is that the highest state of being is to be a servant. Indeed, the pope is referred to as “the servant of the servants of God.”
In all major religions, particularly in mystical traditions, there is the idea that it is necessary to turn upside down the ways we have always been told are important. A servant therefore becomes greater than anyone because a servant is one whose concern is not him or herself but whose concern is other people. Therefore, if we are all servants of each other, we are all concerned with each other, and not with our own needs and wants.
The point is not to tell people whose lives are spent in serving others, whether they want to or not, that they are fulfilling some kind of spiritual destiny. That is something that can too soon become an excuse to make the powerless continue to be powerless. That can too soon imply that they should continue to serve others without getting any of the real rewards of life. The point is to reverse the usual way we see people, to honor the act of service and to make service, service to others, the goal of every life. In this role reversal, the selfish, the greedy, those who diminish others in order to exalt themselves, are shown to be in need of spiritual development, are shown to be inadequately evolved.
In today’s world, the idea of service is so often artificial. It is a performance, like the performance of the bishop. It has become a ritual to increase profit. Think of the ritual of “customer service”, which has little to do with service and everything to do with keeping people placated and the company’s bottom line. Can you imagine the reaction if, in the course of a call to “customer service” the customer had a real conversation with the representative, told the representative about, let’s say, their fears that they might be laid off or their fears about the medical tests they just had. Perhaps the customer might ask the representative to help them find a new job or to comfort them as they faced chemotherapy. We’d all think that was pretty inappropriate, wouldn’t we, but it would be service. What is service and how can we serve each other? What are we called upon to do for each other? When and how do we offer comfort and help to each other?
In every religion there is some idea of equality. In every religion, there is some warning that that the inequality of status, of resources, of rewards which characterizes the way things are done now will lead to a reversal at some point, in some way and that the last will be first and the first will be last. I thought of this as we, all of us, served and servers alike, were part of a floating world, the world of a large ship. As the sea became rougher, as we all bounced along the waves, especially when we found we could not get into the port where we had intended to dock, I thought of the closed system that is our planet and the myriad ways we need to honor each other, to allow all of us to have some share of the riches and joys that are part of being on this earth. I thought if we began to all be servers of each other, if we could honor those who have given the most to each other, rather than taking and taking and taking, we might find the courage to truly talk to each other and to listen to each other. In serving each other we might put something ahead of or own desire to be right, our own opinions and prejudices. In finding a way to serve each other, we might find a way to talk rather than screaming at each other or avoiding each other.
In honoring those who serve others, the waiters, the home help, the custodians, those in our lives who are often the least paid and the most ignored or denigrated, how could we change the ways we see people, the ways we see the worth and dignity of each person? In making service an honorable profession with pay that reflects that honor, how can we affirm, truly affirm, our need to see others in all their complexity. Aristotle called slaves “living tools” and that view of those who serve us has lasted into our times. We do, unfortunately, judge people by their bank accounts, their professions, and give them power and preference accordingly. Many times we do this without thinking about it, it seems so natural. But what would happen if we gave all people the reverence due to them, simply because they are people? What would happen if we could insist on another way, a way that does not see as natural one group of people always as the servers and another group of people always as the served?
In our times, maybe in all times, it is the rich, the powerful, the glamorous who are served. Those who admire them seek to be served as well, as if through this act they receive they also become part of that world of power and glamour. A culture of disrespect, of judgment against the poor, of mockery and insult has replaced mercy and compassion. But, religion seeks a different relationship.
In Christianity, it is the marginalized, the poor, the sick, the disabled, the humble who are given God’s preference. In Islam, all people are told to submit to Allah, for whom they are all equal, And think of the Hindu greeting “Namaste” which means I bow to the divine in you. All people recognizing each other as divine. For us, not only our first principle reminds us of the worth and, importantly, and dignity of all people, we also remind ourselves of the sacredness of service in our Affirmation of faith. And service is our prayer.
As we sailed around the Mediterranean, the area thick with the reminders of history, a history of beauty and greatness but also of reminders of the subjugation of one people by another, of servitude and oppression, it was clear that history can be changed quickly and brutally, the oppressors becoming the oppressed in the endless cycle of greed and cruelty. Isn’t it time for a fundamental change?
We are all in the same blue boat. The boat has some cracks and some leaks. If the boat goes down, the inexorable waves do not ask, who was on the top tier and who washed the dishes? Perhaps if we see the holy in each life, perhaps if we see our highest calling to serve one another, we will build a stronger boat, a safer boat, a boat in which all will serve all and so all will have a part of this beautiful world, here and now. This is our goal. Namaste.
Singing bowl? Responses.