The Franciscan Center Team: Cultivating Service!

Dr. Jack Harless Manager of The Franciscan Center

Cultivating Service

Continuing with St. Leonard’s core values of Reverence, Service & Stewardship, I’d like to develop the concept of cultivating service from a somatic or body perspective.

Many of us know how to intellectually serve. We serve on committees, on boards; we may even serve a member of the family who has lost some critical functions in their lives.

Who mandates, however, that we serve? In other words, is service intrinsic creation or can we set it aside depending on the circumstances or our own desires?

I believe that service is not only mandated by God, but that it is literally imprinted into the structure and fabric of the physical universe.

As we look at the human body, it is made up of countless millions of cells, all working together to produce harmony, coordination, and function. It is the ultimate “family”, so to speak, because these cells all know each other, they are all biologically related, and they have different aspects, shapes, sizes, and functions very similar to our families, but on a much grander scale.

From a body or somatic perspective these cells very often must sublimate themselves, even to the point of their own death, to serve the greater needs of the organism. When cells do their own thing, without respect for what the body as whole needs, we call that cancer. The heart cell no matter how much it envies the brain neuronal cell cannot be or do anything other than what it was created to do. It cannot and should not overstep its functional boundaries, if it wants to fulfill its greatest purpose.

So, too, we are created with a specific task and function and we are efficient, purposeful and most able to serve when we understand our role in the context of the greater body of humanity.

Service is intrinsic in the human experience from the lowliest cell to the twirling infinitude of galaxies. May we learn to cultivate this practice of service, wherever it may be found in creation.