Tuesday, January 20, 2009
You Got Served
I think the germ of the idea that compels me now to put pen to paper (I am transcribing this you see) was in an article in the Washington Post some months back, about a man who’d been a butler at the white house for eight administrations. It was a touching story of perseverance and balance, in which a man consigned to inferior treatment in his own country committed himself to the service of the President of the United States. The article referenced glittering affairs of State, profoundest workings of the inner circles of power, and the unvarnished essence of actual POTUSal home life. But, while there is service in each of these, the man in the story wasn’t personally involved in any of that. His service was to serve, regardless of the circumstances through which the President substantively struggled.
The actual battles of the day were the antithesis of this man’s service. It was, rather, his job to make it possible for the Most Powerful Man on Earth to execute his duties, realize his vision, and still maintain the humanity and happiness that the Declaration of Independence sought to vouchsafe for all mankind. All, including the president - but not necessarily his Jim Crow’d, disempowered butler.
The the bitterness of that irony never impeded this man in the slightest. He bent to the menial details as well as the most elaborate productions. Without him and his crew the Affairs of State would have been international humiliations, high level conferences would have foundered on simple logistical shoals. The presidency itself would have been diminished without his service, and that was a noble calling that he answered every day for thirty long years.
I grew up in a household that honored that kind of service - the fulfillment of a personal pledge, the contribution of one’s full measure to a higher principle, or, sometimes, principal. Doing your best at anything was a mitzvah in itself, without even referencing what you were actually trying to accomplish. This orientation was a commonplace with us. My dad, RabbiCop, was truly a clergyman, and we frequently debated pointless midrashic niceties. Dad taught, mostly, forsaking the congregation altogether. He did his communal work in chaplaincy, with the sherriffim and ATF. We’d have a little family daven for shabbat and havdalah most weeks, but it wasn’t often that I got to hear him do a full-on service.
By this, of course, I mean a religious service, a torah reading or a seder or something. Thinking on it, I can see how the word was adopted here, with the tending to a spiritual flock being a particularly noble example of service - but I really don’t make that connection much anymore. I think of a religious service as akin to tea service or brake service - a predetermined set of components in a specified format, constituting an single complete unit. Tea service and brake service have predefined contents; religious services have their own ordained constituent subunits. The “service” is a recantation of specified items. It was not my experience that “services” put me immediately in mind of the subordination of the self to the greater good. It really seemed to be more about the cookies afterward more often than note.
But there were those moments that the spiritual supervened at services. Though it didn’t evoke any expanded sense of the word “service” to me at the time, these incidents aroused an internal experience - an inspiration, if you will - that opened my understanding to a different kind of religious practice. I’m sure that those were the sort for which the term “service” was originally appropriated. Some pastors and rabbis and imams and priests operate primarily in this sphere, and to worship with them is to renew one’s place in a benevolent universe. Clearly, to me at least, MLK was a leader of this ilk, driven by an ethic that superseded his reality, to which we could be driven only by exhortation and example - functions he selflessly served up to the moment he was shot.
While no one can say what would have been his impact had he lived, King’s impact as a martyr is beyond question. We dedicate our evolution as a race to his memory, and while he’s hardly the sole father of our progress, and much we’ve gained was gained without his help, as a symbol of the personal sacrificed to the possible, he has rightfully, in my eyes, been anointed as our saint of service.
So now on MLK day I can look out my window to the greenbelt across the street where children play and bums dump garbage and relive themselves, but on this particular day the kids are out with their whole families and they’re all filling bags with trash. It’s a national day of service now, a day off work not to watch stuff blow up or to light backyard grills or bask in ancient celebrations of family or prosperity, but to buckle down and do something for your community. I rather like the idea - maybe even enough to teach it to my sons by example. That is, after all, the only way to really teach something like that.
Or maybe I’m already teaching. Sure, I spent MLK day shopping for drapes for the boys’ room, but the very next day was the inauguration of a man who has the potential to make a bigger positive impact on the world than any American - any human - in generations. Our new president embodies aspirations and commitments that have real power - transformative power, the power that empowers others to change themselves. Without lapsing into messianism, hopes are high - for me and for millions, even billions, of others. I now speak as one who, four years ago, so feared for my nation’s future that I went to an electoral battleground to defend voting rights - to no effect, as it turns out, except perhaps to arouse some incipient social readiness for change, a readiness that was widely nurtured in the intervening four years till the community that that spoke but was not heard became the community that could not be shouted down.
Unprecedented volunteerism and small donations turned the moribundity of old politics on its head, with whole demographic slices linking up to work for a common goal, in concert and in spite of differences. A dear friend traveled to Nevada to walk precincts and talk to people to encourage them to vote, and then, to vote for change. That walk was true service, and the candidate - now the President - himself thanked my friend for it personally when they wound up working out together in the small weight room of the hotel fitness center. Yes, my friend pumped iron with Obama, and introduced himself as a volunteer, and the Community-Organizer-in-Chief paused in his efforts to say Thank you. Such service deserves recognition, and our new president was wise enough to meet that responsibility.
Working for the vote, for the power of the franchise, is really to be considered as part of the larger civil rights struggle that began before abolition, suffered the outrages of John Brown’s landing and the long night of state sponsored terror against persons of color, and then found its voice and its power less than half a century ago. That struggle clearly continues full forward today. The inauguration of Barak Obama does not culminate this striving, but it is a damn fine signpost along the way.
That’s probably why more people, as I understand it, in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population, flooded to DC to witness an historic moment. And of course all moments are historic, all have their place on the cosmic time line and their impact is unknowable but in hindsight - but still, as a moment of taking stock and revisioning ourselves, January 20, 2009 lacks much competition. There are parties in DC, in Chi-town, in every US city including Wasilla, and in Berlin and Sydney and all over Africa. It’s an international celebration. I spent it at work. I work to bring access to justice to those who cannot afford access to public transportation. By my small efforts, together with those of my colleagues in the office, in other similar offices in all the other states across the country and in all the offices that survive in part on our support, good people missed the inauguration because they were working on something of related significance and more pressing importance - at least, to their clients. Signposts are for those seeking direction; those who know where they’re going are excused from reading them, in recognition that they have other things to pay attention to. The national mall filled with the foaming crest of human potential is all well and good, but I needed to make sure the funding for my projects was protected and effective.
I may not be a wealthy man - I’m not, in fact - and my income must stretch far to meet my family’s needs. In theory, I could have earned more elsewhere, but the price was one I couldn’t pay—a renunciation of my ethic of working on behalf of goals that inspire me. My wife, too, works hard - harder than I, quite often, outside in the heat or the rain, managing the vicissitudes of both human foibles and animal instincts… she, too, is worth ten times her wage, but we don’t expect anyone to make up the difference for us. We absorb the loss because we share the gain. Knowing that someone has protected herself or gained independence because of our work - that’s part of the salary too.
So maybe, when I missed the SCOTUS chief justice getting schooled in the language of the constitution by our new president, I was just doing a little selfless service. It’s one more facet of a complex of service , my modest contribution is a contribution nonetheless. My boys see me go to work early and come home late, they know I work hard. When they know why, may it be that I can pass the spirit of service on down to them.
