As we enter the Bridge Walk season and look at the notion of service, my attention is drawn to an experience I had when I was in Africa a couple of years ago working with the team in Kantolomba.
One day our job was to paint some bookshelves and tables for the kids’ classrooms. About half a dozen of the local team and I gathered on the lawn with our paintbrushes and “monastery-brown” paint to begin the work. As we painted, my fellow painters started talking among themselves in Bemba. I watched how ego-identity was trying to make me feel separate, left-out, and isolated. Ego suggested they were talking about me, that I don’t belong there, that they don’t want me around. But I stayed. And while we painted, I practiced dropping the “you don’t belong” karmic story that is such a familiar source of my suffering. As I redirected my attention to what actually was happening, I noticed how beautiful Bemba sounded to my ears, I enjoyed their soft, relaxed laughter, and I felt a oneness that transcended culture and language. We were just humans painting together.
On that day, painting tables for the children, who was helping whom? Hard to say.
Gasshō,
Rebecca