Fr. Ron Rolheiser offers some guidelines to those who serve. He begins by noting that we should try to serve others and not be caught up in the many tensions, some that beset from without and others that beset from within. How can we remain energized, effective, and true in service to others?
(1) Refuse to be pre-defined by any ideology of the left or the right. Like Jesus, transcend boundaries, constantly surprise, refuse to be classified.
(2) Don’t be afraid to be nothing and don’t be afraid to be everything! Jesus was both the Christ of silent, anonymous witness and the Christ of chanting, public processions. Honor both.
(3) Take your stand with the marginalized, even as you are known for your sanity and capacity to relate warmly and deeply to every kind of person and group.
(4) Be led by the artist but listen to the street! Be a leader, a creative person trying to lead others forward. Be a leader with empathy, without disdaining others’ culture, sentiment, or piety.
(5) Don’t be afraid to smash idols and don’t be afraid to bow in reverence! Great hearts hold near contradictory principles, lesser ones do not. Help smash the false gods that need to be smashed, even as you are unafraid to kneel often in reverence.
(6) Learn to be comfortable leading both a peace march and devotional prayer! Do not choose between justice and Jesus, between committing yourselves to the poor and fostering private intimacy with Jesus.
(7) Be thoroughly in the world, even as you are rooted elsewhere. Live in a tortured complexity! Love the world, love its pagan beauty, let it take your breath away, even as you root your heart in something deeper so that the realities of faith also take your breath away.
(8) Eat the tension around you! Mary pondered, not by thinking deep intellectual thoughts but by holding, carrying, and transforming tension so as not to give it back in kind.
(9) Go into dark places, but don’t sin! Stand up for the God-given freedom we enjoy, even as you model and show others how that freedom can be carried in a way that never abuses it.
(10) Forget about yourself and how others react to you! A bad singer on stage makes love to himself; a more mature singer makes love to his audience; a really mature singer makes love to the song. Forget your image, your need to prove yourself, and eventually forget about your audience too so that you and your song are not about yourself or about your people, but about God.