Serving

What are creative experiments you do to teach principles

Service. What a ways that you can creatively discuss and teach your family to have a servant's perspective? We were throwing out ideas and decided that a few simple projects that we could do would be:

1) Dinner - at dinner time you cannot put food or drink in your own mouth, nor could you ask for anything. If you want to take a bite, you will need to wait until someone at the table sitting at either side of you offers. If you want a drink, something much trickier, you will have to rely on the stable hands of your fellow consumers. In service the point is to look for opportunities to help others and to work to reach people where their needs are in a manner that communicates care to them. Someone in our group noted that service means treating others how you would want to be treated and we discussed that in doing so it is important to think about how that person will receive it rather than just doing what you think you would want. 

2) Chores - we decided to divide the family chores differently than we had to streamline the process and once the responsibilities were lined out, we then informed the members of our family that they would be responsible for the chores of someone other than themselves. For the duration of the experiment, you would make the bed of the person you were assigned to serve, you would clean their room, do their laundry and assume the responsibility for their assigned chores. As noted above, service entails attempting to understand what is important to the person you are serving, not only doing unto others as you would have them do unto you (the golden rule) but listening and adjusting to their perspective. 

No one likes chores, but they are things that need to be done. The dinner experiment ended up being pretty fun. Next time we do it we need to make spaghetti or something messy like that. What creative family experiments or projects have you tried in order to teach a principle to the group? Have you tried anything similar in a professional setting? 

Connect. Collaborate. Conquer. 

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