Father,
Let me speak, and preach, and seek, and
Greet as Jesus
Today let my handshake grow
Warmer and my smile glow with
More sincerity.
Help me see in others
The sorrows the Savior sees.
Beyond their smiles let me feel their
Anguish for sorrows unspoken and griefs
Hidden to all but Thou.
Make my perception deeper,
Truer
And then make my cup run oer with the sweet nectar of
Empathy.
That like butterflies to blossoms
Those who anguish will find respite in
Me–
In my words, in my sermon,
And in the common hallowed touch of a hand.
Mormon Hippocrates 
Very nice… did you write that yourself?
Thank you; yes, I did.
What a beautiful prayer about being an instrument in God’s hand and ever growing in empathy so that you can lift another.
You seem to have a theme of your blog that celebrates humanity and dignity of all people in all walks of life.
I have thought of the following and hope to express my feelings in a proper manner. The scriptures say that when you give someone bread and feed the hungry that you are doing it to Jesus. The scriptures also say that whatsoever you do to the least of my brethern that you do unto Jesus. I think that it is easy when one is in the position to serve to think that makes you higher than another person. You certainly may be more able at that juncture if the other has had misfortune. This may be my thinking, but I find that the fact that Jesus says that we do the act unto him shows that wherever someone finds themself in this life that we are all deserving of dignity. In fact, if we turn our back on those in need, then we are sinful. I guess that I am getting at the fact that it is easy to think that we are better than those we serve when we could all find ourselves in circumstances at some point where we are in service. I also believe that anybody who breathes and has the heart can find opportunities to serve. I wrote a poem about how we can all give and all receive that is posted at the forum Helamans-army.com (or .org-I forget). I am bkb-the poetry moderator there. I do not want to come across as someone who has mastered this. I am speaking to myself as well. There are those who I serve that I tend to think of myself as being better than. And that may be a stretch if you knew me and how very limited I am and how dysfunctional I am. Yet, in serving others, I do feel that it helps me be less self-absorbed at any rate. Well, I am veering off in a lot of directions here and hope you do not mind. As you can tell, I have thought a lot about the subject and your prayer is the desires of my heart though my abilities are so feeble in so many ways.
I am so glad that I found this blog. 🙂
Barb–
I take your comments to heart. As King Benjamin reminds us, we are all beggars and all dependent on Christ’s grace for salvation–indeed, we are only able to serve because the Lord continues to grant us breath. As you point out, we sometimes believe we are better than those we serve. Still, I have found that, the more I serve and the more I pray for love, the quicker the condescension melts away.
What you experience is pure love. I have to work on that. I great at theories and love in the abstract. It is just not always so easy to put into practice.
I had wanted to write a post on that subject but as you can see, my thoughts are not clear enough to get my point across.
Your prayer speaks of the power of the handshake. I remember my first Home Teacher that visited me when I joined the LDS Church. I am not sure if it was his first visit when he shoke my hand with the firmest grip that evoked feelings of trust and strength. I do think there is much power in touch as you do. However, these days I try to avoid touching people at all cost due to the fact that I always think I am contaminated due to ocd. I will hug my mom every once in a while and sometimes touch her hands. They say that you need so much physical touch to be happy. I would be mighty miserable if there were truth to that. I am rather reclusive other than work. I won’t say that I never long to be like other people or that I do not long for human touch. Kind words are the closest I can allow myself to have.
Well, I do have goals and even without leaving my house, there is much good that I can do. I don’t even reach all of my goals.
I will draw this to a close and hope not to monopolize too much conversation here. I like blogs that keep a dialogue going as you do. I may be more quiet in the future, but I will certainly be checking back and probably saying a little here and there on a more moderate scale.
Barb= I’d like to say that maybe it’s not a concept of servers being “better” than the ones they serve; but that the ones who serve feel that they are in a “better position” to serve than the one they are serving (at the time). Did that come out right?
For me, I’ve found that everything I say, do, feel, are intentional. Know that we’ve got to “work” for everything we are. We must practice what we preach, and that is also living our beliefs. If I were to stay in my natural state, meaning not working at who I want to be, I’d seriously just be a spiritual couch potato. Work is good… for the bible tells us so.
Last word here is that everything is a choice. We choose to work for good or we choose to work for evil. We choose good, but then we must constantly work at it to keep the devil away.
Tyler= read your poem again and it’s really beautiful. That could be my prayer, too. I hesitate to post my poems because I don’t want someone to take them for themselves. I am very protective of my words.
I believe the ability to both give and receive service are spiritual gifts worth developing.
What a blessing it is to receive service from someone who exhibits the traits described in Tyler’s poem!
beeshinkj-
You are so right about the ability to receive a service being a gift. I used to joke about this, but it’s very real.
I always had a difficult time accepting something from someone, whether it be a gift, words of praise, or a favor, whatever. Then I realized that when you allow someone to serve you, they are being healed as well in other ways. I said to myself that it was not good to prevent someone from the benefits they gain when they serve. So I put myself in therapy. My therapy was to actually “allow” someone to help me if they offered to. Believe it or not, it was very difficult to do at first, now, it’s more of an intension of mine. Is that weird sounding, or what? But, I look at the mechanics of it. I saw myself as preventing that good feeling (that I always get) from entering someone else.
Dragonmommie: I think you are so correct. Your thoughts remind me of a story that appeared long ago in “Readers Digest” of a man who stopped in a pouring rain storm to help an older gentleman fix a flat tire. When the job was done the older fellow held out a $20 bill (more money then than now) and said, “I’d like to pay you for helping me with the tire.” The other man retorted, “Look, Mister, I have a real good feeling about helping you when it wasn’t convenient and that feeling is not for sale, especially not for $20.”
Ah… If I might, I can go a little further with a song called “The Chain of Love”, by Clay Walker. It’s a country song, have you heard of it? I don’t want to clog up space here by printing the lyrics but you can do a search on just the title and come up with them if you are interested. It exemplifies the concept of deeds coming full circle back to you.
[…] I just read a comment about a post called Prayer Before Speaking over at Mormon Hippocrates, which is, by the way, a clever name for this man’s blog. He is a Mormon and a medical student… get it? I fancy that it goes deeper because Hippocrates was a Greek physician who had certain beliefs that inspired the Hippocratic Oath. He believed that the body should be treated as a whole and not just the immediate body part that was sick. […]
Thanks, dragonmommie, this is beautiful.
Dragonmommie, What you said made a lot of sense. I think that in serving we should feel blessed if we are in a position to do so while recognizing that we could be in need in the future. I think that you can make a person dependent on service. Of course, the best service lifts a person by giving a hand up rather than a hand out where possible.