This is the season when many of us reflect on gratitude, grieving and our cherished or unsettled histories with family, lovers and friends. Chanukah, winter solstice, Kwanzaa and Christmas are upon us.
As the year winds down, I ponder people who serve without ego or concern for personal gain and attention when I consider the nature of generosity and universal love. In their role, servant leaders focus on others rather than themselves. They may be found leading countries, giving care to older adults, teaching children or directing a company with ethical principles.
Bill Turner was the head of the Highway Department in Williamsburg. He died recently, and I find myself thinking of him and missing this bear of a man who simply did his job without fanfare. He advocated for me around a situation at my property, and he did so because it was the right thing to do. My accolades made him feel embarrassed because, for Bill, the nature of service was implicit. I also miss Bill dutifully clearing our street during snowstorms. He always had a wave and a smile.
My cousin took her lifelong love of horses and her clinical work with veterans to create an equine therapy program in Colorado. She has lost funding and her own money, but has no regrets because the cause is so clear. Veterans I have worked with have a strong inclination to help other veterans even as they have their own healing work. They rarely call attention to themselves in terms of accomplishments.
Andrea Ayvazian is known to many for founding The Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership and for her spiritual leadership and activist work. She is also a tireless collaborator and proponent of expansive social justice efforts. She does not rest on her laurels as she acts in the background to foster the growth of current and future leaders. Give her credit and she will move the conversation to her admiration of others and the work ahead of us.
Lately we have been learning about public servants who work to unite rather than divide as they engage in the grunt work of diplomacy. Fiona Hill, William Taylor Marie Yovanovitch and others have offered compelling statements and testimony during the impeachment hearings. These foreign service professionals are earnest, highly intelligent and skilled diplomats. They did not sign up for public attention. This makes them all the more endearing. They give me hope in the midst of this surreal, dystopian drama with the person impersonating a president.
Servant leaders and public servants do not seek reward because they are in a perpetual state of feeling compensated by feelings of goodness in their work. They generally see through a lens of gratitude despite challenges and failures. They keep going.
This season of thanks and giving serves as a reminder that every thoughtful act brings positive energy into the world at large. The holidays are a complicated time for many of us, and it is all the more important to consider there are countless servant leaders and limitless acts of personal kindness every day.
My plan is to offer a few random acts of charity this month as an exercise in universal love. I feel blessed that my natural tendency is to feel gratitude for all I have and to easily forgive people who have harmed or insulted me — to make peace and to move forward.
If you are reading this, I highly recommend the forgiving and kindness things. Not just in December, but in our everyday lives of service. Peace to all.
J.M. Sorrell is a social justice activist and a wedding officiant. She still cries when she watches the original Grinch cartoon, Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life. Clearly she is capable of transcending her feminist belief system to get the best from those stories!