on service
Illustrated by Emily Gallaway
One Report is spiritually-minded content for and by young people. This publication is borne from a reflection of the teachings of the Baha’i Faith and many of our contributors are Baha’is, but not all. The goal is for One Report to offer space for people from all faith backgrounds and beliefs to discuss issues of faith and spirituality. In a time of turmoil, One Report hopes to be a source of unity and collaboration. It is an opportunity for young people to learn from one another and share reflections that feel relevant, pressing, stirring, and elevated. Thank you.
One Report is edited by Anisa Tavangar. Cover photographed by Leila Yavari.
essay: on service
Using our talents to elevate our station Written by Juliet Rasekhy Illustrated by Sophie Rutstein
What’s the point of doing anything if you aren’t contributing — even if it’s in the smallest of deeds — to the betterment of our world? Whether I am good at it or not, I have always had a pull towards writing. I remember hearing stories about me as a six year old refusing to communicate unless I could write in my notepad and hand it over for others to respond. I remember sending a meaningful birthday letter to my father on his fiftieth birthday that made both him and my mother cry pools of tears. I remember showing my music partner my lyrics for the first time and seeing the twinkle of excitement in her eyes. Now as a twenty-four year old, I find myself creating song lyrics that aim to elevate not only peoples’ mood, but the lyrics’ subject matter as well. My intentions are to move those who mindfully listen to lyrics, and to deviate from promoting negative concepts as music often does in our world today. It’s easy to see the state of our world — the chaos, the bitterness, the injustice — and feel down and discouraged. It’s natural to feel that pain and want to express it, but what’s overlooked is the personal responsibility of contributing something positive or elevating. Why mirror the world’s darkness when you can help illuminate it, even if it is just a tiny ray of light?
Whether it feels like it or not, our thoughts, words, and actions affect our reality. Everything we think, say, and do affects our world. We all have strengths and talents that can be used to serve the world we live in, but we must make a decision as to whether to use those talents to elevate or to debase. Using our talents to elevate the state of our realities through our thoughts, words, and actions takes much more diligence than most would care to execute. No fruits are bore from stagnancy or debasement. The feeling of fulfillment and pure joy that comes from ameliorating our world only arises from well-intended sacrifice, pure and goodly deeds, and genuine hard work. Music should be a ladder for our souls to ascend to higher realms, not a source for people to transgress the bounds of decency and dignity. When we create melodies that are carelessly slapped together with futile, purposeless lyrics and a catchy beat with the sole purpose of hooking listeners, we are feeding our lower nature whether intentionally or not. I have a limited time on this earthly plane, so I choose to spend my time and effort trying to contribute to changing my reality — even if it’s through song lyrics, and even if I’m alone in my efforts.
profile: on service
Makeena Rivers:
Finding coherence in work as service Written by Anisa Tavangar Photographed by Leila Yavari
When Makeena Rivers was in high school, she lost her first love to gun violence. The grief that followed, dealt with in a flurry of personal tests and through the guidance of her mother, eventually lead her to a question of love and empathy. Why did she feel sad for the person who killed someone so dear to her? This question of unbounded love, especially for those who have caused pain, stuck with Makeena. Eventually, it made her realize that no one is a lost cause. If this individual deserved compassion, surely, everyone must. After studying psychology and sociology for her undergraduate degree in Atlanta, Makeena continued on to get her master’s in social work in New York City. The decision, motivated by her passion and a realization that a higher degree would help get her a better paying job, confirmed some reflections from her experience in high school but brought out new questions. Like every field Makeena witnessed, social work is
plagued with the racism and classism rooted in society. Deeper than working directly to address some of the consequences of an unequal society, peers, professors, and programs borne from these social realities create additional challenges. “I recognized that a two year program was never going to be enough to reverse a lifetime of socialization” that lead to the problems the field tries to address. And while Makeena is passionate about social work, a perspective she shares with her mother, who is also a social worker, she recognizes a need to flex different creative muscles. “God willing,” she says, “we have time on this earth to do more than one thing.” To stay creative, Makeena also models. “It’s something that I just love doing. The collaboration, expression, and persistence it takes is something I like.” But both social work and modeling rely on toxic realities. Makeena also sees her role has a model as a form of service but
understands that connection is less direct than service and social work. “When things are rooted in promoting justice, it is easy to tie them to a service mentally,” Makeena notes, recognizing the link between the Baha’i Writings and service as a vehicle for justice. As a model, she advocates for inclusion, leveraging “media to open up awareness about certain issues in a different way than” social work would.
“God willing we have time on this earth to do more than one thing.” Reconciling modeling and social work is a challenging task, especially with others who approach it with impatience and preconceived assumptions. “People have told me that I’m not
contributing to the betterment of society at all through modeling. I’m sure people have assumed I am not intelligent,” Makeena admits. She isn’t blind to the impressions people have about models and how narrow standards of beauty are hurtful and limiting. In a search for coherence, modeling and social work may appear contradictory but it’s a willingness to try different things, stimulate contrasting interests simultaneously, and understand how people in all roles can be forces for change that coherence is possible. To Makeena, “service is working to bring spiritual truths to life.” But it doesn’t have to be complicated. “I also think service can be seen in small actions for the well being of a single other person. When an action is about honoring the God within everything I think it is service.”
reflection: on service
If the church is not political, it is irrelevant to the world that God so loves. But if the church is partisan, it becomes a tool of the power structures. Being political means we are engaged in how society is organized. If we want to love our neighbor, we naturally will get involved in building systems that lead to flourishing; and we will fight to change the unjust systems that target the poor, weak, and marginalized. We can’t pretend to love our neighbors while we ignore the systemic realities that hurt them. (Aaron Niequist, “The Eternal Current�)
I have struggled throughout my adult life to reconcile the Evangelical narrative of Christian political action with the mission of service that I see Christ model. This struggle has manifested as fights between family members and resentment in places of vulnerability. It has manifested as imposter syndrome, a lack of identification with and fear of ostracization from the spiritual community I once believed was in similar pursuit. At its worst, it has manifested systemically in our country as a weapon that has disproportionately affected the poor, weak, and marginalized. The mission of Christ has taught me a great deal about what Christian political action is not. It is not a political party or a set of policy measures to be canonized, and it is not an attempt to retreat and turn our backs on the modern world.
It is not an opportunity to claim dominance over other beliefs and theologies, personal experiences, or individuals created in the imago dei. In short, it does not match much of what is claimed to be done in His name. As Christians, we assume Jesus’ mission as our own, one that is continually honed into practice through our daily lives. We first get a glimpse of this purpose of Christ’s ministry in the Gospel of Luke. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free...” In general, this charge is not complex or lofty. For all intents and purposes, His commission was rejected in His own time, too. In both essence and practice, the mission is a confoundingly simple call to service. You will commune with those who are poor, and I call you to give them comfort. You will cross paths with those bound in their chains, and I commend you to serve them into their freedom. Too often the wrong questions are asked when Christians seek out their political role. Too often questions are asked wrongfully in place of actions that serve our shared purpose more authentically. I’m not sure what Christ would tell his followers to support, what the head of a reckless Kingdom would deem to be sound policy (and to be fair, I think that call is least convincing). I don’t know if Christ would have used the system to save the system or if he would have burned the entire thing to the ground. What I do believe is that the main thrust of his political voice would be heard through the same acts of service: by caring for the poor, by comforting those who mourn, and by freeing those in bondage. If we lose our heart for service, we lose our biggest tool to accomplish the political goals we were seeking all along. How much we have left to learn… —Jesse Ojeda
essay: on service
Serving with Two Hands Written by Istabella Lajara Collage by Anisa Tavangar
Thanksgiving, 2005. I was six years old, watching my mom pull a second turkey out of the oven. Giddy at the prospect of leftovers, my excitement turned to bitterness when my mom informed me that the turkey was not for me and my brother, but rather heading to a food pantry in the South Bronx, the same neighborhood my abuela lived in. Being young, selfish and enamored with turkey, I was upset. I voiced my anger, saying something like, “why do we need to give away our food,” my younger brother, a copycat, backing me up with a, “yeahhhhh”. My mom turned to us and said something that has continued to play in my head. When I want to give up, when I want to turn into myself and my own needs, or when I try to explain why I act the way I do, I hear her voice. “You have two hands, one to help yourself and one to help others.”
At the time, I didn’t know it was an Audrey Hepburn quote and thought my mother to be the most profound person I’ve ever encountered. As I got older, those words continued to play large roles in my life. This two hand idea that my mother repeated over and over whenever she wanted my brother and I to donate toys, help her vacuum, or when I told her I was struggling with my mental health my sophomore year in college, has come to represent a creed that I follow, thanks to my mom. The first hand is to help yourself. You can’t help others and be there for them in service if you can not be there for yourself. Flight attendants remind passengers of this before each flight. Put on your own mask before you start helping others with theirs. What good are you to those around you struggles if your struggles are overwhelming?
“I became a ‘yes man’ in the hopes that me helping people would help me be a better person.”
I wanted to be like my mom, who took the time out of her weekends to teach a woman in her 70s how to read, whose weekend was deserved after spending the week teaching children in the daycare she owned. I wanted to be like my mom who would volunteer at homeless shelters and children’s shelters, who goes on trips with Heart Care International to translate for doctors and do arts and crafts with the kids getting surgery, comforting their parents who travel from small towns in the hopes of getting their kids the heart surgeries they need.
I wanted to be as selfless as my mom so I took on as many projects as I could. I became a ‘yes man’ in the hopes that me helping people would help me be a better person. It got to the point of overwhelming people pleasing. I involved myself in various activities on my college campus that required me to speak on behalf the organizations I represented. It became too much. It became overwhelming. It began to feel like I was losing myself. On a call with my mom in the thick of this conflict, she reminded me, “you have two hands Bella, one for yourself, one for others. You can’t help others if you can’t help yourself first.” I was torn. I was exhausted. I felt like I had lost myself, stretching in too many different directions. After a four hour walk around Central Park on a cold Sunday in the middle February, and with a little herbal help, I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t immersing myself in meaningful service. The work I was doing was meaningful, sure, but it wasn’t meaningful for me. I wasn’t invested in what I was doing, making my work feel hollow and leaving me empty. To help myself, I needed find the work that would make me feel truly useful and of service. I could not help others if I couldn’t help myself.
The contents of this essay reflect the views of the author and not necessarily those of One Report or the Baha’i Faith.
reflection: on service
For service in love for mankind is unity with God. He who serves has already entered the Kingdom and is seated at the right hand of his Lord. (Abdu’l-Baha, “The Promulgation of Universal Peace”)
If I believe that I’m a spiritual being with a body, the question arises of “where� I want to live. As our highest goal can only be to draw closer to our Creator, to live in the spiritual world, we have to ask ourselves how to reach a spiritual plane where God comes first. Now, if God created us out of love, how can we in return show our love for Him? It seems, according to this quote, that reflecting God’s love for mankind through acts of selfless service is a way to be in line with His will. How beautiful that we can already “enter the Kingdom� through acts of service in this earthly realm
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—Pascal Schmidt
different takes: on service For many youth, considering a year of service is often the first time they think about their personal relationship with service, beyond family or friends. We asked three youth, one who did a year of service, one who didn’t, and one to is about to, to share their decision making process and reflect on that choice. Estella Muro: Entering college after a year of service Did you do a year of service? Yep! I spent a year in Haifa, Israel at the Baha’i World Centre serving in the Department of Security. Why did you make that decision? When I was applying for both my year of service and for college I didn’t really have a set decision in mind of whether I wanted to go to school right away or take a gap year. I took a lot of time to think about it and consult friends and older peers to hear about their experiences either going straight to school or doing a year of service. In the end, I was invited to serve in Haifa and the college I committed to allowed me to defer my starting date, so everything just ended up coming together and nothing was in the way of me going to Haifa. What professional or academimc concerns guided this decision? I definitely had some concerns about taking a year off from school and feeling behind when I started college. My high school was pretty academically rigorous and the college application process felt really competitive among my classmates, which I’m sure pretty much everyone applying to college can relate to. During my junior year of high school, I had completely ruled out the idea of taking a year off from school because schoolwork felt like the most important part of my life and I was putting all of my time and energy into it. However, I had a conversation with an older youth in
my community around this time that really put things into perspective. He basically told me that service and studies go hand-in-hand and that everything I would gain from doing a year of service would help to enhance and reinforce my time in college and my studies. After this conversation, I stopped seeing doing a year of service as a setback and instead began to consider the benefits of it. Did you feel left out by peers who decided not to do a year of service? Not at all! If anything, I really enjoyed the fact that my close friends and I had decided to take different paths, with some starting college and some “Rather than seeing doing their year of service. It was really cool to be able service and studies to hear about my friends’ separately, I learned experiences in college or serving in places across the to see how each world and great to share my experiences with them. affects the other.” How have you been able to be of service in college? My first year of college, I joined a lot of clubs centered around service. After I transferred to a different school for my second year, I was engaged in a lot of service activities off campus. There’s a lot of work in the community with the Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program, a program for middle-school aged kids to help them develop their moral capacities and encourage service in their communities. I did outreach in the community where we were trying to form these groups, which involved talking to neighbors about the program and trying to find kids who would be interested in participating. How has your year changed your mindset entering college? I think that I learned to see the different parts of my life more holistically. Rather than seeing service and studies
separately, I learned to see how each affects the other. Being able to take a step back from my studies also helped me to think more about the role that I want education to play in my life. During high school, college felt like the end goal. Now I think a lot more about the importance of getting everything I can out of my time in college in order to help me shape my interests and longer-term goals. Do you regret your decision at all? Definitely not. Have you benefited academically or professionally through your year? Not directly, but it’s really nice to have a unique experience to talk about when applying for jobs, internships, or other programs. Questions about leadership or working on a team come up a lot and I have a lot to talk about regarding that. Did your year set you back in any way? At first, getting back into the routine of doing schoolwork was definitely a challenge for me and even into my second year of school I still feel this way, but a lot of people struggle with this to some extent so I don’t think this is unique to people who have taken a year off from school. Other than this, I don’t feel that I struggled to keep up in my classes or anything once I started college.
Bayan Toloubadei: seeking service on a college campus Did you do a year of service? I did not go on a year of service. Why did you make that decision? I personally didn’t think that pausing my academic curriculum was the best thing for me. I wanted to pursue my schooling all at once so that I would be able to integrate service into my life instead of seeing it as an entity that is
seperate from the other aspects of my life. What professional or academic concerns guided this decision? I felt like taking a year off, even if that year was devoted to service, might make me lose some work ethic when it came to school. I was a little scared that in a year of service, I would forget some of the things I learned in school or make me less prepared to take on the challenges of university. Did you feel left out by peers who decided to do a year of service? don’t know “If I had done a year of Iabout left out but I definitely did feel a service, I know I would kind of separation have been doubting at times. My friends come back that decision during my would sharing the special service and I just don’t experiences that they had or would talk think that is a proper to other people who mindset to serve with.” went on a year of service and it would cause a small kind of divide. This was not an intentional divide by any means but it was interesting for me because I would see people who I had known for a long time almost seem like a different person while on that year of service or still just shortly afterward but then would slowly go back to more of themselves. It was almost as if they were unable to mesh together the mindset they had while serving with the mindset they had in the “real world” for lack of better words. How have you been able to be of service in college? I have been trying to be as of service as possible. I created a club with some friends at Georgia Tech that focused on tutoring, mentoring, and guiding elementary school kids at a local after school program. This is a program that is
extremely close to campus yet none of the kids that attend the program end up going to Georgia Tech. We saw this as an opportunity to create a connection between our school and that program so that it would become more of a possibility for those kids to go to Tech one day. Do you regret your decision at all? I don’t regret my decision at all. I think that a year of service is a wonderful thing yet I wholeheartedly believe that it is not for everyone. If I had done a year of service, I know I would have been doubting that decision during my service and I just don’t think that is a proper mindset to serve with. What were the benefits for you with going to school immediately, service-wise or professionally? I honestly think that the benefit was mostly mental. I think that if I would have gone on a year of service, I would have blamed any shortcomings I may have had earlier on in my university education on the year of service. I also think it might have made me a little complacent. Just knowing myself, I would probably be less inclined to get involved in service knowing that I had just devoted a year to solely that.
Juliet Bogan: Anticipating a period of service I think from a young age I was attracted to the idea of a year of service. I wanted to travel and go on an adventure, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, and, of course, I wanted to serve. As a child, I read fiction novels and created characters constantly, so it isn’t very surprising that a sort of “hero’s journey” would be attractive to me. In high school, of course, my character and motives changed; or, at least, broadened. I struggled to find a group of friends I felt myself with, and once I did, I still felt as though we were shrouded in the normalization of gossiping. I think it’s gotten to me. I am currently a senior. I got into college early decision, and I applied for a year of service program in the winter. In fact,
I only just recently got accepted to the program, serving at the Bahá’í House of Worship in Chile—I don’t even know how I’m serving yet! Throughout my junior and senior years I felt very much focused on “me”—and you have to be. You have to focus on your grades, and your extracurriculars, and your resume, and your applications, and, as much as you can, your happiness or wellbeing. In the midst of the intensity of such material and self-centric foci I think a little bit of me shattered. I find myself, now, today, with little to no confidence, feeling quite empty and helpless, lost in activities I once enjoyed and even thought myself talented in, and in need of assistance. A year of service, I hope, will shift my thoughts from the material world and its stresses, and instead toward the spiritual world and spiritual growth. I need to get in touch with kindness, and gratitude, and generosity, and genuine love. In my growth the past few years I have really come to know myself. I know that a year where my focus is on serving others and my community will ultimately help me heal the spiritual wounds I’ve developed. And, I think a year of service is a good palate cleanser between one’s educational journey. I’m excited to have a new experience, in a new country, learning a new language and culture, meet new people, and serve the wonderful community I’ll come to know. It’s a lot of newness, which is actually pretty scary. But I am reminded of the adventurous child I once was and will always be, and I feel up to the challenge.
Bayan is a sophomore at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, studying biomedical engineering. Estella is a sophomore at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, studying public health. Juliet is a senior at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. She plans to attend Barnard College in New York, NY after her year of service.
Songs on Service Playlist by Saumon Oboudiyat & Naomi Tewodros Illustrated by Juliet Bogan
Resilience (April + Vista) What’s Going on (Marvin Gaye) Unshaken (D’Angelo) Sticking to My Guns (PJ Morton) Hard Times (John Legend, The Roots, Black Thought) Stand by Me (Ben E. King) Bridge over Troubled Water (Aretha Franklin) LSD (Jamila Woods, Chance the Rapper) Lean on Me (Bill Withers)
Listen at bit.ly/songsonservice
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