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He thought he was going to class early to get extra credit with God.

That’s how his story began. One of our students shared that he found himself with twenty-five spare minutes before our Wednesday evening Way of Spiritual Living class. His first instinct was to go in early and help set up — to be “of service.” To do the right thing. To earn some invisible gold star from the Divine for being a good helper.

But then his heart — that small still voice within — whispered something else.
Take a walk. Go outside. Feel the day.

And so he did.

He walked along the arroyo, noticing the golden light of late afternoon casting shadows and light on the concrete, the sound of wind mingling with the distant rush of traffic. He let himself be led. Not by duty. Not by “should.” But by Spirit.

At the top of the trail, he saw an unhoused man standing with his dog holding the leash tight to him with obvious fear. The air felt tense. The man’s body language said, Stay away. But in that subtle way Spirit speaks — more like a knowing than a sentence — he heard:
Introduce yourself to the dog, not to the man. He’s not in the right place today.

So he crouched down, smiled at the dog, and said, “Hey buddy, my name’s—.” The dog wagged his tail, the man relaxed, and told him the dog’s name. Just that. Nothing dramatic. No sermon. No saving. Just presence.

He kept walking and came to a fork in the path. He could follow the easy way back toward the road or take a steep, rocky hill down into the neighborhood. He didn’t want to take the hard way. But Spirit nudged him again:
Take the rocky hill.

So he did.

Halfway down, he saw a young man smoking fentanyl. The young man startled, tried to hide what he was doing. My student said softly, “It’s okay. You don’t have to hide. You can be exactly who you are around me. Do you need anything?”

The young man looked up. “I’m thirsty,” he said.

So he walked to the corner store. He didn’t have much cash, but he asked the cashier for a deal on two bottles of water. The cashier said, “Sure. A dollar.” He brought them back to the young man and went on to class.

When he arrived, he remembered a lottery scratcher he had in his pocket. He scratched it clean.
He’d won one dollar.

When he told this story, I threw my hands in the air and shouted like I was at one of my kids football games. I was moved to shouting and cheering by this gorgeous example my student was offering to us.

This is what conscious service looks like. It’s not a plan. It’s a posture.
It’s not about doing good for points or performance.
It’s about being available.

It’s about attunement — that interior tuning fork of the soul that hums when you’re in rhythm with Spirit.

Because real service rarely happens on your schedule.
It happens when you’re willing to be interrupted. When you’re willing to be inconvenienced. When you’re willing to follow the nudge to take the rocky hill instead of the easy road.

This is the spiritual practice of availability.

Jesus of Nazareth taught his students, “Faith without works is dead.” But the kind of “works” he meant weren’t about doing more. They were about embodying faith so fully that Love starts acting through you.

And love doesn’t always look like volunteering, or organizing, or being early for class. Sometimes it looks like slowing down enough to listen. Sometimes it looks like saying hello to the dog instead of the man. Sometimes it looks like walking down the hard hill and buying two bottles of water with your last dollar.

That’s the paradox of service: when we let go of trying to serve, and instead just make ourselves available, Spirit does the serving through us.

We spend so much of our time trying to do the right thing when the deeper invitation is to be in right relationship — to let our inner ear stay tuned to the frequency of Love. That attunement will always lead us to right action - Love In Action.

And if we’re lucky, it will lead us right into the middle of someone else’s heartbreak, or need, or holy moment — if we’re willing to be interrupted.

This month at the Albuquerque Center for Spiritual Living, we’re exploring what it means to live that way.
To let our faith become visible through love in action.
To listen first, act second.
To serve not because we should, but because we can’t help it, because it’s our True and Holy Nature.

Because when Love gets the final say,
service stops being an item on your to-do list.
It becomes your way of walking through the world.