Service Rotary Invocation
Fellow Rotarians, Anns, dignataries, distinguished guests, and friends of Rotary, maayong gabii sa tanan.
It has been a good year for our club, the Rotary Club of Cagayan de Oro, for our community, for Rotary District 3870, and for Rotary International as a whole.
Before we go into “prayer” mode, let me instill in you a couple of ideas. Ideas that may require your intellectual attention. A very short sermon about service.
150 years ago, Charles Darwin wrote “On the Origin of Species”, the single most controversial publication of all time, a book which still causes reverberations throughout the World.
In 1861, the British Association for the Advancement of Science devoted a special session at its annual conference to it. Darwin himself was not in attendance, but one of his sharpest critics said:
“Darwin should have just put his facts before us and let them rest.”
Darwin wrote back:
About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorize, and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe their colors. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observations must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service.
This has become to be known as “Darwin’s Dictum”, as identified by the final clause “all observations must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service.”
The mere facts never speak for themselves. For the facts to mean anything they must be interpreted by the colored lens of opinion.
To state it another way: To be of any service, one must be for or against some view. To be without an opinion, is to provide no service.
My mother has always been a fount of wisdom. She bestowed upon me this one pearl when I was a child, she said:
“One cook can serve a family, but six cooks can serve an army”
What she meant was that a group of people, even a small group of people, working together toward a common goal, can accomplish exponentially more than any individual working alone.
The best cooks follow recipes and/or create new ones. Recipes are plans of action. They are best made by cooks with well-seasoned opinions, with the intention of serving others.
As Rotarians we put service above self. We come together as small groups called clubs. The clubs come together to form districts, and the districts come together to form Rotary International. Our numbers are more than 1.2 million. We are enough cooks to serve The World.
With these thoughts in mind, please, let us bow our heads or simply close our eyes and recognize the presence of the Lord, who is with us now.
Lord, I hope, and I pray:
To be of service to thee, let us all be bestowed with good ideas, and well-founded, well-seasoned opinions. Let us all contribute as your team of cooks, working together, following recipes or creating new ones, so that we can all be of service. And, so that one year from now as we come together again to usher in another Rotary year we can again say,
It has been a good year for our club, for our community, for Rotary District 3870, for Rotary International, and The World is a better place because we, as Rotarians, have made a difference, we have cooked up something good, and we have been of service. Malambo-on nga servicio!
Amen