The Seven Roles// #4 The Server

When we leave the All that Is we are ‘fragments’. Picture a spark of pure white light. One of the first things we do is choose our ROLE. Picture the white spark passing through a prism and becoming one of the 7 colors within the white.
SERVER // 30% of the population
In the early 1990’s the Server population in the US was down to 10% overall and even fewer on the coasts. This has made for a callous and calculating “What’s in it for me?” feeling in this country.

With the conventional viewpoint of, ‘Every man for himself’ that has long been the tradition here, Servers haven’t felt particularly welcome— so they’ve tended to go elsewhere— choosing, instead, to congregate in China to help nurture it forward [at that time, a whopping 50% of the Chinese population were Servers. That’s a LOT of nurturing!]

We all like to gravitate to places where we’ll be valued. This is as true at the Soul level as it is at the personality level. And, in China, the energy of the Server has long been venerated.

So, until recently, the US has made do with women from other Roles taking on characteristics that Servers truly enjoy embodying. So our Grandmothers, who may have chafed at the confinement, took on these attributes even though they were not inherent in their natures. This may have accounted for the 1960’s rise of the women’s movement.

Luckily for the rest of us, though, the population of Servers began to increase around the early 1990’s with more being born here— mostly in male bodies. If we haven’t reached it yet, we should soon be back up to the normal rate of 30% here. Looking at our current situation— it’s not a moment too soon. We need those Servers and they know it.

Maybe now, as the balance is restored, those other Roles can return to their own being-ness and leave most of the nurturing to the Servers. It may help lessen the sense that serving others means self-sacrifice and even a sense of martyrdom accompanying the “serving” which would have been, at best, a going-through-the-motions that most of us could probably feel underneath the caring.

**Whew!** We may just be saved by the skin of our teeth, here!
xxx
The Server is the Ordinal spoke of the Inspirational Role dyad. [Its related Cardinal end is that of the Priest—which will be profiled next.]
Everybody loves the Server [originally, Michael called this role ‘The Slave’, but that has such negative connotations from our viewpoint it was quickly renamed.]

Servers truly want to nurture the rest of us. They look out for the common good. You can tell a Server by their welcoming presence and a look of approachability in their eyes. The Grandma with the biggest lap is the Server.

Like Scholars, Servers tend to dress in muted colors. Not for them the bird-of-Paradise colors of the Artisan or Sage.

They truly enjoy helping others. They look for what needs doing and quietly make sure it gets done. Being Ordinal, they’ll take care of the nuts-and-bolts of day-to-day living—leaving the Big Picture stuff for the Priests to handle.
Servers create cozy environments where the rest of us can relax and regroup.

If you were lucky enough to have a parent or grandparent who was a Server, you knew that, when you got home from school, there would be a cup of cocoa waiting or a big glass of milk and warm cinnamon toast on the table.
And you could expect help with your homework. But s/he wouldn’t do it for you. Servers know that doesn’t truly help—and they have the patience to prod you along while you work out the answer for yourself.
Do you see why you would, if you came from that environment, feel nurtured, cared-for and cherished?

They want you to feel valued as they do what they do for you. They’ll be behind the counter serving coffee at the church social or playing the organ during the service. And, they’ll carry out these roles with such grace [if they’re in the positive pole] that most of us won’t even notice that they’re the last to sit down at the pot-luck dinner.

They’re very sweet though they’re less likely to shout their love from the rooftops. They show their love by what they do for you rather than by showing ardent affection. They don’t wear their love on their sleeves.

Server’s communications tend to be more muffled because confrontation can tend to create storms. Accommodation is the name-of-the-game.
In fact, it can be difficult to discern just what they want. Their style is to drop a hint, wait a while and see what happens. One of the problems with this communication style is that it can require the rest of us to develop the ability to mind-read—and, since we often don’t have as much patience as the Server, we may tend to give up before figuring them out.
With so many of them in the population, they lend the entire planet a sense of: ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘Oh, I don’t care, whatever YOU want,’ that can make communication difficult at times.

While Servers are great at the supportive role, you won’t find them out in front leading the way, all that often. Leave those aspects to the Priests, Warriors and Kings [all to be profiled later] and the Sages.

Servers may, particularly if they’re in the negative pole, get themselves into enslavement to a cause, a spouse or family member, a boss or co-worker. Martyrdom, anyone?

They may also meet with resistance for reasons not of their own making: The rest of us are so used to waiting for the other shoe to drop we may not trust the sincerity of the Server— especially in this country which has made do without the normal numbers of Servers for several generations, now.

In the early lifetimes [Infant and Baby], Servers will march off to war to support their countries, create large families, care for farm animals and create warm structures in small towns and villages around the world. As they mature they may begin moving into larger cities and develop a penchant for pushing various causes though they’ll still tend to work behind the scenes rather than be out front and center as promoters of BandAid, for instance. They'll often still tend toward producing fairly large families as they continue to wish to care for lots of other people.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, and Bishop Tutu all used religion and a certain fervor to push their causes.

Florence Nightengale, Queen Victoria, Jimmy Carter, Albert Schweitzer, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles can all be seen, even as they rose to visibility, to hang back and not take center stage. This has caused problems particularly for Carter, Q.E. II and Prince Charles as the rest of the population don’t quite know what to make of them in our media-driven world.

The only show business personality I’ve found [and he was decidedly at the quiet end of that noisy group] is Phil Donahue. And his style [racing around the room with his microphone, making sure that everyone got to have a say in the discussion] was certainly the hallmark of the Server.