Tag Archives: Mentor

Oh to have a Mentor

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The mentee, too, serves an essential function for the mentor: By nurturing the younger person, the mentor keeps alive his own values and hopes, which helps him deal with his mortality and allows him to develop more “generative” parts of himself. Indeed, many men find the mentoring relationship at work allows them to heal some of the wounds of parenting; feeling frustrated with their own children, some men turn to their younger colleagues as “surrogate sons.”

Finding Our Fathers: How a Man’s Life Is Shaped by His Relationship with His Father – Samuel Osherson

Things I’ve Been Chewing On Since Pentecost

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Mentoring as Cure of Souls

 Down deep, men and women began/begin to feel a yearning to be connected with others in a way that didn’t rely on a cable, keyboard, or cell tower.

MentoringThe September 2005 special edition of Newsweek’s “Spirituality in America” sums up our spiritual hunger very well: “Today, then, the real spiritual quest is not to put another conservative on the Supreme Court, or to get creation science into the schools. If you experience God directly, your faith is not going to hinge on whether natural selection could have produced the flagellum of a bacterium. If you feel God within you, then the important question is settled; the rest is details.” Again…  David Stoddard.

A Christianity which is not basically mystical must become either a political ideology or a mindless fundamentalism. Watts, Alan W.. Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion.

This is exactly the situation in the second decade of the 21th Century. On the left the Church is political ideology and the right is brain dead fundamentalism. Betwixt and between these camps of true believers lies the company of the beleaguered.

Many do not know that before he was a Buddhist  Master,  Alan was Father Watts, Episcopal chaplain at Northwestern University,  Evanston, Ill.  The following long quote is from Behold the Spirit, a work that I consider a classic.  His critique of the present condition of the Christian Church in America was made in 1947.  The man was a prophet. Perhaps if anyone had listened he might well remained a Christian.

AlanWattsFr. Watts continues,  “Naturally, institutional Christianity will, in its present form, continue to supply the demand which remains for a monarchical religion. But a considerable number of ministers and even congregations—not to mention millions of reasonably intelligent young people—realize that churches must “put up or shut up,” and that the chief business of religious facilities and assemblies is to provide a social milieu for religious experience. This is no mere matter of changing the externals—of having rock bands instead of organs and Kyrie eleison set to jazz, nor even of turning churches into social service centers with the idea that t*his would be practicing Christianity seven days a week instead of just talking it on Sundays. Continue reading →

Bill, the Loitering Bishop, Blessed Be He

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The Rt. Rev. Furman (Bill) Stough, Eigth Bishop of Alabama

The Rt. Rev. Furman (Bill) Stough, Eighth Bishop of Alabama

One of the gifts of living past sixty is coming to treasure the people who help you along the way; you see Christ in them, and remarkably enough, they see Christ in you!   Bill Stough was one of the chief stewards of my life, ordaining me, first a deacon and then a priest.

Bill had this way of loitering by the door of this faith we share, lying in wait for the unsuspecting traveler.  Even though we may not even have known at the time, we were looking for God, Bill knew. More importantly, Bill knew God was looking for us.

The day I wandered by tugged by the longing of my heart for home. One Sunday at Christ Church, Lexington, Kentucky,  I knelt down to say my prayers before the Eucharist began and looking at the altar I suddenly knew this was my place and I wanted what I sensed there.

It was that very longing that drew me the day I made an appointment to meet with the Bishop of Alabama.  We were seated and Bill, asked what I had come for, and I told him.  He took me seriously, which the is the greatest gift one can give to another. My memory is that His Grace gave me the gift of two hours, an unheard of waste of a Bishop’s time.  He told me candidly that many people seek ordination, more than he could employ.  But he also said,  “If you are still interested to come back in a year.”  I left that day affirmed by the fellow who loitered by the door.  I did go back a year later, and that story is for another posting.

I learned the most important things from Bill by watching him, especially when no one was looking at him. What was he like in the unguarded moments?  He was a wise man, kind, direct and terrifying when righteously angry.  I came across his blessing a couple of days ago.  I share it with you because it tells you all you need to know about this man, whom I love(d).  He said it always, in a small group in the woods or at the altar of his cathedral.

“Let us depart from this place in peace, and as we go on our way, forget not the poor, pray for the sick, make no peace with oppression, and love one another as Jesus has loved us. And the Blessing of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be upon you and upon all God’s people this day and forevermore. Amen.”

– The Right Reverend Furman (Bill) Stough, Eighth Bishop of Alabama

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