Chris Gribble

Be yourself - Everyone else is taken (Oscar Wilde)

“I survive on the breath you are finished with”. John Mayer

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There are many times when I am not satisfied with my conversations. Recently I have been part of a bigger conversation that has saddened me in the lack of love and grace that has been given.

A friend of mine shared this line the other day and it has sat with me. Out of this came my beginning reflections. Wondering about what is it I am leaving – my breath – my essence? What will remain as my conversation begins and ends and continues.

“I survive on the breath you are finished with”. John Mayer

Love is breathed in
From the gasp
Exhaled
In a word
That finishes
Or, begins a conversation.

Seeking what loves says
Is a gift
That gives and receives
Life, shared,
Not taken,
Forming new life,
A womb of air,
Creating,
Nurturing,
Seeking,
Protecting
What is given,
Exhaling, life.

Wounding and a deeper experience of God – Lessons from 1000 conversations

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Prayer for sadness

May you see God’s light on the path ahead
When the road you walk is dark.
May you always hear,
Even in your hour of sorrow,
The gentle singing of the lark.
When times are hard may hardness
Never turn your heart to stone,
May you always remember
when the shadows fall—
You do not walk alone.

The second level in the conversational hierarchy that emerged from my workplace onversations (for further detail on the background of this click here) is the expression of wounding and a desire for a deeper experience of God. Each of these have featured significantly in the more than 1000 conversations contributing to my investigation.

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

C.S Lewis once said, “pain is God’s megaphone.” These two understandings fitted closely with each other as wounding is the signal to many people that a deeper relationship with God is sought. Without the pain that is a part of living in the midst of brokenness most people would be deaf to God’s calling on their lives.

Wounding

My version of Psalm 127

Work for work’s sake is futile activity,
Slavery to an endless list of tasks,
Only to achieve a bigger paycheck is futile,
They are illusions of success,
Rest is important too,
It teaches us that God provides.

Parker Palmer in his book, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life, writes about the wounds that are caused by our institutions. For many people their experience of work is dealing with daily disappointments where wounds are inflicted by those who wield power unwisely.

One of the first realisations coming out of my conversationsis that for most people work is about violence. This is the conclusion Studs Terkel reached after interviewing scores of Americans for his book Working: Work is, by its very nature, about violence—to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us

In my life’s most recent transformation the most difficult part of moving forward from my wounding is recognising the disappointment that lay behind that transformation. David Whyte says in his book, “Consolations”, courage is in embracing that disappointment. There is no pathway on this earth that doesn’t involve being let down in some way.

Parker Palmer writes about the need for our roles to be more deeply informed by the truth that is in our souls. His experience over many years of conducting Courage and Renewal groups is that leaders who are able to engage deeply with their identity and their organisational disappointments are best equipped to allow healing to be encouraged in their life. Being heard in a conversation is a way of encouraging healing through self reflection so that leaders are able to re-enter the daily conversations that must be had as a part of their role. Spiritual companioning conversations enable this pain to be voiced and heard; then provided a place where soul and role are reconnected.

Institutional betrayal is potent because it represents a profound and fundamental violation of trust in a necessary dependency relationship. In that sense, it is similar to abuse in close relationships such as what is expected in a marriage. This abuse is serious and its consequences are shattering for many people. Workplace statistics regarding the prevalence of bullying and abuse are horrifying and yet these numbers are a glimpse of the daily heartache that work is for many people.

I wrote the following psalm when considering the impact of violence in the workplace. For most people it isn’t a single act of abuse that destroys their soul. More often it’s the daily accumulation of barbs and jabs that end slowly suck the life out of any productive activity. They are the thousand pinpricks that slowly accumulate take away any passion that may be felt for the daily tasks needed to be done. Redemption is found when the gifts that are brought are celebrated by another. But, recovery is a healing process that is required because of the wounding inflicted.

Psalm 204 – When things go wrong

A thousand pinpricks are certain to kill,
Just as certain as a bullet to the head,
Each day can mounts with frustration,
Passion slowly curls up to die,
Lost in the mass of failures,
Notched up in the daily diary account.

Joy’s slow death has it’s own smell,
The putrid stench of contempt’s gaze,
That stares from its lofty throne,
I am lost in what cannot be changed,
Unless something changes in me,
Broken down, deserted for green fields,
That yield a thousand times more.

But Joy’s heart was opened wide,
To begin to restore my broken heart,
What went wrong will be set right,
As hearts combine in loving embrace,
Celebrating the meagre gifts offered,
From which something beautiful unfolds,
Promises from God are always kept,
Setting things right in Creation’s economy.

The struggle is necessary for hope to emerge. In this case it’s the recognition that the change must happen within me if I am able to navigate the work world. The difference is that when hope is found there is the joining of two hearts that are able to celebrate what is true and good in each other. It’s the beginning of a new conversation that begins from Joy’s open heart and searches for what is beautiful in the other person.

As Parker Psalmer relates this personal transformation to the North American seasons, he describes how the change from winter to summer requires the messiness of spring. It’s from this uncertainty that fresh shoots that are the signs of new life are able to emerge.

“In my own life, as winters turn into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility; for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger’s act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.”
? Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

What is often missing is a place where an honest conversation can be had about winter’s darkness or the messiness of spring. Too often in many workplaces anything not regarded as positive affirmation of current management practices can quickly label the person as negative and they are put on the outer. The truth that is in the messiness is lost because the wounds are never given an opportunity to heal. Organisations are quick to banish and say that someone doesn’t belong if their wounds disrupt the image that they seek to present.

The foundation of the conversational hierarchy developed is that a deeper space is desired. Once this is acknowledged in a conversation then the pain that comes from people’s wounding is able to become a voice that can understand what it is to have a deeper relationship with God. The opportunity that comes from this second level in the conversational hierarchy is to share with someone their wound and perhaps to shed a little of the gentle light of the soul on their pain. It’s the beginning of consolation, forgiveness and healing for the disappointment that comes with being let down by something that we sought to trust.

A deeper relationship with God is desired.

“There is in the soul a something in which God dwells, and there is in the soul a something in which the soul dwells in God.” Meister Eckhart

This search for a deeper relationship with God is often about reshaping our image of ourselves. As David Whyte puts it, “creation is waiting breathlessly for each of us to take our place…to begin the one journey only you can take…to occupy that one complexion of creation that no other element in creation can occupy.” Becoming found by God enables a person the opportunity to be seen in the most authentic place; in the most vulnerable way.

Creation begins with an imaginative act of God. Human life commenced with a series of divine creative acts followed by a conversation between God and humanity. This conversation has continued throughout history. When God created a person his conversation extended beyond declaring it is good, he started the relationship with a deeply intimate conversation that established a unique identity for each individual person. This conversation continued and developed in the Garden of Eden and beyond.

The tone changed after sin became something that needed to be confronted because of its impact on the conversation between God and humanity. This was the conversation that Adam and Eve didn’t want to have with God and they sought to avoid it. But, we are told that God sought them out and together they discovered the truth and then re established their relationship after trust had been lost.

This could have been the end of the conversation, lost trust could have doomed us to unfulfilled longings that could never be completed. However, this was not the end and humanity continues to have the privilege of having a conversation with God. Forgiveness is love’s purest expression of hope that is given as a gift to us.

In the following poem called, “Imagination” I sought to discover something about the source of that conversation and then the intimacy that I am able to have because I share with my Creator’s imagination.

Imagination

When Love created an eternal soul,
A smile announced his arrival,
Imagination’s beautiful idea fulfilled,
In the surprising gasp for breath,
Introducing life’s first cry.

In the landscape of a million conversations,
One voice creates a new piece of ground,
Creation’s busy activity paused.

Stopping to listen.

A moment dedicated to this life,
Finding a word that belonged to this person,
The word that sought out his special name,
That joined imagination with possibility,
Concluding with life’s final breath,
The smile completed by Love’s embrace.

In this poem I was also exploring the beauty of creation and the discovery of my place in the Creator’s heart. The thought that the creator of this world would stop to listen to me, that he would hear my voice and know me by name inspires me to explore more of this Creator. Imagination is the place where a deeper experience of God begins.

John’s gospel introduction to Christ begins with taking the reader back to the creation’s first creative acts. Today my life witnesses these acts that formed my life and breathes meaning into my creativity. I am a witness to God’s conversation with me, the one that knows my name; the conversation that is forgiving and the conversation that is fulfilled by Love’s embrace.

It begins with the creation story. It includes me in a holy community that says I belong. It introduces the lie that is deceptive and also the truth that can be found in the conversation we are invited to have with the Voice, Breath and Flesh.

John’s introduction to his gospel in my words.

This story originates with a small community who each desired to express their creativity. This community is made up of, a Voice, Breath and Flesh. I am one example of that creative expression. There are many others that are too numerous to mention in this brief introduction. My life is a testimony to the desire of that first group to share their creativity with their creation.

The Voice, the Breath and the Flesh realised that by myself I can only dimly make out a sense of who they are. This image is distorted by a lie. This lie is spread throughout the world and influences everything in the world. The good news is that the lie always has to give way to the Voice, Breath and Flesh.

Creation once was a complete unity then it was divided. How this came about is complex but the Voice continued to talk to his creation. He never stopped speaking the truth even though the lie was believed by most people.

Before I was born the Voice, Breath and Flesh began a plan to make truth absolutely clear. This plan required the Flesh to live with his creation so that everyone could see the lie clearly. His presence focussed the differences between the truth and the lie. It became obvious that people believed either one or the other.

The preparations for the Flesh living with us were carefully planned out. A man called John was specially prepared from birth to ensure that everyone knew who the Flesh in person really was. He knew the entire history of the Voice speaking and how deceiving the lie could be.

John was not afraid to speak the truth. He was very clear about who the Flesh was and the Flesh’s relationship with the Voice and with the Breath. It clearly was a huge commitment by the Voice, Breath and Flesh to separate for this time so that their creation could get a first hand account of the truth.

The gospel brings truth to the lies that are the most used weapon in workplaces. The lies inhibit the creativity that we are intended to share with the Voice, Breath and Flesh. The gospel brings the Flesh’s word to us and the truth that we are intended to hear.

Truth’s daily calling

Truth is the soul’s main labour,
Connecting heart and head and eternity,
Truth lived brings laughter and tears,
Truth understood is shared intimacy,
Embracing with none of love’s regrets,
The longed for hello,
Not the regretful goodbye,
Truth is not clinging to a failed understanding,
Truth is the soul’s daily work,
The creative heart work of the true human.

Ultimately we work not to just make an income, or to fill in an empty space in our day. We work because we are co-creators with God in the unfolding of the world. Our voice in this conversation is what creates a new piece of ground. In the midst of this creation Norvene Vest writes, “Vocation teaches us that each of us has a particular place, a particular set of talents, a particular responsibility that no one else can quite fulfill” (Vest).

In concluding this section I have included a prayer for forgiveness. This has the dual purpose of enabling wounding to begin healing and also it’s the starting point of a relationship with God. It provides the opportunity to step up to the next level of the conversational hierarchy – The creation of a safe place and uncertainty’s expression.

A prayer for forgiveness

Allow me to forgive,
For I am imprisoned by my bitterness.
Allow me to be forgiven,
For I am shamed that I have done another harm.
I earnestly pray that we may all forgive and be forgiven.
May we love and be loving.
May we strive to see the right, to do the right;
And to be generous with others as we would be with ourselves,
This day, this week, this life.
Amen

Don’t worry about a thing – cause everything’s going to be alright

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One of life’s harshest lessons is to recognise that it doesn’t quite measure up to expectations. Life disappoints. This has led me to seek out some reason for some of the injustices that I see during my own life journey. My heart says that if I can find a reason for going through my difficulties then there is a purpose for continuing on. Otherwise, my life would be a series of bitter defeats that ends with a despairing final defeat when I die.

A lament can be defined as a formal expression of deep sorrow. Once written, or brought to a community, or shared with someone else the issue is made official. It can’t be ignored. To fully understand the sorrow of disappointment creates the place where a life transformation can begin. The experience of lamenting for something or someone allows the beautiful truth of hope to be brought forward as a solution that enables a more positive future to be attained.

For a number of years my wife and I have been involved with an orphanage that helps children with HIV in Asia. It started with a couple of ordinary people who heard the cry of a young girl whose future looked very limited. She was malnourished, not getting her needed medication and was close to death. Her life today is full of hope, she is healthy and happy and has a loving family.

Once that child’s cry was heard they sought to discover how justice could be given to children like this little girl. From that simple beginning came a hopeful response to those children whose future didn’t have much to offer. The number of children helped through the organisation that grew out of this response grows each year.

Therefore, for the children an appropriate response to the deep sorrow about the injustice of their situation is to create a place where they can be known and loved. This is an immediate practical outcome of the recognition of a need. The children also require internal healing that comes from their own experience of abandonment and uncertainty because of what they have already faced in their brief life. This is a much more difficult path that I think will take a long time for many of them.

In my own life there are also disappointments that have come in my brief fifty years. My life like most others has had the gamut of human experience. I have experienced the loss of loved ones and known the deep grief that comes with saying goodbye. I have had dreams quashed by harsh words. There have been friends who have deserted me in times of great need. All of these experiences are to some extent unremarkable because they happen to us all at some point in our lives.

One of the things that was most helpful to me was to acknowledge the deep sorrow that comes with those disappointments. I could choose to try to explain them as inconsequential, or excuse the behaviours that caused the disappointment. But, if that as the only way I had to deal with all the injustices that I see in the world would end up even more disappointed.

My Version of Psalm 13

I have waited impatiently Lord,
Trapped in my own fears,
Sad and full of self blame,
For my failures.

Waiting means uncertainty and anxiety,
And, in the meantime,
It looks like I am passive,
Letting others run over me,
They say I am a failure,
They even think they are better than You.

Waiting means trusting,
Certain of your love,
Instead of being anxious,
I will look for expressions of your eternal love,
Life’s eternal breath,
Breathed into me,
Gives me a confident voice,
Daily declaring your goodness.
The steps that I have discovered out of my reflection on Psalm 13 that contribute to a healthy lament are as follows:

  1. Disappointment
  2. Uncertainty and anxiety
  3. Waiting
  4. Listening
  5. Hope

There is a progression from being let down in some way to a gamut of emotions and responses that lie between it. Part of the healing process always involves listening to God’s voice. My experiences in the Psalms are crucial expressions of me learning to listen to God and be more responsive to his words, rather than just hearing some of the less helpful words that can be said to me.

In this reflection on Psalm 13 I was thinking about how out of my own sense of failure and anxiety some beautiful truths emerged. Learning to trust in the midst of uncertainty was one of the hardest lessons. My first response is usually to try to create my own solutions. There was one period in my life when I was depressed and even with my optimistic nature I couldn’t think of a single way to help myself. No matter what my desire was I was helpless to bring about my own solution.

For a period of time I had to wait. This was a difficult time of uncertainty and anxiety where I was forced to do nothing. I used the words, “I have waited impatiently Lord” to express the internal conflict that often is there when waiting. For a long time I felt like I was waiting with no expectation of what was arriving. This was a daunting prospect to face each day.

Deep sorrow, properly lamented points to hope. It helps us find our true north again. This new certainty began emerging for me as I spent more time in stillness and listening to God. To be fully realised it started with a lament about my deep disappointment. But, as I waited and listened I discovered a fresh sense of hope emerging. I found that over and over I was able to find more and more to celebrate in my life. Even just over two years since he died there are still times when I think about my Dad and feel a tinge of sadness that he’s not with us anymore. Yet from that sadness I am able to return to a more hopeful place much more quickly because of a future that I look forward to.

Finally from Psalm 35 is another lament where David is reflecting on his own deep disappointment with the way he was let down by those who had once relied upon. He struggled with the way they turned on him after he had offered these people friendship and loyalty. Sometimes he even put his own life on the line for their sake. All this was received with little gratitude. Plots betraying the trust that David gave seemed like regular occurrences throughout his life. Yet it was these experiences and his responses that gave him the recognition that he was a, “man after God’s own heart”.

A reflection on Psalm 35

Why do some people seem hell-bent on my destruction?
They are well armed,
Wielding their weapons of mass destruction,
Against me personally.
What do I do with my enemies God?

I don’t wish ill on anyone yet I still have enemies,
God I am turning to you to protect me.
When someone comes against me,
With attacks that don’t let up,
Even when they have me down,
They keep coming with more vindictiveness,
Watching for every opportunity
To put in the knife,
Stabbing me in the back,
Twisting it to cause maximum pain,
This is really is an attack against you, God.

For a long time,
I thought you were ignoring me,
Enemies were gloating at my distress,
I was trying to do my best,
My best was never good enough,
Every little failure was an opportunity,
To twist that knife a little more,
To make sure that I could never feel good.

One day justice will be done,
All in your good time God,
You will turn their gloating into a cry for help,
Lies will be exposed,
Truth will win out in the end,
This will be your opportunity God,
To set things right.

In the meantime,
I will keep serving you wholeheartedly,
I will keep trusting you have my best interests,
This will be an opportunity to tell others about you.

 

Five benefits of checking email once a day

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My name is Chris and I am an email addict. I confess that I may relapse at any moment. But, for now I have my email habit under control.

Slowly I have been reducing my dependence until just recently I took control and decided to check my email once each day at 3.00 pm in the afternoon. At that time I deal with everything that needs to be dealt with from what I have received in the past twenty four hours.

The good news is my world hasn’t fallen apart. Even better news is that I am finding some tangible benefits in limiting my access to this important part of our modern communication.

Below is a list of five benefits that I have noticed since getting my email habit under control:

1. I spend more time on focussed activities.

One of the key issues about feeding my addiction was that it needed gratification several times an hour. My life was consumed by clicking from whatever I was doing to seeing what had arrived in my inbox. At one point I was receiving at least 60 emails an hour. The constant alert of a new arrival left me in a state of permanent distraction.

Focus is all about maintaining a sustained effort. This was not possible in my constant state of distraction. The result was that my productivity was at an all time low. Even though I was engaged in activity the whole time rarely was it actually getting the jobs done that needed to get done.

Nowadays I can sit down and write a 2000 word post in one sitting. I don’t find my attention wandering back to the inbox because I know that can wait till 3.00 pm this afternoon. This type of focus is required for some of the larger tasks that I need to attend to.

2. I no longer need instant gratification of opening the next email.

My system went into withdrawal for a period of time. I remember the empty feeling after I first shut off notifications on my mobile phone. This was the complete turning off not just putting things on silent. I think that quite mode’s vibration even more torture because you know something has arrived but you have to wait till you can check without being noticed. The instant gratification is delayed.

I am discovering that I am able to wait and appreciate the reward that comes from consistently applying myself in extended bursts. What is emerging is far more gratifying than the quick injection of dopamine that my body had become used to. According to Psychology.org the desire for instant gratification comes from a desire for dopamine. Researcher Kent Berridge writes,

“These two systems, the “wanting” (dopamine) and the “liking” (opioid) are complementary. The wanting system propels you to action and the liking system makes you feel satisfied and therefore pause your seeking. If your seeking isn’t turned off at least for a little while, then you start to run in an endless loop. The dopamine system is stronger than the opioid system. You tend to seek more than you are satisfied. Evolution again — seeking is more likely to keep you alive than sitting around in a satisfied stupor.”

I was a victim to an endless search for those chemicals that I find most gratifying. I have learned to replace these short term bursts of pleasure with the satisfaction of committing to a task and seeing it to completion.

3. I can take time out without being anxious

Weekends are mine again. I can take time out to refresh and relax. Usually when the time comes to return to work I am able to do this enthusiastically. I think that this is because my creative store is replenished and waiting to do something.

A settled restlessness

A tightening surge rises from within,
Uncertainty, fearfully, remembering,
Breaks the imagined calm,
Too much, too fast, too soon,
Restlessness breaks in on every task.

Serenity is imagined from my soul’s mind,
Hopefully, trusting, relearning,
Reality is almost in sight,
Rest, slow down, wait,
A settling transforms whatever comes today.

I wrote this poem as I was considering my anxious state that drove me to an incessant email checking. Rest is such a welcome friend but it required a more settled approach to my life. I needed to accept whatever came that day and learn again how to prioritise. In my anxiousness everything felt urgent and important. This became overwhelming to the point of damaging my health.

Each day I know how my day will start. I am a morning person so I don’t want to waste my creative energy answering email. Nowadays I dedicate that most productive time to doing my most creative work. Rather than being anxious I tend to look forward to the tasks that lay ahead for me on any day.

4. I sleep better at night

One of the things that I used to dread was going to bed because of the anticipation of a mass of emails to wade through the next morning. Often I would be checking emails till late at night to try to cut down on the number of emails that would await me in the morning.

Going to sleep is now a welcome part of my daily rhythm. I am thankful that I will wake rested to a new day that has new possibilities ahead. The half settled sleep of worry that I used to have when I went to sleep concerned about what message may arrive during the night is becoming a distant memory. If I do wake I no longer check what’s come in on my mobile phone hoping that my wife doesn’t catch me in the act.

5. I am not constantly distracted.

I was constantly distracted by my inflow of emails. A side effect was that I found it very difficult to delete anything in case it may be important sometime in the future. What happened was that with too much information coming to me I had no time to develop a filter to know what was important and what could be discarded. This overload of information left me constantly distracted.

Our obsession with what may be contained in the latest email that we receive is an indulgence that we can’t afford. Our minds are becoming bloated with information. The fear that something important may be missed is rarely realised.

Alain de Botton says that we need to have periods of fasting from all of this is we are ever going to be able to concentrate. My email checking routine allows space from the self imposed expectation of needing to respond instantly to something that more often than not can wait.

Three key strategies that helped me:

  1. I turned off notifications on the mobile phone – That constant ping that tells you something has arrived is not a part of my life. My advice is to not even play with the idea that you can get away with silent so no one knows about your addiction. This is only fooling yourself.
  2. I started by unplugging for a weekend – It’s always good to start with small victories. The weekend is a good starting point to begin disciplining a chronic email habit.
  3. I ruthlessly unsubscribe – Companies are constantly trying to get email addresses so that they can get their email message to you. Sometimes you need to supply your email address but the law is they need to have an unsubscribe function. Use it ruthlessly. They rarely will have information you need in a mass email. If you do need information you can always go back to that company’s website. I used to get close to 100 emails a day. Now I can get less than 20 emails for the whole day. Unsubscribe!

Re-imagining heroism – A post for those who don’t always feel brave

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Definition of Coward

“one who shows disgraceful fear or timidity”

Our family recently climbed a mountain that is close to our home. It’s not Everest but it does require a bit of climbing up some of the rock faces. The level of difficulty would be classed as very easy but it is a reasonable climb with a magnificent view at the end.

My eldest son doesn’t like heights. From some people’s perspective it might seem that his fear is unreasonable and irrational because sometimes it’s quite limiting for him. This last time as we climbed this mountain I watched him carefully at one point as we climbed up one of the rock faces. I could see his fear and uncertainty as he took each cautious step forward.

When we got to the top I could see his visible relief that he had made it. I made sure we had the time for a quiet moment together and I told him how proud I was that he had made it. My observation was that he didn’t allow his fear to stop him from doing what needed to be done. His fear was real and palpable yet he didn’t allow it to stop him from climbing that mountain.

Fear is a part of everyone’s life. Unreasonable fear can create all sorts of anxiety that if left unchecked can leave us paralysed. I love the words from one of Jesus’ sermons that spoke words of comfort for those who are seeking courage and comfort.” How happy are those who know sorrow.” This is the person who has pushed this world to its limits and recognised its disappointments. The paradox of our humanity is expressed in the contrast between happy and sorrow. Normally you wouldn’t expect them to be in the same sentence.

“How happy are those who know what sorrow means for they will be given courage and comfort! “
J B Phillips

Happiness comes when the limitations of our world are owned honestly, and we understand that relationships will fall short of expectations, material benefits can come and go and prestige can be a fleeting experience. When this is realised and we become vulnerable we are prepared to face our real fears, the ones that will take us to our source.

For many people this is the step that they don’t want to take. As David Whyte says in his poem, “Start Close In”, this is the first step, the step that we don’t want to take. I wrote give me the coward to seek to distinguish from the self declared hero to the person that has recognised his fears, and knows that he is the coward. From this recognition comes the capacity to demonstrate courage in the face of adversity.

The passage from Matthew’s gospel that I quoted earlier is alluding to those people who have started close in, they will know their sorrow, but then out of their sorrow those people get the truest idea of what love looks like. In my poem it’s not the hero who really knows love, they are caught up in their heroic deeds and are forgetful of courage’s testing by love.

In, “Give me the coward”, I chose the word coward because it’s that person who knows the unreasonableness of who they are and feel the deep pain of the tragic gap of who we desire to be and what we know we are. That person is the one that has learned the deep sorrow that comes from life and all of its disappointments. They have felt the fear that comes from when their world spins totally out of control. But, this is the persona who will know happiness. Courage emerges from facing their sorrows and responding in love and kindness. The coward has the more opportunity to be a hero than the person trapped in a self declared sense of grandeur.

Give me the coward

The measure of a man is not in his grandest thoughts,
The self deluded picture of a courageous act,
Reality brings all actions together,
Truth explores love’s result
Courage sifted by love,
Nothing left,
Coward.

Give me the coward who can sob about his weakness,
Who knows there are other things to cry about,
He can gaze into the weariness of sadness,
Eyes feeling the glare of judgement,
The delusions of control,
Knowing lies,
Hero.

The best human stories are redemptive stories. They are the one’s where our biggest failures are transformed into a redeeming triumph. These are the heart stories that we yearn for because such stories provide all of us with hope. Give me the coward sought to be such a story. It seeks to explore the nature of true courage and develop a deeper understanding of each person’s possibility for redemption.

Four signs that indicate you are emerging from burnout

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1. Creativity re-emerges

Truth’s daily task

Truth is not clinging to a failed understanding,
Truth is the soul’s daily work,
The creative heart work of the true human.

Another line in this poem that I wrote was that “truth lived brings laughter and tears”. When in the midst of my burnout there wasn’t much laughter, tears were the more common expression of my state of being. Creativity requires both to be present in our life. The unhealthy imbalance was very evident in my daily lament about my lack of value to anyone.

James Altucher in his book, “Choose Yourself” recommends that we write down ten ideas a day. I would normally say such a task is too easy but my idea well was completely dry during this time.

Creativity re-emerging showed itself in a growing confidence to try something new. Each day as I took the next faltering step forward I was able to move to a new understanding of myself as a person. The old ways of seeing myself were lost in a finding of a new truth that touched the very core of my soul.

Psalm 85

When love and faithfulness collided with my life,
The sparks shot to the heavens,
The light shower showed me the way forward,
The paralysis of despair healed completely…

I used the word paralysis to refer to the despairing state that I found myself in during my experience of burnout. The discovery of those who could meet me with love and faithfulness in the moments of darkness encouraged the smallest sparks of creativity that they saw in me and this allowed light to emerge on the next step forward. Being able to work creatively and to then have the confidence to share my work with a community that expressed love and faithfulness was a very clear sign that I was beginning to rediscover a balance in my life.

2. Sleep refreshes

One of the clearest indicators of my state of being when in the midst of burnout was a poor sleep rhythm. Even when I did sleep it never felt like I woke refreshed. There were times when I questioned if I would ever have a proper night’s sleep again. I felt like I lived in a state of perpetual tiredness. Being able to have a good night’s sleep was a welcome relief that was a clear indicator that something was beginning to shift in me.

A reflection on Psalm 112

My heart’s deepest gladness has been found,
Living in the centre of God’s intention,
I sleep peacefully each night,
I dream of hope and belonging…

For me the tiredness hung around for a long time. I am normally a quite active person who approaches life with enthusiasm. My preferred rhythm is to wake early and it’s in that time that I can be quite creative. When I continually was waking up feeling tired there was little creativity left in me.

As I emerged from my continual tiredness I started looking forward to the mornings again. As creativity emerged I began looking forward to waking up so that I could engage in the creative activity of my work. Sleep was welcomed because it was a restful sleep that came from resolving some of the tension that I felt had emerged in understanding my sense of vocation and my response to that call.

3. It doesn’t have to be about me

At the height of my burnout my conversation centred around me. Sometimes when I was saying the words about me I felt tired of hearing myself talk. Some good friends stayed with me during this period and continued to listen and I am thankful that they were able to do this.

A reflection on Psalm 104

Like a lost friend who is brought close,
Creation continually welcomes me with a huge hug,
I am safe again in his presence,
His Voice the centre of my conversations….

One of my burnout symptoms was a complete retreat into myself. This was very difficult with a wife and four children who were very used to me be very present in our family life. I still managed to be very self focussed in my world of perpetual distraction. Even when I was with them I was never really there. I would be looking at them but thinking about a thousand things that could be going wrong, what I needed to do yet in that day, what mistakes I had made that day and a constant self talk of failure. There wasn’t much room in my head to fit anyone else.

My centre had become all about me and this was creating fatal wounds in my life. Learning to discover other important voices that spoke into my life helped me to re-find my centre. I loved the growing sense of belonging that brought with it a healing voice into my life. The words that emerged brought a new understanding of my own voice that could transcend my immediate problems.

4. Confidence returns

So many of us let others determine what we are worth. It’s our duty to make that determination ourselves.”
Jonathan Goldsmith

Dr Travis Bradberry in article in Forbes Magazine recently that quoted research from the University of California in San Francisco that showed the more difficulty you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. He also says that before we say “no” we need to have worked out what we are saying yes to.

Writing Psalm 203 was about me re-finding my centre in work by first learning to say yes to God.

My first word today is to say, “No”,
To a thousand different questions,
That seek to bring complexity,
To what is the simple choice,
Of first saying yes to God.

Being able to say no to someone means that there is something bigger at play in life. I have learned once again to find a bigger purpose in my life than some of the more material goals that dominated my life during my period of burnout. This gives more confidence to be able to make choices and to then live with those choices.

I notice myself saying no more and more lately. Sometimes saying no is often about choosing between good and best, this choice can be difficult especially when the creative juices are flowing and there are so many options to explore. But, saying no helps focus creativity and beds it into more fertile soil that is ultimately more productive.

No can sometimes bring with it some immediate pain but this is sometimes better than the dull ache of a half hearted yes. No, changes the terms of of a relationship because it makes the reality or impossibility of a situation clearer. Burnout can feel like living in a fog but with finding the capacity to say no confidently the fog recedes to give a clearer picture of reality.

Leadership and Liminality

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About 18 months ago at the end of a retreat I was told that I was in a liminal space. These words came after sharing my story with a group of trusted friends and letting them reflect back to me some of their impressions.

I received their thoughts when much of what I thought I would be leading was gone and I was unsure of what the next step forward would be. There was a period of time when the only productive task that I completed each day was to pick up a load of free mulch that was provided by our electricity company, load it in the boot of our car and spread around our yard. I felt a huge achievement when I got one area of the front yard covered. This was the result of a continuous small effort day after day. In terms of achievements I wasn’t exactly climbing huge mountains.

It was during this time that I questioned if I had anything of value to offer to anyone. My eldest daughter still tells me today that that she was the only person in our family that was employed.

I then came across an article from Harvard Business Review that talked about leadership in liminal times. It began by explaining the term liminal:

The liminal term comes from Arnold van Gennep, the Belgian anthropologist who first outlined the common patterns in how cultures mark transitions from one human state to another (for example, from adolescence to adulthood). In his 1909 book The Rites of Passage he described three stages of separation from one world and entry into another. The liminal (or threshold) stage is central
(HBR)

During my period of liminality I couldn’t see a way forward. The best I could do was to know that, “the way behind had closed”. My life script had been altered in a way that I didn’t expect. I had a picture of how I expected life would work out and it didn’t happen that way.

Firstly I realised I was wrong.

I Thought

I thought that I was strong,
I thought that anything was possible,
All I needed to do,
Was to believe enough in myself,
And, it could be done.

I thought that I was in control,
I thought that I determined my future,
All I needed to do,
Was to have enough things,
And, my world was secure.

I was wrong.

This was one of the key discoveries I have made in slightly more than 50 years of living. Admitting that I was wrong, and that I was not in control gave incredible freedom to begin to contemplate the possibilities for the future.

Commenting l on van Gennep’s work, anthropologist Victor Turner explained it as “a moment when those being moved in accordance with a cultural script were liberated from normative demands…. In this gap between ordered worlds almost anything may happen.”

The word “liminal” comes from the Latin word limens, meaning literally, “threshold.” A liminal space, the place of transition, waiting, and not knowing is:

…a unique spiritual position where human beings hate to be but where the biblical God is always leading them. It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are finally out of the way. It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. If you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait, you will run…anything to flee this terrible cloud of unknowing.
– Richard Rohr

The “threshold” was a terrible place to have to wait at because none of my old excuses worked. There was nothing to hide behind, only the certainty that all my old protections were gone.

Secondly being wrong is not the final word.

For a while I had nothing to lead. But, then slowly I again took on some life responsibility. This was firstly for my family. There was much that I had neglected during my pre-liminal and liminal period that required my attention. I remember one day looking into the backyard and being surprised by the young man playing cricket in the backyard, it was my son. But, I had missed some important growing that had gone unnoticed by me.

In some of the most important places I had left a gaping hole that could not be fixed in an instant. There are some wounds that are bit like Humpty Dumpty’s predicament, “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again”. For me the coming back together was in a very different shape from what we had before.

Then, slowly I felt creativity begin to reemerge. Ideas began surfacing. Most of them totally impractical but I began allowing myself to dream again. This began my pathway back to believing that there was some hope.

Thirdly be ready for hope to emerge.

What does hope look like?

Smiles that start in my heart,
Songs that I feel in my stomach,
Shadows that cool the harsh light,
Rainbows where I know the end is close,
Dreams that are doused with love,
Ideas that are bigger than me,
Calling that knows my name.

This period was marked by a lot of uncertainty. I found it difficult to plan anything because I had no idea of what was to be next. And, because I believed I had been so wrong I hesitated to make any decision in case it ended being more disastrous than what I had just done. But, hope wouldn’t allow uncertainty to have the final word.

One of the most valuable activities was to have a retreat day with my wife. It was a day of silence, listening and talking. It led us to a discerning of the path forward for us. This discerning didn’t mean there was an immediate transformation but it did allow me to hold the liminal tension a little more easily. For me this day was the beginning of seeing the way forward but there was still a lot of uncertainty yet to come.

As hope returned new leadership opportunities emerged. I began to see any possibility with a new humility. The arrogance of self sufficiency was clearly shown to me to be an illusion. As Dickens says so well in “The Tale of Two Cities”,

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way”.
I am able to look to that liminal period as a significant marker in my life. It’s still very close and maybe the way forward is still emerging. But, as David Whyte says, it’s during these times that transformation can begin. That without some despair, or destruction something new cannot emerge.

There are three gems that I have picked up during this time,

  1. Admit where things went wrong.
  2. Recognise that this is not the final word.
  3. Look for hope to emerge.

Leadership and the Psalms – Part one

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Note: I have used “he” when describing the leader in the third person. This was not meant to be exclusive but chosen because much of this post is written in the first person. Because I am a male I thought it would be best if this was consistent in the post. My apologies for the limitations of language to adequately convey the non gender tone I desired.)

Over the past year I have been finding myself in the Psalms by making the Psalmist’s prayers my prayers. I have sought to find God’s and my own voice as I have rewritten them in my own words. My methodology wasn’t correctly exegetical in anyway and I think sometimes the reader may have difficulty in recognising the original Psalm. While rewriting the Psalms I have discovered some great personal truths as I have travelled with the Psalmist and his journey of love, justice, rest, God, faithfulness, betrayal, disappointment and the rest of the gamut of human experience.

Because of its length I will divide this essay into two sections. This first section will cover my exploration of my first two themes about leadership and the Psalms. They are as follows:

  1. Leadership and loneliness.
  2. Leadership and disappointment

Then in Part Two I will explore the following two themes:

  1. Leadership and rest.
  2. Leadership and courage.

The first two themes will explore some of the shadows that accompany leadership and then in part two it will look at the places where there is light.

The reason why most of the Psalms are written is because leadership is tough. The psalmist is usually facing a situation that is very difficult and often feels like it’s beyond his control. Prayer is the way that he is able to work out the way forward in his understanding of the situation in the context of belonging to God.

My key points in this post flow from the understanding that leadership can be difficult. As I have written my own versions of the Psalms I have sometimes reflected on my leadership experiences and empathised with the Psalmist and his leadership journey. The words that have emerged in my versions of the Psalms have come from my heart as I have found myself in his prayers.

As the themes emerged in my writing of the Psalms new words were brought to me each day as I uncovered a prayer in my heart for that day. One of the most confronting themes for me was that of betrayal, where those who I thought would be there in a crisis didn’t turn up and even worse I watched as they turned their backs on me. Disappointment is that knowing I was deserted and then seeing those people becoming my most vehement critics. This is often the leader’s lonely path and one that we know was experienced by David who is one of the main psalmists.

The second theme that I will write about in this section is that of disappointment. Disappointment emanates from a sense not belonging and the often hurtful discovery of this can be transformative. I felt one of my deepest hurts when I was told that I didn’t belong to something that I helped create. Although this rejection was deeply painful the experience was also the start of something transformative in my life. This is the nature of opposition that is often firstly painful before it becomes transforming that every leader will face and then need to decide how to respond to.

1. Leadership is lonely.

There are some really tough lonely conversations that the leader will have as he leads. Most literature on communication and leadership is about the way the leader speaks to those he leads but the leader is also required to listen to those around him. These conversations when tinged with betrayal and accusation can bring a sense of separation leading to a despairing loneliness.

All of us desire a deep connection with another person, when it happens it’s a discovery of that place where we we truly belong. In my versions of the Psalms I have often referred to that sense of belonging as, “home”. Loneliness is that place that makes us seek out togetherness and brings us to where we desire home above all else. As I wrote Psalm 143 I was recognising the gift of togetherness with God when compared to an angry outburst I had recently faced where the person’s aim was to lash out and hurt me.

As I watched this person’s anger reflected in his words and eyes I felt that deep disappointment of a betrayed trust that any such outburst brings. To help deal with this I sought God’s mercy, one version of this Psalm starts it with, “Lord, hear my prayer”. This is every person’s desire, we want to be heard. One of the leader’s most important tasks is to hear the voice of others but sometimes in the midst of that it can be difficult to find a place where he is heard.

Psalm 143
Mercy is my heart’s cry today,
This morning your gift is its sweet words,
I allow only these words to fill me,
My dear enemy spews constant hate,
His cold eyes that have dark souls,
Drawing me into their emptiness,
Wanting to see me cling to false hope,
I feel the pain of disappointment,
The desert of loneliness,
When what was important,
Was too easily discarded for a trinket.

These words came to me as I considered the encounter in which I experienced vehement opposition that spilled over to become very personal statement about me. At first I was surprised by what I saw in the person’s eyes because I expected the gift of friendship. This was replaced by words that sought to drive me away. I was shocked that something so special as the deep connection I thought we had could be betrayed so easily by the other person.

This took me to the place of loneliness, where my prayers to God were for mercy. I was seeking a sense of togetherness and this was now lost in this relationship. Loneliness brought about by being told I didn’t belong was a haunting hurt that required mercy’s voice to speak to me in a more loving way. This emerged from Psalm 143 and many other Psalms that have found me in that alone place.

2. Leadership is disappointing

Disappointment makes us reconsider reality, and question what we thought was secure. It can help us reconsider our sometimes too generous assessment of the loyalty of others. It can bring us back to a more realistic truthful assessment of the motivations of others.

I can be overly optimistic about the intentions of others and loyal without the common sense of wisdom. This has led to deep disappointments when this loyalty has not been repaid in the way that I thought it would to be. I was guilty of making a deep emotional commitments that were never going to be reciprocated. In hindsight I should have seen the signs that betrayal was inevitable and been wiser in what I allowed my heart to be open to.

For me disappointment and opposition often come together to create a sense of overwhelmingness. When the opposition mounts I know I can feel quite besieged. Inundated by the words that are often carefully chosen to bring the maximum hurt I have recoiled into a state of numbness born from disappointment.

Psalm 43
Disappointment is a constant companion,
Opposition seems to dog every step,
Love isn’t my natural response,
To those who use confusion as their weapon,
Even those my own side are difficult,
Saying one thing but doing another,
They should be sticking up for me,
But, they are blocking my light,
I can’t see a way forward,

What will I do?

I think my best response to disappointment comes out of Psalm 142. I know that I have not always wanted to make love my first response but this was not right. I have discovered It is to whom I give my love that is important and will help shed light on the way forward. Making God my first love has helped me to be better able to love others.

I won’t depend on anyone now,
Except my God’s love,
Too many disappointments have come,
These seek to overwhelm me,
The powerful destruction of divided attention,
Is what slowly destroys love’s desire.

This world is always going to give its share of disappointments. Plans will not work out as we anticipated, people will be disloyal, we will be told we don’t belong. Each of us will experience these disappointments in our own way but one of life’s guarantees is all of us will experience it.

I know that when the disappointments have inundated me I have responded with uncertainty and by withdrawing. But, as I have sought God first and my attention has become less divided I have found the deep hurt of disappointment is able to be understood and then used as a transformative tool.

Leadership is a transformative task that requires the leader to work out their disappointments. Being let down is a part of the deal but as I learn to give my undivided attention I am better able to serve those who share a sense of togetherness in a task or common goal.

On the other other side of disappointment comes the possibility of transformation. Often what lies before has to be taken away before real change can happen. The leader’s task is to take up that disappointment and bring the group together with an undivided attention.

I finished Psalm 142 in this way:

My heart longs for a shared intentions,
The love of God above all things,
Lost in the maze of endless distraction,
But, I am brought home by trust in God,
Despairing of any loyalty,
My cry for help is heard,
Instead of pain I seek out the goodness,
That my God has given me.

Conclusion

Excerpt from “Monet Refuses the Operation”
by Lisel Mueller, from Second Language
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapour without end.

In the worst moments of my leadership journey I have wanted to disappear into a vacuum of nothingness. But, with a wife and four children and responsibilities crowding in from every direction this is not always possible.

What saved me was being able to take the time to step back from my circumstances. I was able to gain some perspective about my own loneliness and the deep disappointments that have come my way. I write this knowing that I have lived a privileged life that many people in this world would envy yet I still experience this deep yearning for what I believe is possible in the way that we work and live together. Writing my own version of the Psalms enabled me to pull the earth into the arms of heaven. The exploration of this world is expansive with increasing possibility that only expands my leadership capacity further as I bring God into the conversation.

The Art of Forgiveness

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Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings.
Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty & frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Rumi

I recently spend a few weeks in Asia with my wife looking after an orphanage for children with HIV. We were accompanied by one other person, a close friend that we have known for many years. Our days were quite long. Starting at around 5am and often not finishing till 10pm or later. As time went on we all became increasingly tired.

At about the 10th day the tiredness had developed into irritations at things we all normally would overlook. Finally the irritation expressed itself in words and tone – specifically my words and my tone. Neither of which were helpful to anyone. Immediately as the words escaped my mouth I could see that I had inflicted pain on my dear friend.

My wife was quick to let me know that I was out of line. I said to her that I would apologise to try to rectify things.

As we were walking along together with the kids I went up to my friend and said these words, “ I am sorry. But, you have been doing this (I named my irritation) the whole time”.

As an apology it fell far short of providing healing words. On reflection and judging by the further tears invoked by my apology I could see that they had done more damage than good.

After giving us a bit more space I attempted again to talk to my friend this time with some more carefully chosen words. This time they were more helpful in healing the damage that I had inflicted earlier. What was even better was that we created a new level of openness in our relationship.

Forgiveness is a part of daily life. Every day we have to make choices about what we do with the inconsistencies, in considerations, failures and shortcomings of those around us. We also need to work out what we do with those things we find within ourselves.

One thing that is evident in most people is there is a level of restlessness in our souls. This expresses itself in the unsettledness that many people have in their circumstances but I believe is pointing to a deeper yearning that we all have.

Hugh Prather says that the root meaning of the verb, “to forgive” is to “let go”. He says that when we consider forgiveness in this way it becomes a “restful activity”. I think that this is the balm that we are looking to heal the wounds that life inflicts upon all of us.

Parker Palmer in a recent article in On Being reiterates the actions that come from not being able to work out our pain. He writes, “Violence is what happens when we don’t know what to do with our suffering”. The only way that we know how to deal with our own unforgiveness is to pass our own suffering onto others.

Ellen Bass expresses the healing path beautifully in her poem, Mules of Love,

Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

To conclude I would like to offer my own reflection on my actions on that day when I allowed my irritation to surface. I have immersed myself in the Psalms over the past year and sought to make them my prayers. The day after my outburst I came to Psalm 116 and this was the prayer that emerged from my reading of that Psalm.

Psalm 116

Forgiveness is my constant request Lord,
In a brief moment I chose death words,
That sought to see the worst,
In an instant anger took over,
Leaving deep hurt in its wake.

In the midst of this I cried for forgiveness,
I look to God for healing,
Seeking kindness to replace the anger,
Turning sadness into tears of laughter,
Lies are the hurtful twisting of truth,
That are spat out by venom’s tongue,
Seeking to separate my Spirit from God’s,
Looking for an opportunity for Death’s victory.

Today I will look for life’s words,
Seeking to restore the hope that begun,
Not allowing death to wreak destruction,
Looking to belong again after destroyed trust,
I will seek the goodness that belongs to me,
The rest that comes from loving deeply,
Giving daily thanksgiving to God,
For his abundant life giving words,
That are my hope for restoration.

I found in the last stanza the rest that comes from forgiveness that Prather talks about. The wounds inflicted required me to bring a different voice to our conversation that sought to discover the beauty in my dear friend. The conversation that ensued was one that brought a new level of honesty and a renewed capacity to care for each other.

Stillness – Being present to another

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Stillness is what creates love,
Movement is what creates life,
To be still,
Yet still moving—
That is everything!
—DO HYUN CHOE, Japanese Master

I just spent a couple of days at a retreat. One of the main activities during our time is to listen to each other’s stories. I have been retreating in this manner with some of these people for more than a decade. Over that time we have heard each other’s story many times but I still look forward to catching up.

I often wonder what is the gift that is received during these times. Each of our stories is very ordinary, with the usual mixture of failure, successes and transitions. We laugh often, cry sometimes and respond to each other’s voice, so our time is not a deathly 24 hour silence. It’s a time that’s full of life that keeps us coming back over and over.

Perhaps as Do Hyun Choe says, “it’s that stillness that creates love.” Giving our presence in a quiet space is something that is life giving for each of us. Our souls are given a little more light to be able to reenter the fray.

I know that these quiet spaces can be difficult to find in a busy life. There is always one more email needing a response, another phone call to make, or that one more thing to check off on that unattainable checklist of perfection.

Last week in a small orphanage that My family supports in Asia a small life passed from this earth. I stopped and considered his life. A different voice emerged to me that day. His was a short story that impacted on a few lives on a world with many busy souls.

The words, “A voice speaking to me”, in the midst of the “raucous din”, reminded me of there are important things to consider that needed to be sifted from all of my activity. A reminder to stop and listen because there may be an important voice that I have not heard that I need to hear.

Still – For David

A breath of stillness passes by,
A whisper that is barely caught
I was still just now,
I heard a voice speaking,
Love and hope for those left behind.

A life passes sadly in the din,
Barely heard,
A small voice in a crowd,
Eternity cries out to me,
Be still and hear him now.

What does this life say to me?
I pray my soul is not deafened,
To the cry of the poor,
Not drowned out,
by a raucous busy life.

I took a moment to be still,
I heard a voice speaking,
I took a moment to be still,
I heard his voice speaking to me.

 

Personal mentoring reflections – What’s it like to be mentored?

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Summary: This essay will be in two sections. In the first section I will reflect on my personal experience of mentoring with two significant mentors. The second section will review where my story intersects with the mentoring experience.  

My mentoring stories.

A mentor from young adulthood.

My first two careers after leaving school at age 15 were firstly completing a trade as a fitter and turner then completing my nursing studies. When working as a nurse I went through a personal spiritual experience and ended up in a small community in Emerald, Queensland. The community had a philosophy of work, study, tutorials and sharing life with people who had similar desires.

One of the most keenly anticipated parts of the experience was the regular tutorials. These were occasions when a community leader would meet individually with each student to check in with their progress and to listen to their concerns and ideas.

Initially it took a while to connect to my mentor. He was naturally a shy person that didn’t quickly disclose personal information. But, the relationship deepened as the first year progressed and we shared more experiences together and we began spending time with each other outside the formal tutorial arrangements.

Once my student days were completed the relationship continued. We became colleagues and then after a period of time I replaced him as Dean of the college. Over time the relationship matured and deepened to become a valued friendship. He was a person who demonstrated amazing humility in allowing me to lead the community that he founded.

Today I cannot remember many things that were said to me. But, I am deeply grateful for the time that he invested into me. As I emerged from my previous self destructive lifestyle I was impressed that he valued me enough to commit himself to my well being. Like most young people I was uncertain about myself and my capacities, I was still learning to develop relationships and I was still developing a sense of my vocation.

This relationship was instrumental in my choice of vocation for the next 25 years and his influence continues to shape me today. I saw that John made enormous personal sacrifices to mentor many young people. I knew he sacrificed personal career options to follow what he believed in. He served as a role model who lived out what he taught. He served as an inspiration to me of what happens when an ordinary person committed himself to a higher cause.

A current mentor.

My current mentor was for nearly three decades principal of a Bible College. I had observed him from a distance for more than a decade and felt a deep respect for his obvious humility and his evident personal warmth. During this first 10 years we didn’t connect one on one but I observed the way that he related to others and I valued his honesty and integrity.

I remember him stating clearly to a group of people that his one of his biggest failings during his tenure as Principal was the lack of leaders produced. He saw this as a huge deficiency in his own leadership. I admired his openness and my respect grew deeper at his frank admission. I saw him an an amazing leader who had brought his organisation through a radical transition from an extremely traditional college to a student centric, multimodal college, that enabled access to quality education to a huge geographical area.

We began communicating personally when I was completing my Masters in Online Education more than a decade ago. This was the early days of online learning and he asked me the whether online learning was an appropriate platform for ministry training and particularly spiritual formation. We shared many of my ideas that emerged from my studies and were percolating in those early days of online education.

After he retired Keith committed himself to mentoring leaders. He was widely sought after by a number of CEO’s of organisations and also large churches. He has often said that in retirement he actually found his vocation and felt more productive and fulfilled than in his previous role.

With some trepidation I approached Keith to ask if he would consider mentoring me. I wasn’t sure if he would consider me worthy of mentoring because of his popularity and because so many important people were mentored by him. When we began our mentoring relationship I was an honorary small church pastor who had started a part time business and had little to offer when compared to his many high profile mentees. However, he said that he would meet with me to see if we were a good fit.

We met and connected and five years on we have an ongoing relationship. He speaks with amazing clarity into my life. I continue to resonate with his wisdom and insight. I am pleasantly surprised that he sees the time that we spend together as worthwhile. Usually at the end of session he thanks me for my time.

Personal observations about my mentoring experiences.

I describe my life so far as fortunate. I have a  wonderful family, good friends,encouraging workmates and a great city to live in. I consider myself  a privileged person who has benefited from a lifelong education that has opened many possibilities.

In the midst of this I have sought to maintain connected to a range of mentors. My relationship with those people I call mentors is different to the many other positive relationships I have.

They have connected personally.

In the two key mentoring relationships I described in section one growing trust allowed me  to open areas of my life that previously I would be kept hidden. As the relationship has developed there is increased capacity to connect to each other’s deeper selves. The commitment my mentors demonstrated to our relationship created a space where a close personal relationship could ensue. They didn’t just see me in terms of my human capital but as a whole person that was valued for my intrinsic worth.

I was recently talking to another mentor who is very successful in business and academia.  I consider him as a mentor (even though we haven’t formalised the arrangement) and when nearly finished thanked him for his time. He smiled when I said how much I appreciated the chat knowing that I was of no economic benefit to him.  His said that quite simply it’s not about the money it’s about the people.Then he proceeded to spend another 10 minutes with me telling me stories of how he had invested in other people during his career. Spending time with people was his passion and I believe also a key ingredient of his success.

The mentors that I highly value know the worth of being able to waste time with someone. They are able to listen to my story attentively and because of this my story can explore nuances that are not available if they didn’t have the time to be attentive (Ref: Link). My experience of other helping professions such as psychologists and coaches is that the relationship is firstly transactional and based on a very specific time period. For example the psychologist has allotted a one hour session and it’s always acutely obvious that to go over that time will impinge on the next person’s time. I have observed that my  mentors have cleared the space in their schedule to allow for time to attend to the my story.

Mentors that have high levels of influence in my life have been willing to open themselves and connect their story with my story. Healthy development of the mentor/mentee relationship is dependent on this movement toward a deeper personal relationship as Casto et al. (2005), state, ‘‘successful mentoring requires a mutual commitment to time, open communication, clear yet flexible boundaries, and adjustment to new rules and roles as the mentee moves toward becoming a colleague’’ (p. 336).

I attribute the success of my relationship with my mentors to a growing meaningfulness that has developed into strong friendships. My review of the literature is that increased meaningfulness is to be expected in the final stages of a successful mentoring process, the relationship transforms into a more collegial, peer-like relationship (Kram 1983; Vance and Olson 1998; Morton-Cooper and Palmer 2000).

They have helped me to understand my story.

We develop stories to bring to our lives unity and purpose. They assist in bring context to life’s experiences.  My story is made up of the key actors, tensions that have arisen, resolutions or lack of resolution and hopes about the outcomes. My story is constantly evolving in light of new discoveries and new truths that come forward through different phases of my life. Generally when telling my story I am searching  to bring some resolution to the events that have come forward at that time. Over time my story has matured and emphasises different things to what I did in early adulthood.

A significant part of a mentoring relationship is in the storytelling. Most of our time spent together is not seeking to identify particular issues to work on but on telling the story about the journey so far. There is incredible insight sharing a reconstructed past and the anticipated future in the desire to ensure that there is a future hope (Ref: Link) .

In a mentoring relationship the mentor keeps  the mentee mindful of the journey by actively listening and contributing to the conversation. By listening to my story they enable me to make meaning of my journey. Keith always includes in a mentoring session a time on reflection on the key themes that he feels has emerged from our time together. I always appreciate this brief summary because it charts the journey as Keith as heard it and then is reflected back for me to hear the things that I have said.

My significant mentors have helped me to understand my place in the world. I want to know that I fit somewhere and they have helped me discover the unique value that I bring to the word. As Allen and Eby (in press) note, individuals possess a universal and fundamental “need to belong” (p. 399) (Ref:Link). My mentors have guided my understanding of where my story intersects with the rest of humanity’s story and then beyond that to an understanding of where it connects to a bigger spiritual story. This outside value has given increased meaning to the way that I see my current circumstances.

They served as role models.

I know that I have modelled myself on my mentors. This highlights my attraction to Athene’s activities in The Odyssey where role modeling is a central quality of mentoring. Athene provided Telemachus with a standard and style of behavior which he could understand and follow, this was done because Athene took on human form to communicate in a way that was understandable for Telemachus. Athene helps us comprehend that mentors need to make themselves available to mentee as role models and to understand how their modeling can stimulate perspective, style, and a sense of empowerment within the mentee (Ref: Link).

John was a shy retiring person who never wanted to be in the limelight. Yet, he was one of the most gifted and powerful teachers that I have sat under. I don’t remember tiring of his lectures even after a year of learning. He spent hours with me sharing his own methods and  insights into people and his own experience of dealing with the issues of community. Role models invest  time, know-how, and effort in enhancing another person’s growth, knowledge and skills’ (Shea 1999, 3).

John’s teaching style heavily influenced my early teaching approach. His was a well structured, thoughtful approach with no hype but a solid logic. Today I recognise that he could have included more emotion however he contributed much to my current teaching practice. I recognise that sometimes I am the other extreme of having too much emotion so this early modelling served to moderate my style.

Keith is a significant leader in a church denomination. His influence has spread well beyond his assigned role as college principal. He earned his authority through his generous humility, innovative style and obvious care for others. There are few people that I have met that have such a powerful presence that is based on transparent modesty.

His leadership approach has significantly shaped my own understanding of leadership and particularly the concept of servant leadership. This phrase was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as leader, an essay that he first published in 1970. In that essay, Greenleaf said:

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature”.

A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. I believe that this describes Keith well. He has served as  a leader and mentor because he first chose to serve. He brings a people first approach to leadership demonstrates his commitment first to culture that then enables successful strategy to be developed.

Concluding Reflections

I recognise that the two chosen mentors are both leaders but extreme introverts. I often wonder why I am attracted to these mentor qualities? I think I chose them initially because I saw that I lacked strengths that they had. In the MERID model (Figure One) they both belong in the non-directive, reactive spaces. I tend to be directive and reactive in my approach so I think that I gravitated to the strengths in their styles in an attempt to mitigate my own weaknesses.

MERID

Figure One – MERID model

As I reflect on the what things have mattered to me in the way that I have been mentored I realise that they are things that I have implemented in my relationships with others. I am discovering that as I am getting older there are an increasing number of mentoring type relationships emerging. I haven’t always set out to deliberately mentor some people but as the relationship develops and takes on a higher level of commitment this becomes an appropriate word to use.  

Further reflection on my mentoring relationships evokes a deep sense of personal satisfaction from these relationships. I have been fortunate to have discovered positive role models, people who have been willing to waste time with me and people who have shared the journey over a period of time and for these qualities and behaviours I call them mentors. The label mentor assigns a sense of commitment to the relationship that implies the depth and character of the mentor bring mentoring qualities.

The notion of transition is inherent to the concept of mentoring and may be seen as a change or growth in personal capability, position or some other area of achievement (Clutterbuck and Lane 2004).

References

Casto, C., Caldwell, C., & Salazar, C. F. (2005). Creating mentoring relationships between female faculty and students in counselor education: Guidelines for potential mentees and mentors. Journal of Counseling & Development, 83, 331336.

Gagne, F. M., & Lydon, J. E. (2003). Identification and the commitment shift: Accounting for gender differences in relationship illusions.

Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 907–919.

Clutterbuck, D., & Lane, G. (2004). The situational mentor: an international review of competences and capabilities in mentoring. Gower Publishing, Ltd.

Kram, K. E. (1983). Phases of the mentor relationship. Academy of Management journal, 26(4), 608-625.

Morton-Cooper, A., & Palmer, A. (2000). Mentoring, preceptorship and clinical supervision. Nurse Education Today, 20, 418-421.

Vance, Connie, and Roberta K. Olson. The mentor connection in nursing. Springer Publishing Company, 1998.

 

Discernment – Parker Palmer

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I love how Parker Palmer expresses his thoughts on discernment. His honesty is refreshing.

I was offered the opportunity to become the president of a small educational institution . So as is the custom in the Quaker community, I called on half a dozen trusted friends to help me discern my vocation by means of a “clearness committee,” a process in which the group refrains from giving you advice but spends three hours asking you honest, open questions to help you discover your own inner truth.

Halfway into the process, someone asked, “What would you like most about being a president?” The simplicity of that question loosed me from my head and lowered me into my heart. “Well, I would not like having to give up my writing and my teaching…. I would not like the politics of the presidency…. I would not like….” Gently but firmly, the person who had posed the question interrupted me: “May I remind you that I asked what you would most like?” I resumed my sullen but honest litany, “I would not like having to give up my summer vacations…. I would not like….” Once again the questioner called me back to the original question. But this time I felt compelled to give the only honest answer I possessed. “Well,” said I, in the smallest voice I possess, “I guess what I’d like most is getting my picture in the paper with the word president under it.”

I was sitting with seasoned Quakers who knew that though my answer was laughable, my mortal soul was clearly at stake! They did not laugh at all but went into a long and serious silence— a silence in which I could only sweat and inwardly groan. Finally my questioner broke the silence with a question that cracked all of us up— and cracked me open: “Parker ,” he said, “can you think of an easier way to get your picture in the paper?” I called the school and withdrew my name.
Based on information from Parker J. Palmer

Perspective

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Perspective

The mountain is,
The interminable climb,
Tired muscles, painful breaths,
To get to the top.
Or,
It’s the awesome view,
The soul renewing outlook,
That was waiting to be reached.

Most mornings my wife and I go for a walk. We are fortunate enough to live near the edge of the Toowoomba range so we are given a beautiful context in which to do this. I wrote this poem after seeing a particularly glorious sunrise during this walk.

While we walk we talk. Mostly we talk about people – Our kids, our wider family and our friends are the usual topics. Each day the conversation starts again. Most of the time our talk is a celebration of the good things in our life. Sometimes disappointments come up but they usually don’t take too much of our time.

We try to take a long walk. The minimum time we like is an hour. The gift of this amount of time is that we tend to run out of words. This isn’t the silence because of conflict but the sound of two people being content just to be with each other.

What I find is the walk gives me perspective on the day ahead. Work is about people, relationships, hopes and ideas. It’s also about the things that have to be done. Sometimes work can be the climb, the tiredness and the pain. Or, sometimes there is the opportunity to take a rest and appreciate the view.

Two questions I have been asking myself lately are:

  1. Is there time to walk?
  2. What is my perspective of the mountain?

Love and Relationships

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“Some people cannot love you the way you want to be loved, because they are emotionally and spiritually frozen. They recoil from or avoid affection. You will never meet a deep penetrating gaze from their shallow eyes; only a surface glance. They will touch your hand with their hand, but never with their heart. They will serve your body but not your soul.

They can only connect with you through utility, but never passion. If you need cupcakes or a jar opened, they are perfect; if you need compassion or wisdom, you are all alone. They are only a person as society made them, not as nature intended them.

They live life so perfectly, but know nothing of life at all. They did everything they were told to be a good person, but are hardly a person at all. They are empty. They are dead inside. They will break your heart if you let them. They are usually very judgmental. They see themselves as nice but are often mean and cold. They feel themselves superior. They think everything they do is exactly the way it is supposed to be done. They are repeaters. They lack original thought. If you challenge their slumber with awakened thoughts, they will panic and flee. They will make you feel crazy because they only believe what the masses believe. They are the embodiment of the masses, because they have not become their own individual person. Individuation is an attainment of spiritual maturity — frighteningly seldom attained in today’s world. You cannot change these people. They are trapped inside of themselves; stunted.

You will waste your whole life waiting for them to wake-up to the treasure of what you have to offer. You cannot snap them out of their sleep. Only a tragic event will awaken them.”
— Bryant McGill

The importance of mentoring

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Throughout my career, there have been many times when advice, support, and criticism were critical for my own professional development. Sometimes that assistance came from people who were formally tasked with providing advice; a good example is a Ph.D. advisor (in my case, John Aldrich of Duke University, who has been a fantastic advisor and mentor to a long list of very successful students). Sometimes that advice was less formal, coming from senior colleagues, other academics at conferences, and in many cases from peers. The lesson is professional advice and support — or to put it into a single term, mentoring — comes from many different sources and occurs in many different ways.

However, there is growing concern in political science that more mentoring is necessary, that there are scholars who are not getting the professional support and advice that they need to help them with career decisions, teaching, and the publication of their research. There are many good programs that have developed in recent years to help provide more mentoring in political methodology, for example the excellent “Visions in Methodology” program. And the Society for Political Methodology recently approved the foundation of a new professional award, to recognize excellent mentors. But more needs to be done to improve mentoring and mentoring opportunities in academia.

– See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2014/11/mentorship-academic-career-political-science/#sthash.QybfMfbR.dpuf

Reflection on Psalm 3

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My version of Psalm 3

My Lord, My Lord, I feel like I am treated like the faithless,
They look at me and think that I am weak,
But I want you God to lift my head up,
I want your glory,
What do you say to me?
I heard you Lord, in the night’s stillness.
You take my independence and teach me to rely on you,
You say, I need to put all my confidence in you,
Even though I think that it looks I’m crazy,
Tonight Lord I pray that I will sleep well,
Confident in your provision,
Knowing that I am your child,

I am blessed
I am your child.
I am blessed,
I am your Son.
I am blessed,
I am your beloved.
I am blessed,
You have delivered me.

Reflecting on Psalm 113

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This is my take on Psalm 113.

Today is a day of praise,
Speaking God’s name brings praise,
He is:
My Father who is proud of me;
My beloved King that I want to obey;
Grace that gives everything to me;
Love that keeps loving me;
Hope that always sees the best in me;
Trust that is sure and fixed on me,

To know that this morning he opened his heavens,
To see how I am going and to make sure,
I am ok,

I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed.

Reflection on breaking

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What happens when what you thought you knew about someone no longer remains true?

I recently considered the close relationship between a stranger and a friend and then wrote, “The friend who becomes a stranger”. This poem sought to discover what is the heart of the experience when after we have invited someone into our life as a friend we discover that they are really a stranger. This discovery unfolds as the relationship continues and the journey to being strangers is slowly recognised. This is usually a slow process. But, then at some point of internal crisis we can sometimes be jolted into asking, how did something that once felt deeply intimate transform into something that is the antithesis of love?

Friends becoming strangers is evident around us everyday. We have all witnessed and experienced the harsh words and inconsiderations in an intimate relationship that are the initial tearings leading to being strangers. These tears will start small but if left untended will extend to wounds that slowly rip through to the person’s heart. When they are allowed to become too deep then they will be fatal to the relationship. The result is that the friend is now a stranger and what was known is no longer known. What was intimate is now platonic.

When a friend becomes a stranger the woundedness that led to the current strangeness requires healing from someone able to be a friend. The stranger is not and cannot be the healer. The stranger relishes in creating uncertainty, taking, questioning, closing, weapons, distorting, selfishness and lies. Love, giving, trusting, openness, words, truth, sharing and intimacy are the signs of friendship and knowing each other’s personhood. A true friendship will heal and be renewing to each person’s soul.

I have discovered when we open ourselves to friendship with someone who is unable to return that friendship it’s important to guard my heart from further wounding that a stranger may or may not realise they are inflicting. The first step is now seeing the former friend as a stranger and recognising the stranger’s language. Healing doesn’t require a vindictive retaliation but the courage to know what has become and to accept that healing requires a different language that cannot be spoken by the stranger.

Finally there is an element of winsomeness in writing this poem. It came from a place where a goodbye was needed but choosing to do this was extremely difficult. I hope that from this sadness I will be a better friend.

The friend who becomes a stranger

Love transformed to uncertainty
Giving deciding to take
Trusting turning to questioning
Openness diminishing to closed
Words wielded as weapons
Truth distorting reality
Sharing together to selfishness
Intimacy divided by lies

A stranger no longer known.

Personal mentoring reflections – What’s it like to be mentored?

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Summary: This essay will be in two sections. In the first section I will reflect on my personal experience of mentoring with two significant mentors. The second section will review where my story intersects with mentoring literature. The aim is to review the connections between my mentoring experiences and the current mentoring literature.My mentoring stories:

A mentor from young adulthood.

My first two careers after leaving school at age 15 were firstly completing a trade as a  fitter and turner then completing my nursing studies. When working as a nurse I went through a personal spiritual experience and ended up in a small community in Emerald, Queensland. The community had a philosophy of work, study, tutorials and sharing life with people who had similar desires.

One of the most keenly anticipated parts of the experience was the regular tutorials. These were occasions when a community leader would meet individually with each student to check in with their progress and to listen to their concerns and ideas.

Initially it took a while to connect to my mentor. He was naturally a shy person that didn’t quickly disclose personal information. But, the relationship deepened as the first year progressed and we shared more experiences together and we began spending time with each other outside the formal tutorial arrangements.

Once my student days were completed the relationship continued. We became colleagues and then after a period of time I replaced him as Dean of the college. Over time the relationship matured and deepened to become a valued friendship. He was a person who demonstrated amazing humility in allowing me to lead the community that he founded.

Today I cannot remember many things that were said to me. But, I am deeply grateful for the time that he invested into me. As I emerged from my previous self destructive lifestyle I was impressed that he valued me enough to commit himself to my well being. Like most young people I was uncertain about myself and my capacities, I was still learning to develop relationships and I was still developing a sense of my vocation.

This relationship was instrumental in my choice of vocation for the next 25 years and his influence continues to shape me today. I saw that John made enormous personal sacrifices to mentor many young people. I knew he sacrificed personal career options to follow what he believed in. He served as a role model who lived out what he taught. He served as an inspiration to me of what happens when an ordinary person committed himself to a higher cause.

A current mentor

My current mentor was for nearly three decades principal of a Bible College. I had observed him from a distance for more than a decade and felt a deep respect for his obvious humility and his evident personal warmth. During this first 10 years we didn’t connect one on one but I observed the way that he related to others and I valued his honesty and integrity.

I remember him stating clearly to a group of people that his one of his biggest failings during his tenure as Principal was the lack of leaders produced. He saw this as a huge deficiency in his own leadership. I admired his openness and my respect grew deeper at his frank admission. I saw him an an amazing leader who had brought his organisation through a radical transition from an extremely traditional college to a student centric, multi-modal college, that enabled access to quality education to a huge geographical area.

We began communicating personally when I was completing my Masters in Online Education more than a decade ago. This was the early days of online learning and he asked me the whether online learning was an appropriate platform for ministry training and particularly spiritual formation. We shared many of my ideas that emerged from my studies and were percolating in those early days of online education.

After he retired Keith committed himself to mentoring leaders. He was widely sought after by a number of CEO’s of organisations and also large churches. He has often said that in retirement he actually found his vocation and felt more productive and fulfilled than in his previous role.

With some trepidation I approached Keith to ask if he would consider mentoring me. I wasn’t sure if he would consider me worthy of mentoring because of his popularity and because so many important people were mentored by him. When we began our mentoring relationship I was an honorary small church pastor who had started a part time business and had little to offer when compared to his many high profile mentees. However, he said that he would meet with me to see if we were a good fit.

We met and connected and five years on we have an ongoing relationship. He speaks with amazing clarity into my life. I continue to resonate with his wisdom and insight. I am pleasantly surprised that he sees the time that we spend together as worthwhile. Usually at the end of session he thanks me for my time.

Personal observations about my mentoring experiences and the connection to current mentoring literature

I describe my life so far as fortunate. I have a  wonderful family, good friends,encouraging workmates and a great city to live in. I consider myself  a privileged person who has benefited from a lifelong education that has opened many possibilities.

In the midst of this I have sought to maintain connected to a range of mentors. My relationship with those people I call mentors is different to the many other positive relationships I have.

They have connected personally.

In the two key mentoring relationships I described in section one growing trust allowed me  to open areas of my life that previously I would be kept hidden. In the mentoring relationship, mutual caring and loyalty increases as the social distance between the mentor and the mentee decreases (Scandura, Tejeda et al. 1996). As this space diminishes there is increased capacity to connect to each other’s deeper selves. The commitment my mentors demonstrated to our relationship created a space where a close personal relationship could ensue. They didn’t just see me in terms of my human capital but as a whole person that was valued for my intrinsic worth.

I was recently talking to another mentor who is very successful in business and academia.  I consider him as a mentor (even though we haven’t formalised the arrangement) and when nearly finished thanked him for his time. He smiled when I said how much I appreciated the chat knowing that I was of no economic benefit to him.  His said that quite simply it’s not about the money it’s about the people.Then he proceeded to spend another 10 minutes with me telling me stories of how he had invested in other people during his career. Spending time with people was his passion and I believe also a key ingredient of his success. This is confirmed by Gagne, F. M., & Lydon, J. E. (2003). .

The mentors that I highly value know the worth of being able to waste time with someone. They are able to listen to my story attentively and because of this my story can explore nuances that are not available if they didn’t have the time to be attentive (Ref: Link) . My experience of other helping professions such as psychologists and coaches is that the relationship is firstly transactional and based on a very specific time period. For example the psychologist has allotted a one hour session and its always acutely obvious that to go over that time will impinge on the next person’s time. I have observed that my  mentors have cleared the space in their schedule to allow for time to attend to the my story.

Mentors that have high levels of influence in my life have been willing to open themselves and connect their story with my story. Healthy development of the mentor/mentee relationship is dependent on this movement toward a deeper personal relationship as Casto et al. (2005), state, ‘‘successful mentoring requires a mutual commitment to time, open communication, clear yet flexible boundaries, and adjustment to new rules and roles as the mentee moves toward becoming a colleague’’ (p. 336).

I attribute the success of my relationship with my mentors to a growing meaningfulness that has developed into strong friendships. My review of the literature is that increased meaningfulness is to be expected in the final stages of a successful mentoring process, the relationship transforms into a more collegial, peer-like relationship (Kram 1983; Vance and Olson 1998; Morton-Cooper and Palmer 2000; Chenoweth and Lo 2001; Phillips-Jones 2001; Bower 2003).

They have helped me to understand my story

We develop stories to bring to our lives unity and purpose. They assist in bring context to lifes experiences.  My story is made up of the key actors, tensions that have arisen, resolutions or lack of resolution and hopes about the outcomes. My story is constantly evolving in light of new discoveries and new truths that come forward through different phases of my life. Generally when telling my story I am searching  to bring some resolution to the events that have come forward at that time. Over time my story has matured and emphasises different things to what I did in early adulthood.

A significant part of a mentoring relationship is in the storytelling. Most of our time spent together is not seeking to identify particular issues to work on but on telling the story about the journey so far. There is incredible insight sharing a reconstructed past and the anticipated future n the desire to ensure that there is a future hope (Ref: Link) .

In a mentoring relationship the mentor keeps  the mentee mindful of the journey by actively listening and contributing to the conversation. By listening to my story they enable me to make meaning of my journey. Keith always includes in a mentoring session a time on reflection on the key themes that he feels has emerged from our time together. I always appreciate this brief summary because it charts the journey as Keith as heard it and then is reflected back for me to hear the things that I have said.

My significant mentors have helped me to understand my place in the world. I want to know that I fit somewhere and they have helped me discover the unique value that I bring to the word. As Allen and Eby (in press) note, individuals possess a universal and fundamental “need to belong” (p. 399) (Source). My mentors have guided my understanding of where my story intersects with the rest of humanity’s story and then beyond that to an understanding of where it connects to a bigger spiritual story. This outside value has given increased meaning to the way that I see my current circumstances.

 

They served as role models

I know that I have modelled myself on my mentors. This highlights my attraction to Athene’s activities in The Odyssey where role modeling is a central quality of mentoring. Athene provided Telemachus with a standard and style of behavior which he could understand and follow, this was done because Athene took on human form to communicate in a way that was understandable for Telemachus. Athene helps us comprehend that mentors need to make themselves available to mentee as role models and to understand how their modelling can stimulate perspective, style, and a sense of empowerment within the mentee (Ref: Link).

John was a shy retiring person who never wanted to be in the limelight. Yet, he was one of the most gifted and powerful teachers that I have sat under. I don’t remember tiring of his lectures even after a year of learning. He spent hours with me sharing his own methods and  insights into people and his own experience of dealing with the issues of community. Role models invest  time, know-how, and effort in enhancing another person’s growth, knowledge and skills’ (Shea 1999, 3).

John’s teaching style heavily influenced my early teaching approach. His was a well structured, thoughtful approach with no hype but a solid logic. Today I recognise that he could have included more emotion however he contributed much to my current teaching practice. I recognise that sometimes I am the other extreme of having too much emotion so this early modelling served to moderate my style.

Keith is a significant leader in a church denomination. His influence has spread well beyond his assigned role as college principal. He earned his authority through his generous humility, innovative style and obvious care for others. There are few people that I have met that have such a powerful presence that is based on transparent modesty.

His leadership approach has significantly shaped my own understanding of leadership and particularly the concept of servant leadership. This phrase was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as leader, an essay that he first published in 1970. In that essay, Greenleaf said:

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature”.

A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. I believe that this describes Keith well. He has served as  a leader and mentor because he first chose to serve. He brings a people first approach to leadership demonstrates his commitment first to culture that then enables successful strategy to be developed.

Concluding Reflections

I recognise that the two chosen mentors are both leaders but extreme introverts. I often wonder why I am attracted to these mentor qualities? I think I chose them initially because I saw that I lacked strengths that they had. In the MERID model (Figure One) they both belong in the non-directive, reactive spaces. I tend to be directive and reactive in my approach so I think that I gravitated to the strengths in their styles in an attempt to mitigate my own weaknesses.

Figure One – MERID model

 

As I reflect on the what things have mattered to me in the way that I have been mentored I realise that they are things that I have implemented in my relationships with others. I am discovering that as I am getting older there are an increasing number of mentoring type relationships emerging. I haven’t always set out to deliberately mentor some people but as the relationship develops and takes on a higher level of commitment this becomes an appropriate word to use.

Further reflection on my mentoring relationships evokes a deep sense of personal satisfaction from these relationships. I have been fortunate to have discovered positive role models, people who have been willing to waste time with me and people who have shared the journey over a period of time and for these qualities and behaviours I call them mentors. The label mentor assigns a sense of commitment to the relationship that implies the depth and character of the mentor bring mentoring qualities.

A prayer of abandonment

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Read this Prayer of abandonment. It is Charles de Foucauld’s translation of the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, Our Father.

It does not become your prayer until the words become your thoughts, feeling & action.

Father,

I abandon myself into your hands;

Do with me what you will.

Whatever you may do, I thank you:

I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,

& in all your creatures-

I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul;

I offer it to you with all the love if my

Heart,

For I love you Lord,

& so need to give myself,

To surrender myself into your hands,

Without reserve,

& with boundless confidence,

For you are my Father.

  • What part of this prayer do you find most easy to pray?
  • What is most difficult?
  • Read & Contemplate this prayer again but instead of addressing it to the Father, put in the names of the people with whom you live & work each day. (Tom, Mary, Jane, etc. “I abandon myself into your hands.”
  • How does this affect your prayer?
  • Is it possible to give yourself to another in this way?
  • What do you find possible to say? What do you find most difficult?

How could we dare trust ourselves to another person so totally? Would it be good for them? Would I be good for us? What would happen if we did? What would happen if someone entrusted themselves totally to me? We forget the awesome creative power we have in each other’s lives. When someone trusts us totally & completely, they compel us to grow, to measure up to their love, to be come what they us to be. Each of us has incredible power to enable each person in the measure we believe in them., hope in them & love in them into the fullness which they never recognized in themselves. Such love & trust from another can be humbling & frightening. At times we are more comfortable with our enemies or strangers that do not ask this of us.

The more honest we are with ourselves, the more we see that we do not & cannot pray like this.

Only Jesus is able to pray like this, & only he is able to say “Father” with the fullest depth of his being. We can’t pray the PRAYER OF ABANDONMENT. This is Jesus’ prayer alone. But if we desire, Jesus will teach us & enable us to pray his prayer.

Now listen to Jesus pray this prayer to you. In the place of “Father” & “Lord,” put your own name & take time to try & listen to the way Jesus says your name, the way he calls you.