Honoring Our Elders

I walked through the brush, trying to spot a gravestone. I wanted to see them still covered up. I knew they were there, somewhere, but couldn't see any but the ones that were already cleared. Deb was nearby on the other side of trees. She had walked there before but I had asked to go there with her before I had to be back for an afternoon meeting. It was beautiful out there and stories just begged to be told. There were three little markers for a still-born baby and two other other young ones next to it. Nearby, was the grave of the mother who died at the young age of 27 just years before 1900. Another gravestone marked the site of the body for a four year old boy. They had died at all ages but there were some, I'm sure, heartbreaking stories among them. As if death is anything but.

We then came across Fred and Eloise Just, the couple who are restoring this old cemetery, bush by bush, marker by marker. Fred's family is buried here as are many he knew having grown up in the area. It is his way of honoring of those who have walked this way before us clearing the way for him. Now he is clearing the way in turn so people can remember them. For being at a conference on mentoring and eldering, it was a poetic reminder to honor those who have had a hand in shaping us into the people we are and honoring their memory. I'm looking forward to coming back one day and seeing such memory in full bloom. What a beautiful thing.

An Exchange of Colors

This is the paper I wrote for the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference in Seabeck, Washington. (Now in progress.) The theme is mentoring and eldering and we had to reflect on that topic for 1-2 pages.
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"This girl needs her nose pierced!" That critique is the only shortfall my friend, Leonora, could come up with on an internship evaluation form after I finished helping her with her youth group at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. At the time, I laughed at the words. Years later, I remedied the fault and blamed it on her. I can’t blame her for the purple hair but between the two, they are a lived out reminder and lesson of what she taught me: don’t take yourself too seriously and laugh at yourself often. Though definitely in a class by herself with the wash away sin soap and Jesus bobble heads on her desk, she is one of the many women I’ve known who have left a deep mark in my life as an adult, one of the beautiful women I have learned from and who have taught me how beautiful such relationships can be.

I have this idea about such relationships, that we each enter the world as a box of crayons of all one color. As we live our lives, we come into contact with other people and exchange our colors, red for blue, purple for yellow. We meet and come to know those people whose colors we most need, the ones we are missing from our huge life-size Crayola boxes. With each person, our lives can be colored with a wider variety of colors. We grow, we learn, and our artistic renditions are brighter and fuller of the spectrum of the Divine light God casts through our souls. Lee is a yellow crayon. I know of another who is purple and another who is green. My life is richer for having their colors streaked across my life, painted onto my soul’s canvas. I am grateful for them.

I would most assuredly call these women my mentors, even my guides. However, I know these relationships are never one sided as the word “mentor” seems to imply. They are definitely an exchange of colors, an exchange of Divine gifts, showing his face in a new way through each other. One cannot be in a mentoring relationship without mutuality, a common respect. The purple needs the yellow, the red needs the blue. Lee enjoyed having me there as much as I enjoyed assisting her. It can sometimes seem like taking on yet another responsibility when deciding to mentor another person, but the rewards can be far greater than the effort we put into the relationship. Just as God delights in his relationships with us, so we can delight in the relationships with those we teach and “help” for we will always be taught and helped as the Divine spark flows from one to another in this, an exchange of colors.

Walk With Me

It is one of those beautiful nights after a thunderous storm has rolled through and the air is now fresh and clean. Everything is moved, substituting for the school year is over, all the volunteer positions have been assigned and I am sitting by a fireplace in Vancouver in the still calm with a friend nearby. Deep breath.

In the morning I will leave for the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference. Despite the fact I'm speaking a few different times (which I am looking forward to), I am viewing the coming days as a vacation, a time to rest, take walks, read, write, and spend time getting to know an intriguing bunch of women. The topic for this conference is mentoring. I wrote a paper for it, which I will post on here, but there are more things I would like to share with you all.

Over the last several days, I have spent time with some of the women who have mentored me over the last few years, women who have taught me a great deal, vocally and by example. They have shared of themselves, their talents, and encouraged talents of my own. As I've talked with them, I have repeatedly felt grateful to God for giving me time with these women, grateful I've had the blessing of sharing the road with them for this period of our lives. I respect their work and delight in hearing about what they are thinking, sharing their fascination with areas of interest, new projects. I have a deep respect for women (and men) such as these who study, who explore the world around us, who think about the wider world. My life is so much richer because of them, the colors are far more vivid because of their presence, the aura they leave behind. How many times can you say "I am grateful?" How many ways can you say "Thank you"? I feel like what these women have taught me, though I am certainly still growing and learning, is now coming from the inside and no longer only the voices I externally hear. It's not just what they have taught me that has added so greatly to my life, it's that they helped me live out of my truer self, they walk(ed) with me on the journey to my own soul and talked with me there. I am so glad, in different ways, we still walk together.

Find Your Wings

It has been a full day full of work at home, going out and joining Marjorie's family for lunch, and going to see Stop Kiss tonight. I got a lot of that little stuff done and that feels good.

As a follow up to yesterday's post on what does a hero do when they lose their mentor, here is one of my favorite "mentoring" songs from the point of view of the mentor letting go of the mentee.



365-09 #290

What Does a Hero do When They Lose Their Mentor?

I was putting sticker labels on books today at my favorite library when one of the teachers I'm acquainted with was talking to me about a lesson he was preparing for his kids: What does a hero do when he or she loses their mentor?

We came up with various stories this happens in such as in Star Wars when Luke loses Ben and Yoda, Harry Potter when he loses Dublemdore, and in Lord of the Rings when Frodo loses Gandalf. I thought it was a very interesting question to think about. What does a hero do when they lose their mentor?

In all three stories mentioned above, the hero's mentors help them find out who they are and help them grow into the person they are meant to be. Luke finds out he is a Jedi and Ben and Yoda teach him wisdom and control. Dumbledore helps Harry be a wizard and gives him comfort, guidance, and knowledge. Gandalf helps Frodo reach a destiny Frodo could never have imagined, he helps him take the journey he was meant to walk to Mordor. In all three there is guidance, teaching the mentee how to trust themselves, and most importantly there is love, the one necessary ingredient to make all things grow. Losing that source of teaching can be life-altering, definitely a jolt at least. It's really hard to lose someone you've come to depend on, someone you've respected and treasured. You feel like you haven't quite finished learning what they had to teach you.

A hero is usually not a hero when they lose their mentor; they're still a student, a mentee, learning how to deal with the world they find themselves in, a world that is often strange and even rather frightening. But we can't always remain a student. There comes a time when we have to leave the sheltered wings of another and learn to fly on our own. There comes a time when we have to realize we really do have everything we need within us, that we have something to teach as well.

What is it that we have to teach? What our mentors first taught to us. Though we lose them, they are still living in our hearts, in the choices we make, in the lives we live. Our mentors have invested themselves in our beings, loved us, took time with us, gave us their wisdom. They will always be with us. The best way we can honor them is to live out that wisdom, to let their love and support guide us on our way as we undertake new journeys. They themselves may be gone, but they have each left an imprint on our hearts that will continue to guide us. They can be the voices in our heads, the inspiration in our feet, the love that keeps us strong.

Our mentors have helped us find ourselves, they have helped us know who we truly are. So what do you we do when we lose them? We keep taking the journey, we keep walking the road we are called to, we keep putting one foot in front of another, learning and growing, remembering what they taught us and passing the blessing along to others. We become the hero we were meant to be, the one our mentors saw all along.


“A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope [hero] inside yourself.”
Oprah Winfrey

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