Men as Mentors- Richard Rohr and Sergio Milandri - Part 1

Introduction - Mentoring Wildness

We are all called to be role models in our society. We have no choice, we are these anyway, whether we like it or not. As members of our community and family, we all have a share in healing and mentoring as we engage the communal relationships and structures we are part of. The question is then, what kind of role model am I? What values and relationships do I live and mentor? Do I give life to my relationships or do I use them to satisfy my own needs, giving little in return?

Mentoring generally is thought of as being qualified to give another person advice based on our own successes and opinions. This is misguided unless we are wanting to make clones of ourselves.
Even though we tend to measure ourselves by our achievements, these is not our lived reality or our real measure. What gives us measure as people is the reality in which we have lived. The truth we have lived about ourselves and the honesty we have faced in ourselves. This has mostly been in our areas of struggle, of facing our fears and our poverty, our self delusions and emptiness.

Mentoring wildness or reality means being willing to go there ourselves. We listen to another it should not be to better their stories or to share our opinions or life beliefs, it is to enter their reality. And mentoring another is sharing with them something of our inner reality, of our wild hidden self, simply to acknowledge our own feelings of struggle and loss when they share their struggles with us. What they most deeply want from us is not another opinion on what they should do, but to know how we managed when we were down, how we stood up again and where we found the courage to continue.

This process is not an invitation to wallow in our failures and miseries but rather an honest engagement of struggles we have lived through, sharing just the areas that might be helpful. As we listen to another we hear our own heart and what it reminds us of. If there is any painful or unfinished reality, we may not find ourselves wanting to go there and subtly steering the person away by giving them superficial advice like “Don’t worry about it, it will sort itself out.” Or, “Just walk away from it, you don’t want to get stuck in the past do you”?

Listening, really listening to another is a risky, but transformative process as it changes both them and us. Listening without judgement is a gift as it enables the person to review their own position. It is an act of love as we are putting ourselves there for the other’s well-being, for their healing and change. We can only show them the love we show ourselves and a healthy self acceptance and self love gives them an experience of our transformative presence. As mentors we need to be a compassionate and uncritical reference point for the other.

As restorers and reclaimers in our broken society we do not try to take away the wounds but in being present with these in compassionate presence, we enable them to be healed and transformed in our human condition.

As we said initially, people will follow us, but where do we lead them, to life or to emptiness?

Our true meaning only comes from transformative relationships where the other is changed. As Morgan Freeman says in the film, The Bucket List, “The real measure of ourselves is by those who measure themselves by us.”

Journeying with Richard Rohr - October 2009

Start with three minutes of silence. In the stillness leave at the door all you are carrying of the day and bring yourself to be fully present.

Part 1. Wild Men and Wild Women.

Rohr starts us on the spiritual journey by speaking of wildness. A wild God, wild men, and wild women. This can be unsettling to our civilised ears as we like to think of ourselves as civil, well-behaved people. Maybe it grates on us because we have become ‘nice’ domesticated men and women who do the expected things and who live out predictable lives. Maybe it unsettles us because we’ve played it safe all our lives only to find that we have lost ourselves and pleased no one.

Most of us were brought up to measure and compete to get what we wanted, but we were to be seen to do this as ‘gentlemen’ and ‘ladies’, hiding our true motives and tactics. We have become split in what we show of ourselves and who we are in our hearts. This paralyses and disempowers us because this hidden self carries our energy and vision, even as it does our loss and pain. When we cannot be free to be our full selves, we lose our ability to love and feel compassion. “Without freedom there is no love - only duty, fear and obligation.” (Rohr pg3).Without freedom love can only be niceness.

It is in taking the risk to be loved by a wild God that we will find our inner self coming alive, but this is not easy as we’re “threatened by such a free God because it takes away all of our ability to control or engineer the process. It leaves us powerless, and changes the language from performance or achievement to that of surrender, trust and vulnerability. This is not the preferred language of men. It makes God free and us not.” (Rohr pg 2.)

Any authentic response to life needs an opening to our full selves and particularly our unexplored wildness. To be wild as Rohr uses it means being real, having our inner self connected with our outer self.

So our journey to authentic self is firstly the risk to journey inward to our own wild heart. Living from our real centre needs us to take the risk to be real, to be honest with ourselves, not letting other’s opinions deflect us. We need to be wild in order to be free to love.

Reflection (10 minutes)
Remember a time when you felt free and fully yourself. When you did not worry about what others would think of you or the consequences of your actions. Relive the memory and notice the events and feelings you felt.

Questions to Journal
1. How wild or real are you?
2. Do you trust yourself?
3. How did your father and mother help or hinder you from being wild? Did they model wildness for you?
4. What would you lose if you risked being more fully yourself?
5. What first step can you take to begin taking your wild side seriously?

Connecting with each other.
Share around the circle something of what you saw in yourself now?
Share a memory of when you were wild and fully yourself. How did it feel?

This week. Reflect on your wild side as you live each day and notice its invitation to become more yourself.