Mutual Mentoring 

Over the past few months, I’ve enjoyed tuning in to the CAC’s Everything Belongs podcast, not only for the brilliant guests, but especially to eavesdrop on Fr. Richard’s conversations with co-hosts Paul Swanson and Mike Petrow as they learn from one another. I feel like a fly on the wall, listening to these intergenerational relationships deepen. Fr. Richard is clearly a mentor to these two men, who have been shaped by his spiritual teachings and who have, as a result, dedicated their professional lives to supporting his mission and sharing his wisdom. It is also clear that Fr. Richard is being mentored in some way by them. He is absorbing new wisdom by listening to their life experiences and their experiments in reframing the Alternative Orthodoxy for new audiences. In their mutual back and forth, the three are creating “new wineskins” for the old (and very good) wine of the Christian contemplative tradition. It seems Fr. Richard is enjoying the banquet as much as they are. We shortchange the possibilities of mentoring if we think of it only as something older generations do for the next.  

When I consider who is mentoring me these days—calling forth wiser, more authentic, and loving responses to the challenges we face—those who immediately come to mind are younger than me, namely my Gen-Z children and their peers. Though privileged in many ways, they have inherited an increasingly unstable world. In their formative years, they experienced firsthand the losses and growing pains precipitated by the 2008 recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, waves of racial and sexual reckoning in the US, a rising mental-health crisis, catastrophic climate events, and outrageously expensive housing markets, all while being the first generation of digital natives. Though still in their twenties, they are not naive about the hard edge of reality, and yet they move ahead with resilience, creativity, and courage, and in community. Over and over, they invite me to ask: Of whom and what am I still afraid? Where am I holding onto something that I need to let go? How do I honor what is sacred for myself and others? What am I called to do and who am I called to become in order to support the unfolding of others?  

I don’t think being an elder or a mentor is about searching for younger folks whom we think could benefit from our guidance and upon whom we can bestow our wisdom. It’s about building relationships of deep trust and mutuality with people of all generations and respecting their ideas, emotions, and experiences of reality, regardless of age. Engaging in friendship and conversation from a place of inquiry and acceptance (if not 100-percent agreement) is the space in which true mentoring can happen—naturally and on both sides. While I have both sought and been asked for guidance in many areas of life, I know I have only ever received or offered true mentoring through mutual openness to relationship, inquiry, and love.  

Ali Kirkpatrick is Editor of Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations and an alumna of the Living School, Class of 2016. Long before she ever met Fr. Richard in person, he was her spiritual mentor, putting words to what she had always intuited was true about God, love, and the transformative possibilities of faith.