Dallas and the Spitfire is a description of redemption through mentoring.  Author Ted Kluck experiences a call not only to befriend former addict and ex-convict Dallas Janke.  Ted “disciples” Janke, helping him to deepen his emerging, but fragile, faith, and challenging him to walk the straight and narrow.  For Janke, the Bible is the text book of discipling and mentoring, and although Janke claims to be non-dogmatic and pokes fun at the legalism of fundamentalists, it is clear that Janke has a sense of where Dallas needs to go in his spiritual life.  Though not authoritarian in approach, he exerts tremendous authority by word and example.  He believes that God has a plan for Dallas’ life that will be revealed in his encounters and choices.  Ted needs to keep Dallas on track so that he can experience God’s personal voice directed to him.

I appreciate the importance of modeling and discipline – recognizing with Ted Kluck that it is primarily relational rather than doctrinal – but I take a slightly different, less authoritarian approach, characterized by an open-ended view of God and the world in which we live.  I suspect our differing approaches reflect our differing understandings of God – God as sovereign and omnipotent; God as inspirational, persuasive, and open-spirited. My responses will be excerpted and adapted from my text, The Center is Everywhere: Celtic Spirituality for the Postmodern Age (Cleveland, TN, Parson’s Porch Press, 106-108).

In considering the nature of spiritual mentoring, or spiritual direction, I believe that all encounters are vocational.  Every relationship is intended to further the divine calling to wholeness and beauty in ourselves and another.   All of us long to be noticed.  While knowledge can often objectify and intimidate, authentic knowledge joins soul to soul.  The Psalmist delights in God’s knowledge of the totality of his experience, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my thoughts.” (Psalm 139:23)  Such knowledge unchains the spirit because it seeks only to enable us to grow into our deepest selves.

In this context, a mentor is one who notices you, picks you out in the crowd, and feels a particular affinity toward your unique spirit.  Mentoring is akin to midwifery.  In its co-creativity, it nurtures the conditions that give birth to our unique vocation.  Global in scope, mentoring can embrace teaching a craft, a sport, an intellectual practice, a profession, or a technical skill.  But, wherever mentoring occurs, the well-being of the other is the primary concern.  Mentors are faithful agnostics who trust God’s vision, not just their own insights, in the mentoring process.  They recognize that they need to let God be the primary inspiration even when God inspires the person they mentor to go in new and uncharted frontiers.

A woman from one of my congregations once spoke of the great gift of an older lady who arranged the flowers for church each Saturday.  Because she did not drive, she asked this teenage girl to be her chauffeur to church and back.  Along the way, they talked about flowers, growing up, and God.   No doubt the older farm woman never saw herself as a mentor, but she shared her wisdom and listened to the dreams of her young friend.   The older lady died many years ago, but her young friend carried on the tradition of bringing beauty to church each Sunday for over three decades.  She learned about life and what it meant to be Christian not just through the older lady’s words and directions, but by observing her in action.  The older lady’s words had authority because she cared – her commitment was, first, to the relationship and, then, to the task at hand as an opportunity for spiritual growth.

A professor notices the unique insights of an undergraduate student.  Over weekly meetings at the university coffee house, the professor listens to his student’s dreams, explores new ideas with her, and invites the student to see herself as a wisdom-giver in training.  Years later the student becomes a master teacher and a leader in her intellectual field.  To mentor’s delight, she introduces her mentor/professor to new ways of looking at the world.

A spiritual healer initiates a woman in midlife to the arts of healing and wholeness.  While expecting excellence in her friend’s work and commitment to her spiritual life, the healer gently reveals to her apprentice her own healing gifts and supports step by step her own growth as a healing partner, whose path naturally reflects her – rather than her mentor’s – gifts.

Nearly thirty years ago, two ministers saw a theologian and spiritual leader in an unkempt “hippie” college student.  They invited him to participate in service projects, to teach a theology class in church, and lead a nursing home worship service.  If they had not seen more in me than I saw in myself I would not be writing these words today.   They nurtured, guided, and supported me, while trusting my journey to the dynamic of call and response – God’s call and my response – in the unfolding of my life.

Mentoring is a gentle process of loving affirmation.  While all relationships involve the interplay of giving and receiving, mentoring ultimately exists for the well being of the one who is mentored.  To be a mentor is to selflessly let go of any preconceived image of who the other will become as a result of your mentoring. Recognizing the vocational nature of all relationships, a healthy mentor midwifes the emerging divine birthings in the soul of another.  The mentor nurtures both roots and wings in the one he or she is called to guide.

The defensive mentor requires obedience and thrives on control.  He desires a student in his image and craves affirmation from the other.  When the student explores her or his own path or sings a different tune, the small spirited mentor feels threatened.  Sadly, this often happens in biblically-oriented mentoring, in which beliefs about biblical inerrancy and literalist understanding of scripture – theologically and ethically – can lead to authoritarian pronouncements, contrary to the movements of the Holy Spirit. The book is more important than the person, and deviation from the book is always apostasy rather than the Spirit’s novelty in the mentee’s life.

Authentic mentoring involves the graceful affirmation of one spiritual center by another.   Good teaching fosters creativity and freedom not conformity or rote learning.  While structures are important, they are the prelude to improvisation and creative transformation.  Even, God delights in surprises and smiles as we chart new paths in the holy adventure.

Healthy mentoring creates an environment of spiritual, relational, and vocational freedom.   The good mentor knows that each person’s path twists and turns in its own unique fashion.  Mistakes and failures on the path are not a call to criticism or blame, but affirmation of new possibilities and unexplored territories.   In the company of the healthy mentor, your center expands, your voice vibrates, and your heart glows.   Imaging the encircling God that he or she embodies, the healthy mentor thrives on freedom, novelty, and creativity, and rejoices when the student explores paths the teacher has never considered.

Good mentoring transforms a relationship from teacher and student, adult and child, to the partnership of fellow adventurers with the Divine Companion.  Good mentoring reflects the Divine Mentor who brings forth our gifts, nurturing our freedom, creativity, and novelty.

Ted is a great discipler.  He knows Dallas well enough to guide as well as let go at crucial moments when too much direction would be counterproductive.  His goal for Dallas is faithfulness in this life and salvation in eternity.  While my approach is more open-ended and sees scripture as a guide on the pathway toward many possible horizons, rather than a road map to be followed line by line and precept by precept, there is no doubt that relationship is everything in mentoring.  This is true of God’s guidance of the world and care for individuals; Jesus’ radical hospitality and companionship with his female and male followers; and the Spirit’s ever new presence in our lives.

Freedom, even the freedom to interpret scripture contextually and personally, discerning the wheat from the chaff in the biblical message, is, from my perspective, the key to authentic Christian mentoring.  It is all about Spirit and freedom, and the willingness to help another discern God’s unique voice in her or his life.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, pastor, and author of twenty two books, including Process Theology: A Guide to the Perplexed, Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living,  Philippians: An Interactive Bible Study, and The Center is Everywhere: Celtic Spirituality for the Postmodern Age.  His most recent text is Emerging Process: Adventurous Theology for a Missional Church. He also writes regularly for the Process and Faith lectionary. He may be reached at drbruceepperly@aol.com for lectures, workshops, and retreats.

[This post is part of a conversation on the new book, 12 Miracles of Spiritual Growth, by E. Kent Rogers, now featured at the Patheos Book Club.]

A number of years ago, I published a text on the healings of Jesus.  I was happy with the first part of the title – I had suggested it – God’s Touch. But, I was a little uncomfortable with one of the words behind the colon – and, of course, these days books must have colons! -  Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus. It took a bit of time for me to come to terms with the use of the “miracle” in the title.  I believed that inserting the word “miracle” in the text would give people wrong impression about what I was trying to say.  I didn’t want my progressive vision of healing to be confused with the supernatural and flamboyant approaches of Benny Hinn and Oral Roberts!

To most people, the mention of miracles evokes images of supernatural in-breakings of divine power that happen to some people and not to others.  They violate the causal relationships characterizing an orderly universe and appear completely arbitrary.  Often they are seen as answers to prayer, but what about the equally faithful prayers that aren’t answered?  Does God somehow choose some and not others?  Does God have a mysterious plan that defies human rationality or morality?

I must assert at this point that I believe that certain types of transformative events occur: there are quantum leaps in energy that change lives; prayers do make a difference in the environment around those for whom we pray and may even open the doors to greater manifestations of divine power; unexpected surprises happen that no one can explain.  These events, in my estimation, are relational rather than unilateral, and lawful rather than arbitrary.

The problem with most understandings of miracles both in the church and among those who claim to be healers is that they are grounded in the modern world view which asserts the following:

• God is outside the temporal world.
• God’s actions come from the outside into our world.
• God must “break” into the normal process of causation, implicitly violating the laws of nature, to change our lives.
• God’s activity is unilateral and sovereign.
• God’s activity is not dependent upon human actions, although God appears to be answering our prayers.

At the heart of the modern religious world view is the vision of “supernaturalism” which asserts that any significant divine action in the universe involves the likelihood of suspending, at least for a brief moment, the laws of nature and normal processes of causation.  Supernaturalism is necessary if God is perceived to be an external actor.  But, our understanding of miracles as “acts of power that reveal the divine intent for humankind,” a definition much closer to the New Testament world view, opens the possibility to a non-supernatural understanding of life-changing events in our lives.

What I am suggesting is naturalistic miracles.  It sounds almost like a contradiction in terms -  natural miracles!  But, my intent is to affirm God’s activity in the world and preserve the orderly nature of causal relationships, shaped on macro level by divine intentionality and influenced at the micro level by God’s intimate presence in the causal relationships of our lives.

God can be powerful, without being all-powerful, all-determining, or supernatural in activity. From this perspective – and I say this with the humble confession that I may be wrong – God works within the many factors of life to bring about healing, wholeness, transformation, abundance, and inspiration. These divine actions are never unilateral but work within the world and our lives, using the materials at hand – the events of our lives – to bring about something new and wonderful.  Indeed, if God moves through our lives in a way analogous to the holistic notion of the interdependence of mind and body, then the divine mind is present in every experience, from the inside as well as through the environment.  All things, to paraphrase Meister Eckhardt, reveal something the divine word.

The vision of God I am suggesting involves the following affirmations:

• God is present within the world as well as beyond it.
• God influences the world and is influenced by the world.
• God acts in congruence with the world as it is to create the world as it could be.
• God moves through minds, bodies, spirits, and relationships seeking abundant life for all in the dynamic interdependence of life.
• God’s power is exerted as one force among the many factors of our lives.
• God’s shapes each moment along with the other factors of our environment.
• God works within DNA, our immediate environment, the prayers of others, our attitudes and spiritual life, our health condition and lifestyle, and the medical or complementary resources available to bring about abundant life in every situation.
• God’s power is relational and limited, not unilateral and deterministic.
• We can be partners with God in our healing process and in healing others.
• Our prayers make a difference to those for whom we pray by helping to shape a positive environment around them.
• Our make a difference to God, opening the doors to greater influxes of divine activity in those for whom we prayer.
• Our calling is to be God’s partners in healing the world.

I affirm naturalistic miracles and belief that this understanding is congruent with the gospel portraits of Jesus’ healing ministry.  A close look at the healings of Jesus indicates that personal transformation involves the interplay of God’s power, Jesus’ intentionality, and  the faith of persons and communities.   Where there was no faith (in  Jesus’ hometown), his powers were limited; where people awakened to divine presence, great things happened – quantum leaps of energy – the energy of love residing in all things that transforms bodies, minds, spirits, and relationships.

The good news for us is that the divine energy of love, present in the Healer from Nazareth, lives on in our world today.  In the quantum entanglement of life, it provides possibilities and the energy to live out Jesus’ promise to his followers and us – you can do greater things!

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, pastor, and author of twenty two books, including Process Theology: A Guide to the Perplexed, Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living,  Philippians: An Interactive Bible Study, and The Center is Everywhere: Celtic Spirituality for the Postmodern Age.  His most recent text is Emerging Process: Adventurous Theology for a Missional Church.  He is the author of a number of books on healing and wholeness, including  God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus and Healing Worship: Purpose and Practice. He also writes regularly for the Process and Faith lectionary. He may be reached at drbruceepperly@aol.com for lectures, workshops, and retreats.

I must confess that I judge books on spiritual transformation based on whether or not they address the wider issues of social transformation and justice.  While I found some wisdom, for example, in the best-selling new age book The Secret, I discovered that there was not a word about justice or fairness in the whole text; it was all about individual success.  Its vision of humankind implied that those who are traumatized or impoverished were, in fact, blamed for their condition.  You are sick because of negativity.  Poverty is the result of spiritual ignorance. Victims of abuse are responsible at a “soul level” for connections with their abusers.  If the universe is a place of spiritual education, certainly a lot of people fail the tests of each lifetime.

This is not just a new age problem.  When Joel Osteen writes Your Best Life Now, I am tempted to amend the title to “Our best life now.” Osteen and The Secret are clanging symbols that make a great noise but lack the melodious movements of God’s spirit.

One of the reasons I find David Benner’s Spirituality and the Awakening Self to be a truly holistic and inspiring text is his concern for the spirituality of community and the impact of the environment, including economics, on spiritual transformation.  Echoing the wisdom of Plato’s interdependent community in the Republic and the apostle Paul’s “body of Christ,” (I Corinthians 12)  Benner proclaims: “Genuine transformation occurs only within a communal and interpersonal context.  Often those communal contexts inhibit transformation, but they can facilitate it and always mediate it.”  (xii)  Further, Benner recognizes that “becoming is a luxury that evades those whose lives are preoccupied with survival and basic coping.  Until the lower-level needs are dependably met, talk of human unfolding remains nothing but meaningless chatter on the part of those who have the luxury of full bellies, a reasonable base of personal security, and idle time.” (xi)  It takes a village to grow in spirit, and this village must aim at awakening as one of its first priorities, along with social justice.

Years ago social gospel leader Walter Rauschenbusch, in speaking of New York City’s tenements, asserted that “hell’s kitchen is not a safe place for saved souls.”  If we want more than faux enlightenment, we must create sectors of healing, wholeness, and spirituality within every community.  They must be truly holistic, nurturing spirits but also insuring good diets, safe and adequate housing, quality education, preventative and responsive health care, and communal support of spiritual growth and aspiration.  While few societies have made spirituality their priority, organizations such as the church, temple, mosque, ashram, etc. must choose to be countercultural for the sake of spiritual transformation.

The apostle Paul proclaimed, “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)  Sadly, many spiritual seekers and congregations fail to recognize that awakening is ultimately a social process.  Martin Luther King noted:

All life is interrelated, that somehow we’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Conversely, the prophet Amos proclaims that a famine of hearing God’s word will descend upon those who are unable to discern the relationship between their wealth and the poverty of others. (Amos 8:11)

In this time in which people cry out for shrinking government, focus on their property and not the well-being of the whole, and privilege wealth over social welfare, individual and social awakening is a challenging despite best-selling books in spirituality, megachurches, gurus, and televangelists.  Awakening requires a commitment to look beyond ourselves and see the awakening of others as connected to our own awakening.  Awakening means growing, like Jesus, in wisdom and stature, and personal stature involves embracing others as if they are your own self.  Such expanded selfhood takes us beyond the sharp boundaries of yours and mine, citizen and immigrant, wealthy and impoverished.  It invites us to always ask, “How can I bless those around me in body, mind, and spirit.”  It challenges us to create structures of personal and communal blessing.

Personal blessing involves seeing the holiness of the other, and seeking to bring something good to every encounter, whether it is a kind word or support of a program for children or the elderly.

Communal blessing involves transforming our social order in both the private and public spheres.  Without rejecting the American Dream of personal initiative and creativity, it means creating a culture of sharing and service, in which greed is looked down up and ownership and wealth are seen primarily as opportunities to support the community’s well-being rather than individual or stockholder aggrandizement.

Communal blessing involves the society asking itself what is really important.  It involves politicians seeking a “big enough government” that encourages the American values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (fulfillment and spiritual awakening) for all its citizens.  This means supporting young parents, creating safe communities, ensuring employment, securing creative and effective education, honoring diversity in all its forms, and building a society that seeks good health from conception onward and ensures that no one is left out when they are ill or vulnerable.

Communal blessing requires the generosity of time, talent, and treasure for the well-being of our children and other peoples’ children.  This obviously means contributing financially to good causes instead of unnecessary consumption.  It also means creating a fair tax policy that raises enough money for a “responsible and effective government” to fund initiatives that support personal, communal, and global transformation.  In a spiritually sound society, millionaires will want to give more to support society through benevolences as well as higher taxes.  They will recognize that all of us are “job creators,” not just the wealthy, and that the wealthy have largesse because of the “job creation” of middle and lower middle class people who spend the majority of their incomes on groceries and services.

These days, I often despair that our nation is going backward spiritually and communally and that many actually want a world without adequate social safety nets, protection of workers, environmental wellbeing, or concern for the aged, young, and vulnerable.  To such rugged and ultimately destructive individualism, I preach the gospel of interdependence taught by the Old Testament prophets, Jesus, the early church, and the apostle Paul.  Our spiritual awakening is a joint enterprise in companionship with the One who calls us to partnership in healing the world and giving each child a chance to flourish and explore the possibilities for abundant living in a caring society.  We need an awakened nation, and people committed to awakening the spirit of interdependence at every level of our society.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, pastor, and author of twenty two books, including Process Theology: A Guide to the Perplexed, Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living,  Philippians: An Interactive Bible Study, and The Center is Everywhere: Celtic Spirituality for the Postmodern Age.  His most recent text is Emerging Process: Adventurous Theology for a Missional Church. He also writes regularly for the Process and Faith lectionary. He may be reached at drbruceepperly@aol.com for lectures, workshops, and retreats.