Famously, Yoda observes, \u201cAlways two there are, no more, no less: a master and an apprentice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, yes, if lucky you are.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in my experience of sending students off to mother church \u2014 and in an ecumenical setting, there are lots of mothers \u2014 I have watched in horror at the number of those apprentices who are forced to travel alone.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a dynamic worth describing, because in most cases you have either been an apprentice or you have the opportunity to be a master.\u00a0 How you handle those experiences is a spiritual issue.<\/p>\n
So, in the interest of candor \u2014 what happens to young Jedi Knights in the nascent 21st<\/sup> century?<\/p>\n HAZING\u2026It is an ancient ritual with roots in human barbarism, but in some quarters it has not died out.\u00a0 Its inspiration lies in the emotional satisfaction that it gives the Faux Yoda.\u00a0 To humiliate is to feel superior and so much the better if pointless rituals and endless hoops extend the experience.<\/p>\n SLAVE LABOR\u2026The apprentice could be valued, nurtured, and trained.\u00a0 But in the words of despair.com, \u201cYou can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor\u201d and far too many Faux Yodas know it.\u00a0 As a result, all too often the apprentice is saddled with work that the master would rather not do.<\/p>\n THE GENEROSITY OF COWARDS\u2026Some apprentices are in the wrong place trying to do the wrong thing; and the masters are often so conflict-adverse that they fail to tell the truth.\u00a0 As a consequence some apprentices turn slowly at the end of a rope \u2014 encouraged to endure, but with no real future.<\/p>\n NEGLECT\u2026Other apprentices find themselves saddled with masters who have no ambition to be Yodas.\u00a0 They are so captive to fear, ambition, or both that they are incapable of aiding their apprentices.<\/p>\n There may be other patterns, but those are the ones I have seen more often than not in over three decades of work between the academy and the church.\u00a0 If all of this leaves most young Jedis feeling as if they have been stranded on Tatooine, it is not surprising.<\/p>\n The problem with such behavior \u2014 in any work world \u2014 is that it debases the apprentice and it robs institutions of the wisdom that could be transmitted with careful attention to the needs of the apprentice.\u00a0 Worse yet, it is the kind of behavior that breeds cynicism and nothing corrodes or weakens the spiritual moorings of any community than the disaffection that follows on well-fed cynicism.<\/p>\n What to do about it tomorrow.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Famously, Yoda observes, \u201cAlways two there are, no more, no less: a master and an apprentice.\u201d \u201cWell, yes, if lucky you are.\u201d But in my experience of sending students off to mother church \u2014 and in an ecumenical setting, there are lots of mothers \u2014 I have watched in horror at the number of those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mentoring"],"yoast_head":"\n