WHY MENTORS MATTER
By Fr. Ken Himes, OFM
It’s the fall of 1968. I’m a sophomore in college. That academic year is a tough year. Martin Luther King is shot in April of ‘68. Bobby Kennedy is shot two months later in earlyJune.
By now, I’m politically engaged, and I’d become absolutely cynical about making change through the system The system is corrupt The slogan that a lot of us had back then was, “Don’t trust anybody over 30” Dylan used to sing aboutit
So here I am, this cynical guy who doesn’t think much of anybody but people in my own generation. I’m convinced I know more than any adult in my family and probably know more than some of my professors. They don’t get it. They don’tknowwhat’sreallygoingon.
And this guy, Noel Fitzpatrick, a young priest, moves into the dorm where I’m living. Noel is this incredibly charismatic guy. He wasn’t particularly good-looking, but hewassmartenough.Buthejusthadanenergyabouthim.
When Noel walked into a room, you would have noticed him right away There was a vitality there you could not overlookorignore
Noel would sit up with us at night. We’d be sitting around in dorm rooms drinking beer back in those days in New York, you could drink at 18. We’re talking with Noel, and finally, at a certain point, I’m one of the last guys to leave the room one night. He said to me, “Himes, I got a question for you ” I said, “Father, what’s up?” He said, “Why are you so sarcastic?”
And I looked at him and asked, “What do you mean?” He said, “You’re very funny, but all your humor is at other people’s expense. All your humor is mocking. All your humor is putting other people down. You’re better than that, or at least, you should be better than that.”
So I thought to myself, maybe I should do something different. He gives me a little book on St. Francis of Assisi. Noel was a Franciscan.
He said to me, “Read this, it will be good for you.” So I read this little book on St. Francis that’s a reflection on his life.
Chesterton was this famous British Catholic writer in the middle of the 20th century And he has this one passage talking about how Francis sees the world differently Francis used to go up into the mountains of the Umbrian Valley in Central Italy to be alone and pray.
Francis is up there, on one side of the Umbrian Valley, and he is looking back on the other side of it at Assisi, his hometown, the city that he loved so much: a solid, massive, walled, thick, heavy city.
Francis was something of a street performer. Chesterton says Francis may have done tumblesaults
And all of a sudden, in one of his tumblesaults, he sees the world upside-down And now, this city that was so strong and solid, now upside-down, it’s hanging over the abyss. And the very thing that made it seem solid and strong now makes it seem terribly precarious: its weight and its mass.
Francis looked at this and he comes to the insight that all of existence is like this. All the things that we think make us strong, make us solid, make us safe, that all of that seen the other way makes us incredibly precarious.
What Francis comes to experience is that life is incredibly and radically contingent, meaning it need not be. Every human being is radically unnecessary. You and I need not exist There’s nothing about us that makes us necessary
So what do you do once you come to that awareness? Chesterton says you’ve got two choices One option is to say that it’s all random. It’s all an accident. Someone rolled the cosmic dice and it came up snake eyes I exist! I am, but I don’t have to be. It’s just by chance.
That was one option open to Francis. He doesn’t take it. The other option, Chesterton says, is that the only reason that we exist is because somebody willed to us into existence. The only reason I am is because somebody loved me into being. And what Francis comes to realize is that at the heart of it all is love. There is no other reason why any of us exist except for love. There is a divine lover who holds it all in place, who makes it all happen
And all of sudden, the vision of Francis gives me another take on things Noel Fitzpatrick introduces me to another way of thinking about the world.
The reason I bring this up is because in my own life, I think not only about Noel but of four other specific individuals who at certain points in my life saved me. I was screwingup my life.
I had a crappy attitude, a crappy frame of mind. I had no particular ambitions, I was angry in a sort of undifferentiated way, I didn’t know what the heck I thought anything was about And at different points in my life, an adult came into it and said, “Himes, think about this Himes, let me show you something Have you ever experienced this? Have you ever thought about that?”
The point is, people came into my life that didn’t have to come into my life. These weren’t relatives, these weren’t people who owed me anything.But they took some time, they exerted some energy,they thought, “This guy’sworth talking to.” Mentors are one of the great gifts oflife.
I hope you’ve had a few by now. They may pass through for a period of time. They’re there for a certain moment when you need them
To have those kinds of people step into your life is a rich grace That people would come along into your own life, tap you on the shoulder, and say, “Let me show you around a little bit. Let me maybe point out a few things you’re overlooking. Or some truth that maybe you are forgetting. Or some relationship that you need to straighten out.”
When I think about mentors, it leads me to thinking about gratitude.
We are, I am, you are because of a gracious God. Wake up every day and say, “Thank you, God. Thank you for this day. I hope I do something with it that’s worthwhile. I hope someone will touch my life or I’ll touch theirs ”
Fr. Ken Himes is a Professor Emeritus of Theology in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College
