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Last week I submitted the six-day commercial reading and writing seminar on women on “Identity and (dis) belonging” that I have been teaching every summer for four years. We usually meet during the week at the grounds of St. John’s Abbey, a Benedictine monastic community located on the shores of a lake in central Minnesota; this year, pretty much everything has taken place. Course participants make detailed readings and analyzes of the personal essays of writers from various cultures and delve into their own individual, family, and community narrative stories, working on a brief creative writing.
Every year, it proves to be an emotionally and physically exhausting week. When we closed on Saturday, someone remarked that part of what made the seminar so meaningful was the unexpected element of guidance: how, by my words and actions, I showed them how to bring their full presence to the ‘work, each other and challenge themselves. I wasn’t conscious of doing it consciously, but it let me reflect over the next few days on what a good mentor is.
In Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, Mentor was the old man whom Odysseus asked to take care of his son Telemachus when he went to war. But in history, it is the work of the Greek goddess Athena that gives meaning to how we understand the word “mentor” today. He disguises himself as an old man and goes to Telemachus to advise him what to do for his family.
Today, tutoring takes many forms: from formal corporate programs established in the United States in the 1970s to global training facilities for coaching and mentoring accreditation. But, regardless of how it is oriented, it seems to be a much-needed and ancient human relationship, expressed in literature, religious texts, and popular culture.
Life hasn’t always put me directly on the line of the exact mentor I needed at any given time. But since I was 13, when a favorite friend of my mom’s pulled me aside and gave me a little book about the transition from childhood to childhood, I can name the people who have remarkably affected my way of seeing the world. the rules about life, nurtured my potential and believed in me more than I was able to believe in myself. They are names and faces I could never forget. All mentoring relationships are different, and yet I believe that mentoring, when honored and taken seriously, is always a mutually beneficial and enlightening experience.
One of my favorite paintings on the subject is “The childhood of Christ”(C1620) by the 17th century Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst. It is a scene of the child Jesus with his father Joseph, the carpenter who taught him the trade. It is the darkness of night and Jesus, dressed in a bright red robe, leans over the table and holds a lighted candle so that old Joseph can work. Two whispered angels, who look like children, stay in the background and point to father and son, apprentice and teacher. The painting is rich in symbolism and religious implications. But it also sheds light on some often underestimated aspects of the mentor-mentor relationship.
The candle creates a chiaroscuro effect, casting a bright glow on the faces of Joseph and Jesus. It reveals several things: that the boy is focused on the old man’s face rather than his work and that he looks at him with admiration and adoration. Mentoring has more than just conveying skills or ideas. There is also a certain degree of gaze on the mentor’s face, which symbolizes his character. The mentors who have had the most profound effect on my own life have been those whose character traits I have respected and wanted to emulate, beyond any advice they have given.
Joseph, for his part, uses the light of Jesus to continue to focus on his craft. I believe that part of the mutual gift in the mentor-mentor relationship is that the presence of mentoring in our lives sheds light on our work and our own presence, inviting us to examine more closely what we are doing and how we are doing ho, perhaps even surpassing what we imagine is the limit of our own growth and development. In this sense, tutoring is a mutual vocation. Knowing the most complete narrative within the Christian tradition, I am aware that both characters in painting contain the role of what is taught and what is taught. But these roles manifest in his life at different times.
The angels in the background remind me of the role of the goddess Athena in the classic mentor role. The task of advising, guiding, and teaching someone during any stretch of the journey of their life has a sacred element. Being confident and invited into someone’s life is an intimate act that we often take for granted, sometimes focusing more on the status that allows us to be the mentor, rather than on the transformative power that mentoring has for a another life.
I look at late 19th century oil work “The Women’s Life Class” (c1879) by the American illustrator Alice Barber Stephens. It was her first published image and arose as a result of her request, along with other female artists, to allow women to attend life drawing classes, at a time when it was considered an inappropriate activity for respectable women. In this image, a classroom of female artists is sitting or standing gathered around a female model on a stage. The women pile up in the room and still feel comfortable with each other, concentrating on painting or looking behind each other’s canvas. They have fought for a space to develop their skills. Just by their presence, they encourage each other.
© Alamy Stock Photo
It makes me reconsider the kind of women I met last week. They ranged in age from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s, across cultures, ethnicities, race, and sexual orientation. I consider how in the short span of six days they came together quickly, how they listened patiently and attentively to each other’s stories and prepared each other’s writing, challenging each other to acknowledge their fears, to be brave in their work and, in parallel, in their lives.
It reminds me that tutoring can be given in all directions, both horizontally and vertically, through differences in age and cultures and socioeconomic status, because no matter how much we have come we never exceed our ability to ‘learn from each other. It reminds me that you never know who can travel by your side, offering you both what you know you need and what you haven’t been able to see yet. After all, in this life, aren’t we invited all residents to help each other on our path?
Enuma Okoro is a columnist for FT Life & Arts
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