On Picking Mentors

I have admired and even­tu­ally grown through all of my men­tors. Some were col­lege pro­fes­sors, oth­ers have been authors, painters, physi­cists, and poets. I have had some very prac­ti­cal ones too. Some include fam­ily. Some I have never actu­ally met (Albert Schweitzer, Friedrich Hegel, Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky, and Paul Tillich). There is much I have learned from all of them. Alas, though I occa­sion­ally still read from their writ­ings or reflect upon their lives, they are of the past. Right now the cup­board is bear of men­tors.
Since Jesus is Lord and not merely a men­tor, he holds a higher place in the shap­ing of my soul (and sav­ing it). All of my men­tors have had an eye toward him. I have never found it appeal­ing to look to some­one that lacks the basic essen­tials of faith. I have perused the great writ­ers from other reli­gious back­grounds, and I have gleaned a few things from them. How­ever, the writ­ings or say­ings that have made the most dif­fer­ence have been from believ­ers.
Recently, I have dis­cov­ered the solu­tion to hav­ing run the gamut of adult men­tors. Chil­dren. Jesus pointed us toward chil­dren. Those are the most over­looked and purest men­tors in the busi­ness. “Becom­ing like a lit­tle child…” is a neglected art. Chil­dren have so much to teach us, but we spend all of our time “shush­ing” them into silence or ham­mer­ing them into rigid and pre­dictable social par­a­digms. We want them to be like us, but Jesus wants us to be like them.
Kids are cool. They live in total trust. You know exactly how they feel. They say what every­one is think­ing but are afraid to say. They find the novel in the rou­tine and the mys­ter­ies in the mun­dane. Most of all, they live in an active imag­i­na­tion — in which all things are pos­si­ble. They are mas­ters of alter­na­tives. Any task can become play. There is some­thing funny to be found in any­thing adults take seri­ously. They laugh and cry with absolute purity of heart. They are real.
My men­tors do not write books or pro­duce pro­found lec­tures, they just show me what God is look­ing at. With that I am sat­is­fied. My lit­tle men­tors are angelic just be being them­selves, and are con­tent with the sim­plest sit­u­a­tions. They are stronger on love than logic. The do not have ref­er­ences or resumes. They are just them­selves, and that is enough.