To the Mentor: A Tabletop Confession (A Mentor's Invitation)

I am in a coffee shop, seated at a small bistro table. I must confess, in the coffee shops where I like to do my work, I overhear things. I overhear them, not because I am trying to eavesdrop, but because I cannot but overhear them. People who go to coffee shops know that goes with the deal, and they know when to choose the booth or choose the “cone of silence” voice or code language that brings some in and leaves others out.

As I am writing here today, about mentoring, I find myself situated two tables over from one of my former students. He goes down in history as one of my most memorable students. It’s because he lingered after class, lots. When he lingered, he lingered with a purpose: he had so many questions that the conventional plan for the day's course did not, or in many cases, could not satisfy. So he got his money’s worth by hanging back, walking with me back to my office, joining me for coffee, and getting his life wrapped around “the stuff.”

I am seated, 12 feet from Adam today. He, too, is at a table. He is bowed in prayer, speaking in a more hushed tone than he has in the last 45 minutes. We, the shop, are not included in this part, but I happen to hear the public voice that preceded the hushed one: “Well, from what we have discussed, what would you like for me to carry away with me?” An answer follows from the person seated across from him, in a trusting and softer tone. Then: “Let’s just go to God now and pray about it!” For most of an hour, I witnessed this emerging leader, who happens to be a pastor, be the good news to a parishioner of his.

Adam has not noticed me, nor does he seem to know that others are noticing his gentle conversational leadership. It’s because he has hardly broken his gaze from the person seated before him in this last hour—he’s oblivious to everyone and everything but the life that sits before him at that table. The scene is almost disturbing. Any watcher with a tuned eye knows what intimacy looks like, in all its holy appropriateness. It looks like something that should be conducted behind closed doors, something too precious for passers-by.

I think to myself: he and I sat at that very table, not more than five years ago…and I wonder if my gaze was unbroken, if I spoke in tones soft enough for only him to hear, if I “took him to God” in prayer. I have watched him for several years since those cloistered years of the classroom experience of graduate school. I have chatted with him around the tests and trials that accompanied the discharge of his early ideas and ideals about his profession as a helping professional. I have been able to repeat back to him the words of help and hope that mattered to him when he was actively hammering out a ministerial identity that could accommodate a rising identity as a community leader.

There he sits. His only tool…a table.

A table is a meeting place. A table is the place for conversations. A table is a place of nutrition, of nourishment. A table is a place for seeing eye-to-eye. A table is a place of learning. A table is a place of preparation. A table is a place of exchange, trading. A table is a place, by definition, that we only come to temporarily. We do not live at tables. We leave them having served or having been served. And given a table’s association with hunger, a table is a place we will always return to throughout our lives.

• What other associations do you make with "the table?"

• Can you think of times you have sat across from another, to whom you gave or from whom you received, and have been changed thereby?

• Is there any meaning to be found in the concept of "an empty table?" As it relates to mentoring, is it possible that there are empty tables all around, perhaps a prospective protégé is seated there, seeking nourishment, seeking conversation, seeking strengthening…but no mentor is found seated across from her, from him?

• What does it take to set the table? From a mentoring point of view, are there key ingredients that should be placed on the table, brought to the table, taken off the table…?

#mentor #table