Journal Entries

I was in IHOP late one evening after a church choir and orchestra performance with a group of musical friends. We were settled into our long table, drinking coffee and iced tea and eating late-night pancakes, when a family came into the restaurant and found a booth. They were dressed up – suits and ties and dress shirts and nice dresses with heels. The nicest suit, surprisingly, was on the youngest member of the group. He was a young boy about 9 or 10 years old, and he seemed to be somewhat in charge of the group. The rest of the family deferred to him.

I couldn’t help noticing this group, if for no other reason than the fact that not many people wear suits into IHOP after 10:00 PM. One of my dinning companions said, “That must be the young traveling evangelist who preached tonight.”

I asked, “Do you mean the young boy?”

“Yes. He is big news among his particular church circles.”

I thought about that scene as I was reading from Kathleen Norris’ book, Cloister Walk. She wrote, “I had come to see both writing and monasticism as vocations that require periods of apprenticeship and formation. Prodigies are common in mathematics, but extremely rare in literature. As far as I know, there are no prodigies in monastic life.”

I never heard that young preacher preach so I have no idea what he said or whether he spoke with the power and conviction or if people were moved to change their lives after hearing him. He did nothing at the restaurant to discredit himself or detract from his ministry. It was obvious from his demeanor and his family’s deference that the young man was used to being the star of the group and used to having people cater to his wishes, but he was polite and grateful. But he also seemed too serious to be a young boy and I hoped he had a chance to return to form once he took his uniform off.

I could imagine how he must have spoken well and performed well and maybe even said things with great spiritual depth. But why would I listen to someone tell me how to live who hasn’t even yet survived Junior High?

I often enjoy breakfast conversations with my friend, Keith, a city attorney, and one of our favorite topics is our common experience in Austin with state government and in Washington DC with federal government. We talk about all the 20-somethings wearing suits and running around from meeting to meeting, representing and advising Congressmen and Senators. Like a couple of old grouches, we complain, “The face of government is a 22-year-old in his first suit.”

In fact, everyone I’ve met or worked with, whether in Austin or Washington, has been bright and clever and insightful and well-informed and polite. I don’t really have any complaints about all the young suits. But I would feel better about the advice given to my congressman if someone at his table had owned a mortgage or picked up their baby from day care. How can they give good political advice about real life when they’ve live so little of it?

But it isn’t just age and experience that makes someone helpful. Wisdom doesn’t always come with age, wisdom comes from God. Kathleen Norris quoted Mechtild of Magdeburg, a 13^th-century mystic: “However good a man’s eyes may be, he cannot see over a mile away; however sharp his senses, he cannot grasp supernatural things, except through faith.”

This is a good counter argument to the notion that there are no prodigies among monks, that spiritual depth takes time to develop. Here she writes that even with maturity and spiritual depth we cannot see supernatural things except through faith.

Many people would like to believe they can achieve levels of insight and awareness into the supernatural, all through their own efforts. But any glimpse we get of God’s things are gifts from God himself.

I don’t expect all my best advice to come from people who are older than me. There are a lot of young insightful people who have spoken wisdom into my life and I’m grateful for them. Some people gain experience, and learn from experience, much more quickly than the rest of us. Some of the voices that influence me the most nowadays are young leaders who are trying to pull the church into the 21^st-Century. Some of them are younger than my own children. It’s my life goal to spend time with people like that – people who can change me, and to spend time with people I can change. Sometimes I’m the mentor, and sometimes I’m the mentee (but never the Mentos – I drink too much Diet Coke for that). But this I know … there are no prodigies among spiritual leaders. It takes time to grow.