Merely the posture of sitting at someone else's feet seems foreign to many of us in the 21st century. It has not always been so. Medieval guilds of artisans regularly agreed to take on apprentices, a practice that has endured in some arts and trades. In the arenas of education and religious formation, to be asked to sit at the feet of a mentor, a learned elder, was understood as both an honor and privilege. To admit a lack, a need, that only someone else can fill, is an act of humility.

In the Lenten group that has been gathering once a week, sharing the reading and insights of Roberta Bondi's book, To Love As God Loves, we have tried to open ourselves to the wisdom of the early church communities that ultimately led to the development of Christian monasticism. It has been transformative to relearn from these fathers and mothers - Abba's and Amma's-how early Christians understood, and sought to live out, such words as perfection or love or humility. Perfection was not about flawless untouchability, but about being fully formed - body and soul - into the compassion of Christ, the imago dei that resides in each of us. Likewise, humility was not about living a life that dripped with the pretense of unworthiness-it was about turning away from arrogance that thinks only of ourselves, towards the needs and claims of others who are beloved in God's sight.

To be a follower of Christ in these early communities of Christians meant putting oneself at the feet of those who could impart wisdom about how to remove all the obstacles that stand in the way of becoming fully alive as the human being God created us to be. It meant learning how to turn loose of attachment to our own needs, so that we could be available to respond to the needs, and accept the gifts, of others who are different from ourselves. To be a disciple of Christ was to agree to be mentored by individuals and communities who could help us not to be someone else, but to become who we already are -friends of God's own choosing.

In our own lives, fewer of us literally go out into the desert, or into a monastic house, in order to be mentored by others - but it does still happen. My own life has been blessed by mentoring, most often from unexpected quarters. There was Mrs. Dejarle, the junior high school biology teacher who noted and encouraged my inclination to grasp the vast mysteries held by creation; Mrs. Hart, the high school softball coach committed to the coaching of character as equally as the perfectly pitched curve ball. Dr. Lee Morrison saw beyond the façade of my personal and academic insecurity to see a potential teacher and advocate of the marginalized. And I'm still learning from The Rev. William R. Payton, a priest of now more than fifty years, who could transform a camp-fire setting into the majesty and inspiration of a cathedral by the mere gesturing of hand and voice, and who is still showing me how to turn from preoccupation with self to the wonders of other people, even as he newly confronts living his life with a recently diagnosed leukemia.