Dick Keyes: my old mentor

Doesn't seem like I've had a lot of time to write for the past few days, though really I think that's a good thing. Tonight after work I went to meet with a priest for spiritual direction--not that he is my spiritual director. I've been trying to get me one o' those for almost a year now, but I keep bouncing around and getting responses like, "Hmmmmm...I don't know..." When I made the appointment with this one, he said, "Hmmm. Yes, well I think I can tide you over till you find the real thing." So funny. Am I that difficult?

Anyway, it was a good meeting overall, with one of the greatest endings ever: "I hate to cut this short, but I've got a potato in the oven." Nothing so good for deflating pride as watching the balance of a man's interest tip in favor of a baking root. The meeting left me drained (in a good way), and now I find myself feeling encouraged but intellectually a bit blank. And nostalgic.

I often miss my old "spiritual director." He wouldn't have used that term. At the L'Abri in Southborough, if you stay there more than a week, you're given a "tutor," someone who meets with you around once a week and talks with you about whatever you're working on, and he assigns a study regimine for use until the next time you meet. This regimine is not always...uh...strictly adhered to. My tutor was the guy who ran the place. That's right, the head honcho. His name is Dick Keyes, almost certainly the most intelligent and articulate man I've ever known, as well as one of the kindest and most solicitous for one's spiritual well-being. And quick. I remember once, after one of his lectures (we had open lectures on Friday nights), a man with a grudge against the church (this is not the Catholic Church; Dick is an evangelical Protestant) stood up and ranted about how he thought the church was bogus. Dick sat there and listened to everything--aggressive and passive-agressive--with a look of such calm and yet such serious concentration and concern that I am amazed the man was not disarmed simply by that. When the man got finished and sat down, heaving, Dick thanked him and literally organized the man's tirade into points for him and answered every single objection, without a single note of triumph or superiority in his voice. I've never seen anything like it.

I could go on all day with stories about Dick Keyes. I also do a mean Dick Keyes impersonation--I mean, I met with the man once a week for at least an hour, and I worked with him every day. We got to be very good friends. I was in his son's wedding as a groomsman (I'm also friends with his son), and the night after the wedding, he invited me up to his house to talk about my becoming Catholic--I wasn't Catholic yet, but I was heading in that direction. Needless to say, I was very nervous. It wasn't like we hadn't disagreed before. He is Yankee through and through, and my very first conversation with the man was about the (so called) Civil War, about which we have a very marked difference of opinion. But this was different. This was a conversation with a man that I revered, and I was about to tell him that much of what he teaches and believes is fundamentally wrong. Not that I planned on arguing. It was just inevitably implied with the direction I was taking. The first thing he said to me was, "What's this I hear about you becoming Catholic?" Gulp. It looks threatening on the screen, but Dick is not hostile; he really wanted to know. The response I made was easily the most difficult of my life, and I nearly broke down a couple of times. L'Abri had become a second home to me, and this was my formal break--it was, in fact, the last real conversation I had with my mentor as a mentee. It was like the moment I realized I could beat up my dad. Not that Dick couldn't have debated me and won. Probably could have. I am no debator. But there he was, looking at me like he looked at the man going on a tirade (I was not tirading, though), except when I was done, he didn't have anything to say. Ah! Dick always had something to say to me! In our talks: some advice to give, some direction, some encouragement--and it was never cheap or mushy--and I realized he wouldn't do that ever again. It was very painful. We talked about other things after that, small things, plans and so on, but I didn't have my mentor any more. Haven't had one since, really. I'm trying, but it's difficult not to think of my first and best master. It's like going on a date after a spouse has died--you feel unfaithful. I guess it's good, then, that the goal is God, and not "relationships," though God is good enough to give us those as well. It's just...sometimes He takes them back. "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord."

P.S. For more pictures of Dick Keyes and the Southborough L'Abri (and some of me), go here.