Mentors for the Journey
What man is a man who does not leave the world better. -Balian in Kingdom of Heaven
We are finishing another day here at @thefoundry, and tomorrow we have a meeting that I have looked forward to for over a year.
Last fall, when some of my friends approached me about starting a coworking space focused on faith at work, the idea intrigued me. I saw it as a natural extension of the calling on my life, to be a theologian in business.
Now that we have established ourselves within the community and shown our viability, a world class business school is interested in partnering with us.
From the beginning, I believed the niche @thefoundry was meant to fill was being a bridge between business school, and business ownership.
When you are world class at what you do, you don’t partner with just anyone, and I cannot be more proud of what our team has accomplished in the past year.
The details are still to be hashed out, but it is likely that we will be the mentoring arm of this school as students graduate and look to start their businesses. They may be in business for themselves, but they are not by themselves.
I was reminded of a favorite movie of mine, Kingdom of Heaven, as I meditated on all that is happening this evening. The main character Balian, had very little going for him in life, but he did have remnants of nobility. The quote above was etched into his workshop as he earned a living as a blacksmith. When his long lost father returned from the crusades, he found his son holding onto hope, and working hard with the few tools he knew. Those words were Balian’s motivation as he worked and waited, making the world just a little bit better.
I don’t know all the stories that we will encounter as we help young men and women clarify their calling. We will likely be blindsided a time or two, and I am grateful we have our own mentors to fall back on in that time.
What I am excited about is making the world a little better, by cultivating entrepreneurs, and revealing the incredible economic power in blessing another human being.
a true mentor is a spiritual father - that's the role Fr. Breton played in A Familiar Rain - the same role he played in my life
Brother Lydon,
I would be shocked to discover that a world-class business school promoted or supported anything approaching my understanding of reality, and thus I would not expect many of its students to fall into the category I will mention below.
Nonetheless, the LORD works in mysterious ways.
Therefore, I would challenge you to be willing to mentor and to strongly support any enlightened students who may have developed (as part of their conscientious calling) the intention of engaging in enterprise as agorists, utterly apart from and not supporting the criminal state.
Should you encounter any such very rare creature, I would like to know of it and I would be willing to lend my support.
😄😇😄
