Elijah's Mantle
A reflection on spiritual guides and guidance
We all need mentors and guides who care about our souls, who initiate us on the path of spiritual awakening.
This is rarely a role that our parents can play for us. In part, it is because few of our parents have themselves learned to speak the language of the soul. Even if they could, the modern division of labor has increasingly taken parents outside of the household since the Industrial Revolution. This was true, first for fathers, and increasingly for mothers. This absence is deeply felt by many people.
At some point, even with the best possible parenting, the transition into mature adulthood requires the blessing of other adults. Unlike traditional societies, where adults other than parents play an active role in the initiation of young people into spiritual maturity, we lack a ritual role and container in which older adults can bless younger people.
Such blessings still happen, but they are fleeting and rare. I was fortunate as a young man to have several teachers in middle school through seminary who took an interest in my development (especially, enlightened male teachers). I also was fortunate to spend a lot of time with my grandparents, who were deeply concerned for the state of my soul (sometimes morbidly but always genuinely so). These adults saw something in me of value, something worth nurturing and investing time to cultivate. They admired me, and I needed to see my worth mirrored back to me through their eyes.
Sometimes, the encounter with such a mentor can radically alter the trajectory of our lives. One of my favorite stories along these lines is from the Bible: the story of Elisha’s call.
So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him. Elisha then left his oxen and ran after Elijah. “Let me kiss my father and mother goodbye,” he said, “and then I will come with you.”
“Go back,” Elijah replied. “What have I done to you?”
So Elisha left him and went back. He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his servant. (I Kings 19:19-21)
Elisha is just going about his business when Elijah, a renowned prophet, casts his cloak around him. I like the older King James Version language of “mantle.” Elijah threw his mantle around him. This is an act of claiming Elisha, of bringing him into the sphere of Elijah’s influence. It is an invitation and a challenge to Elisha to wake-up, to attend to care of his soul, and to discern his life’s purpose.
It is interesting that when Elisha responds to this invitation, Elijah tells him to go back home and pretends like nothing happened – “What have I done to you?” He is testing Elisha’s commitment. This is serious work. It demands our complete devotion.
By slaughtering his oxen and burning his plow to cook them, Elisha makes a decisive break with his past way of life. There is no turning back. He gives himself away in the form of a meal to feed the larger community, marking his transition to this new way of life with an act of sacrificial love.
Notice that Elisha doesn’t simply renounce, much less denigrate, his past. He honors his parents, says his farewells, and transmutes the energy of his previous life into an offering to nourish others. A good spiritual guide helps us to navigate such transitions, learning from the past while transcending it in the service of our calling to spiritual maturity.
A good spiritual guide is a model and a mirror, who casts their mantle on us, inviting us to identify with them so that we may become like them. We need the blessing of elders who help us to nurture the seeds of spiritual awaking with us. We need to come under the protection of their mantle until we can claim it as our own.
This is made clear in the story of Elijah and Elisha. When it becomes evident that Elijah is going to be taken into heaven by God, Elisha persists in following Elijah to the Jordan River.
Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up and struck the water with it. The water divided to the right and to the left, and the two of them crossed over on dry ground.
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?”
“Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied.
“You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours—otherwise, it will not.”
As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two.
Elisha then picked up Elijah’s cloak that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and struck the water with it. “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.
The company of the prophets from Jericho, who were watching, said, “The spirit of Elijah is resting on Elisha.” And they went to meet him and bowed to the ground before him. (II Kings 2:8-15)
The apprenticeship that Elisha undergoes culminates in his receiving Elijah’s mantle as his own. A good spiritual guide does not leave his or her student in a state of perpetual dependency, but rather nurtures in them the attainment of mature adulthood. The goal is to transmit wisdom and power so that the student becomes – and even exceeds – the teacher.
Elijah’s own spiritual maturation leads to union with God. He disappears into the mystery of the divine vision. But he does not abandon Elisha. He leaves him his mantle, and continues to transmit insight and power from across the veil between the worlds. The relationship continues, but it is now one of equals. The scope of their shared work continues beyond the sphere of family and community, to the renewal of the whole people of God, symbolized by the crossing of the Jordan back into the promised land.
This story is instructive on many levels.
It teaches us that we need spiritual guides to grow into spiritual maturity, and that such apprenticeships make real demands upon us – demands that can change the course of our lives in unexpected ways.
It teaches us that authentic spiritual teachers transmit their wisdom, power and authority; they do not instill servility or dependence, but rather foster service and equality.
It teaches us that the goal of the teacher – student relationship is for the teacher to become transparent to the Mystery – to disappear – so that the student can claim the mantle for herself.
It teaches that spiritual growth expands the scope of our capacity to be of service from the circle of family to the larger circle of community, to encompass the whole people of God. And this capacity to be of service continues even after we, ourselves, “disappear” into the mystery of God, through the web of relationships that connect the different realms of being.
Who have been your spiritual guides? How have you experienced their blessing? What have they transmitted to you? How are you carrying their mantle?