Transforming the Journey:
Mentoring Lives Through Magic and Myth
Mentoring Environments
Worthy Dreams
The Dream, we learn from Daniel Levinson's work,36 forms the foundation for building life's structures. A worthy Dream constitutes "a quality of vision . . . an imagined possibility that orients meaning, purpose, and aspiration."37 Parks speaks of this as "a relational sensibility in which I recognize that what I do with my time, talents, and treasure is most meaningfully conceived not as a matter of personal passion and preference but in relationship to the whole of life. . . . Vocation is the place where the heart's deep gladness meets the world's deep hunger."38 Mentoring communities give rise to opportunities to explore such questions. From the perspective of the individual mentor, "The first business of a guide is to listen to the dreams of the pilgrim."39 How do they tell their story? From the lessons of great teachers we learn of the power of stories. Insights "always shine brightest for those who have them [and] truth is a word we give to a pattern that makes sense to us . . . . A good story is a kind of hologram of the life of an individual, a culture, or a whole species."40 "In those moments when the world falls apart, when we lose a sense of meaning, stories can reconnect things for us, place our fears in context, [and] help us see new forms of meaning."41 We must offer our own stories in community; we must be willing to tell them; and we must listen with the ear of our own hearts to those of others, especially our elders.
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36Daniel Levinson and Judy Levinson, Seasons of a Woman's Life (New York: Ballantine Books 1996). return