Mentorship Close to Home by Michael Doran

As I wondered about the topic of mentorship, the thought that most captured me was not about identifying the role of mentor and expectations—how I believe a mentor “should be.” Instead it was the mentors I didn’t see coming and the posture of what mentoring looks like in (those) unusual places—in life, in relationships and even in spiritual direction. Yet I’ll begin with my starting place by going through some of what I unlearned about mentoring.

In my adolescent years involving sports, mentoring resembled coaching. Through the eyes of a young man, it was those who had “accomplished,” “achieved,” and “won.” It was the elusive thing “they had” that I wanted, and didn’t know how to get. Yet I was hopeful they could tell me how so I could do what they did, and become the person I hoped to be…or maybe the person they wanted me to be.

As I reflect on that place, my view was limited; of me, of the other, of what was unfolding. I didn’t know if I wanted change as much as I wanted to be different. And getting there, my desire was that it would be painless, easy, guaranteed, and kind. It wasn’t quite like that, but the experience and the relationships were secondary to the outcome (I wanted). Sometimes focus and drive can be overrated.

The next place I looked for mentors was in the world of “business.” Much like sports, it was a hierarchical view of how I saw others better than me, and how I could “get” what they had; success, recognition, and control. Or so I thought. One of the gifts in life is that it refuses to “settle” for the easy answers. Instead, it invites some of the most unlikely “mentors” into your life and offers mentoring in ways that you’d not imagined.

Who have been my best mentors and what kind of mentoring have they offered? My children would not refer to themselves in that way. They have been mentors in how they lived—from babies to young adults. They have a posture of loving me, giving to me, receiving from me, wanting the best for me without wanting to change or control me. They, like me, want safety and belonging to wonder, to grow, to have difficult conversations, face awkward moments and not be abandoned.

That, perhaps, is the truest mentoring I’ve experienced: a willingness to stay. To walk alongside without fixing. To hold questions without rushing to answer them. And to remain curious when my soul wanted certainty. For me, that’s the heart of spiritual direction.

Mentoring has changed for me—not as a pursuit of achievement but a participation in  meaning, in relationships and even in mystery. It’s not so much about finding someone who has the answers, but someone who holds the questions with me, allowing me to be brave when I’d rather not. And sometimes, that someone is my own inner voice, finally given permission to speak—especially that which I would rather not say aloud, or to another.

In spiritual direction, we often speak of companioning. It’s such a gentle word. One that resists the pedestal and invites the step or the stillness when there is no clear path. The longer I live, the more I believe mentoring is less about quidance and more about presence. Less about clarity and more about courage. Less about the performance of success and more about the permission to be—confused, joyful, afraid, expending.

I once believed a mentor’s job was to help me “become somebody.” Now, I wonder if a true mentor helps me return to myself. To remember who I already am beneath the striving. And in doing so, awaken something I didn’t know was waiting.

I am increasingly drawn to those who carry a quiet wisdom, who aren’t impressive at first glance yet become unforgettable in their kindness and their love. Who don’t speak in answers but in stories that connect hearts and souls.

I don’t always recognize them right away. They might be friends, a stranger, a spiritual director, a child. And they don’t wear the badge of “mentor.” They simply show up. And somehow, that is enough. It’s always enough.

House Finches By Luke McCuster

A pair of house finches began building a nest outside my window. All through the third week of June any time I wanted I could lean over and see the soon-to-be mother with dried grasses clamped in her beak weaving a bed behind a petunia flower in the corner of the window box. Her partner stood on the lip of the gutter watching and burbling cheerfully. After a few days I looked into the nest—four perfect eggs. Two weeks later, two babies, each baby body seventy five percent mouth and the mouth reaching up and swaying and jerking a little crazily on a delicate stem of neck, hungry and blind and wild and desperate. Father bird came and fed mother bird, then she fed the mouths and sheltered them with her body and waited for the other two to hatch. A friend I told called it a blessing on my home and that is how it felt. I have made a nurturing place here. I am doing something right.

Two days later, the nest was empty. A predator took them, and it left a house-finch-sized tear in the fabric of my assumptions about the world. Can animals be evil? Was the predator feeding its own babies? Should I have protected the birds? Could I have? Should I become vegan? Of course, this is not just about birds. When I look through the tear, I see a reality that does not care what I expect or assume. Its ugliness hurts and offends me and its shimmering beauty scares me because I am afraid it will be lost. I want to look away.

But my life is here, in this world, and I want to be in my life. So I have not removed the nest, a place where possibility and loss overlapped. I am lingering at the tear. I am looking through it into a big, deep, dark, bright, ugly, beautiful, pulsing, true world. And with disappointment, or trepidation, or on my knees in trembling or in gratitude, holding tenderness and violence and everything in between, I say, “yes.”

Infinite Love By Lisa Palchick

“Infinity is as far as your imagination stretches, and then some.”

~~Iain Cameron Williams

When my budding scientist brother and I played make-believe together, we got very intrigued with the concept of infinity. What does infinity mean anyway, a number that we couldn’t count? We thought of stars, it awed us. We teased each other back and forth on the subject. Tim had an infinity for something I wanted. An infinity for toy black panthers, for example, when previously we fought over having one. That strange sideways 8, so mysterious and so frustrating when he won the game with infinity Monopoly houses, infinity puppies, infinity everything.

I still think about the concept, so mysterious, so connected to the Divine. I found this definition, “The word infinity comes from the Latin word ‘infinitas’ which means endless or unboundless. It signifies that life is not just a one-time journey. But rather it’s a series of cycles, reincarnations, and spiritual evolutions. It’s also akin to nature’s endless rhythms.”

This concept connects transcendence, life, death and rebirth to infinity, divine mystery. At death we merge into the vast consciousness of the Divine, continuing the vast unknowable boundlessness of God.

I can hear my brother now, playing Monopoly, “but Lisa I just bought the Grand Hotel, I win! It has an infinite number of guests!” And then, “but Tim, if the hotel has an infinite number of guests, then the owner can add a huge owner’s suite for me and then I own it. I win!” This goes on and on until the end of time. It turns out this is Hilbert’s infinity paradox, exploring the boundaries of infinity, but we were getting way beyond our understanding. Tim probably knows these things now.

What I know is this, I love my brother. I love recalling memories of our conversations when we were just little curious children. We touched on profound mysteries of the universe. We played make-believe about the unbelievable nature of the universe. We laughed and danced in the deep pools of infinite love and through the grace of God; we flourished.

Now I am almost eighty, Tim 78, we talk of our grandchildren. I try to fathom the concept of the infinite, but all I know is human love is wrapped in divine love, a love that transcends the boundaries of time and is everlasting.

Now that should even trump the Grand Hotel.

To Be Illumined by Christine Hiester

Only in our doing can we grasp you.
Only with our hands can we illumine you.
The mind is but a visitor:
it thinks us out of our world.

~Rainer Maria Rilke
(trans. Macy and Barrows)
 

Once every quarter I practice retreat in a Hocking Hills tiny house surrounded by trees. I write, sit by the fire, walk, birdwatch, sketch, read, eat when I’m hungry and sleep when I’m tired. I settle into the rhythm of the day, listen to the rhythms of my body, and with each successive retreat, follow the seasons of the year. In October of 2024, it rained nearly nonstop. In January of 2025, the temperature barely cleared 0 degrees. In April, it “snowed” cottonwood fluff for the entire three days, collecting in clumps around my feet.

When I began this practice two years ago, I knew I needed the silence and the regular time away, but I did not realize how much I needed perspective and the grounding that being intentionally present to the turning of the earth– and my part in it– could offer. I didn’t realize how my mind, especially in this season of instability and global disconnectedness and fear, was “thinking me out of our world.”

To be illumined is not to cognitively understand; it is to open to the Light so that we can see– and be seen– rightly. Gaining knowledge doesn’t necessarily lead to deep knowing; sometimes it just serves to obscure what is most true. So I’ve been asking myself, how do I yield to the Spirit in daily life? What helps me gain perspective and illumine the stirring of God that is happening just beneath the surface of things? How do I truly and authentically live in the world, and not just visit it? 

I don’t believe any of us has the answer– I definitely don’t– but being seasonally with the trees and the quiet makes it possible for me to hold the tension of the question with more grace and purpose. To recognize all beings as sacred, to recognize in myself the turning of the world, and do my part in the work of illumination, right where I am.