The Invisible Mentor

Could Nature Be Your Mentor?

August 27th, 2009 |

BOJ Picnic Albion Hills 004 Rey Carr from Peer Resources told me about Marsha Sinetar’s book The Mentor’s Spirit: Life Lessons on Leadership and the Art of Encouragement because he believed that it had some similarities to The Invisible Mentor Concept on this blog. I borrowed the book from the Toronto Public Library today and read the introduction. I am very delighted that Rey referred the book to me because now I know another person who thinks like I do. Here is Sinetar’s definition of mentoring and mentor spirit:

“A mentor is a person, guide or teacher – the keeper of selective wisdoms that we hope to gain. On the other hand, the mentor’s spirit is the “almost anything” that deepens our sense of the sacred or our understanding or transmits a kind of gladness about life itself.”

Just reading the introduction, and part of the first chapter of The Mentor’s Spirit, I have expanded my thinking around the Invisible Mentor, and that that’s why I ask the question, “Could Nature Be You Mentor?” Sinetar’s definition of mentor spirit reminded me of the popular story about Isaac Newton thinking about the Law of Gravity after an apple fell from a tree, and the airplane and hang gliders were invented by studying birds in flight.

What are your thoughts? Could nature be your mentor? On MondayI will create a slide slow with nature scenes and let’s see if we are mentored by what we see!