Spiritual Audacity: The Case for Needing a Madrina More than a Mentor
Every civilization has a sacred purpose, but we have forgotten ours.
—Peter Kingsley
In the professional work world, everyone wants a mentor. And yet the concept has failed to animate us, reframe our culture, or pull us out of the quagmire of despair we feel about being doctors in today’s world.
Most mentors and mentees lack the energy to fill these roles, much less fill them well. Like many things in Medicine, we suck the life force out of them by subjecting them to rigorous scientific analysis—as if that were the final proving ground of everything, as if it could trump primary experience. We look at the weather app rather than opening a window.
The synthetic experiences of awe, connection, and transcendence are dismantled, and we lose our way. The three-legged stool—Medicine’s professional triad—wobbles when meaning is starved and prosperity and intellectual engagement are left to do the heavy lifting on their own.
This is where the Madrina rises.
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