Big Questions, Worthy Dreams (eBook)

Sharon Daloz Parks has been described as a keen observer, a probing listener, and a rich and subtle theorist. She is principal of Leadership for the New Commons, a senior fellow at the Whidbey Institute, and has held faculty and senior research positions at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Business School, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Weston School of Theology.

Preface ix

1. Emerging Adulthood in a Changing World: Potential and Vulnerability 1

2. The Deep Motion of Life: Composing Meaning, Purpose, and Faith 20

3. Becoming at Home in the Universe: A Developmental Process 46

4. It Matters How We Think 70

5. It All Depends . . . 94

6. . . . On Belonging 114

7. Imagination: The Core of Learning and the Heart of Leadership 134

8. The Gifts of Mentorship and a Mentoring Environment 165

9. Higher Education as Mentor 203

10. Culture as Mentor 224

Coda: Mentoring Communities 243

Professional Education and the Professions 243

The Workplace 251

Travel 258

Families 261

Religious Faith Communities 267

Media 279

Social Movements 286

Notes 289

The Author 319

Name Index 321

Subject Index 325

"The things at stake in this tenth anniversary edition are even
more profound and urgent than they were the first time around. This
is not a little story about young people. It is a big story about
humanity and the persistent quest for meaning and purpose. . . .
the key is mentorship, and the payoff should be big--for all
of us." --Richard A. Settersten Jr., coauthor, Not Quite
Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood,
and Why It's Good for Everyone

"Scholarly, wise, elegant, and deeply insightful, this book is .
. . for all who work with people in the awe and angst-filled years
between 18 and 32. . . . Upcoming generations have fateful choices
to make that we need them to take up faithfully and fully awake.
Parks, a master teacher, lights the way--theirs and ours."
--Diana Chapman Walsh, president emerita, Wellesley College;
board chair, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

"No one who cares deeply about people in their twenties should
be without this book. In Sharon Daloz Parks's lyrical company we
learn so much more about their biggest possibilities--and our
own." --Robert Kegan, author, In Over Our Heads;
professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education

"Parks's clear voice .... is simultaneously that of a scholar,
clinician, ethicist, and priest--that of a rare and capable
generalist who can nurture both teachers and students ... [and]
reveal the architecture of the process by which we merge the
questions of ultimate reality with the immediate needs and duties
of our generation." --Janet Cooper Nelson, chaplain of the
university, Brown University

" . . . [A] valuable resource for parents, professors,
administrators, employers, and all others who care about emerging
adults and want to see them thrive." --Jeffrey Jensen Arnett,
Clark University; author, Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road
from the Late Teens Through the Twenties