The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith

by Janet O. Hagberg

We know we are surrendering to a much wiser, more vital Spirit.

Our primary motivation in life becomes the desire to love honestly and live according to God's purposes.

We have little interest in being recognized unless someone inquires of us personally.

Not there.

At stage 4 we meet ourselves, discover forgiveness, and experience healing.

Since the church has been best equipped to serve people at stages 1 through 3, how will people at this stage receive what they need to grow and to move forward?

As Simon Chan (Spiritual Theology) has written: It may be necessary for those taking the inner journey to look outside the local church (to retreat centers, monasteries, workshops on the spiritual life) for specialized resources that facilitate this leg of the journey.

Have started with a spiritual director for this very reason.

Reflection opportunities: retreats, quiet rooms, personal! musing newsletters, inner journey classes, dance, solitude, labyrinth, icons, poetry, body work, lives of saints, journaling, nature, art, music, clay, fairy tales, stories (especially our own story), listening prayer and dialogue prayer; all with an intent unansw of deepening the journey or addressing one's calling or ered questions.

Spiritual direction

Ennea...

May wish to be trained as a spiritual director.

Eventually

What are you holding on to? What would you have to give up to move forward into more intimacy with God?

So many people leave the church when they experience stage 4 or the Wall, since there are few resources or programs available for them, and they feel estranged when the faith they held dear does not work for them any more. Their seeming collapse of faith may also be uncomfortable for those in ministry who are focused on more faith strengthening programs, like Bible Study and discipling.

Stage 1: Awe, Relief God's love and acceptance comes through mostly in the miraculous experiences at this stage.

WA YS TO MOVE FORW ARD This transition, from stage 3 to 4, is one of the most difficult ones to make since it represents the most far reaching change of any stage moves, except for the move from the Wall to stages 5 and 6. We move from feeling secure and confident to a place of deep questioning. This does not happen overnight but it gradually erodes our confident-looking faith. Either a personal or faith crisis shakes our strongly held beliefs or assumptions and we feel adrift on a restless sea, fending for ourselves. Our sense of God is shaken and we can find no new direction, only more questions.

THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH, THE COMMUNITY OF FAITH The church or organization that can understand this stage and does not think of those in it as personal failures or backsliders, or as evidence of ministry that has failed, can be of great service to people at this stage.

Many times, though, people who leave stage 3 and find themselves at stage 4 do not feel like they fit within the organized church structure and belief system;

Churches are at their best in the programming they do for people whose home stages...

People at stage 4 do not long for these things and are usually not interested in leadership, since it is often an integrity crisis they experience. In their hearts they say, "If I don't believe or I have doubts,...

"Professional Christians" such as pastors, missionaries, and parachurch leaders who enter stage 4 often experience what feels like an insurmountable double bind. On the one hand, they yearn to be honest about their spiritual journey - both the profoundly scary questions they are wrestling with as well as their paradoxically deepening insights. On the other hand, they know in their gut that if they begin preaching and teaching these thi...

A caution for churches at this home stage is that people who are not ready for personal reflection or deeper involvement in the inner life may feel really left out, left behind, threatened, or unappreciated.

They are more the co-learners or facilitators.

Leaders cannot tell us exactly what this process consists of; they can just help point the way,...

Since questioning and doubts are common at this stage, the creeds, laws, rules, and belief systems pose more i...

God's grace also allows us to discover new elements in our relationship with God that we never knew were there.

Since people at this stage are focused inward and upward, and are struggling mightily with the questions, they are generally less involved in the programming of the church or the organization; unless the programming is directed towards reflection and questioning.

make the search an obsession -ever learning, never coming to Truth.

This is generally true of those who make faith an intellectual search and are afraid to open their hearts.

Oh dang... what does it mean to open your hearts

The Wall, in my experience, is the place on the faith journey that is least recognized and most avoided by most of us, including the church.

Don’t know if I have hit a real wall still

What image of God would we be basing our faith on if we were afraid of what God would do to us in the Wall?

This is my challenge to all of you who read this. Even if you are afraid, let yourself be led by loving guides and by God into and through the Wall; ask God to show you how to let the love in; and then be a companion to others whose lives will be transformed by the healing Wall experience. Supporting one person through the Wall could make your whole life worth living.

This could be a book discussion group, a support group, or a spiritual formation group.

We are wounded healers,

The gift of the church is to nurture people on their journey, and understand when the clergy are needed and when parishioners are able to allow God to personally lead them.

Sadly, envy or fear of their seeming "holiness" or intimacy with God may preclude an invitation to further involvement. This is most unfortunate because they generally wait for a direct invitation from God or other people.

For instance; we may not be program builders but more interested in the healing of one person.

Tim trickett

STAGE 4: POWER BY REFLECTION DESCRIPTION Power is influence. It is the sandwich stage. CHARACTERISTICS Competent in collaboration Reflective/ confused; seeking meaning Strong while letting go of the need to be in control Comfortable with personal style Skilled at mentoring Showing true leadership (honesty, fairness, sound judgment, and follow-through)

At stage 4, Power by Reflection, stewardship involves not really giving or receiving resources from the church but going deeper into ourselves, rediscovering God and our faith. We are usually competent in the outer world but confused in our inner world.

The cry of the heart is to enter lifegiving, love-producing relationships and work to leave a healed and healing legacy on the hearts and lives of those we love and touch in a meaningful way.

We must face that which we fear the most, and that is why it is so unsavory, and why so many people only enter the Wall under duress.

The Wall calls us to reevaluate our image of God because in the Wall we encounter an endearing loving God. We can no longer deny that God loves us, and realize that there is nothing we can do or have done to change that. This may be the most difficult truth for us to face.

I have been thru some sort of wall with regen and a shift in who god is to me... How has your view of god changed?

"What are you here to teach me?" then God will transform not only our inner world but eventually our outer world as well. The Wall is the place in which we integrate and embrace our spiritual selves as well as our physical and psychological selves.

The power behind the transformation at the Wall is this: learn to embrace your whole story with loving, forgiving detachment.

We need to grieve these experiences and the losses that came with them. This

I have also found that working with the Enneagram (a model describing people's motivations and how to transform these motivations from being self-directed to lifegiving) in close conversations with my spiritual director has helped me to uncover how my own development formed around my family pain.

The person we most often forget to forgive is ourself,

Refusing to forgive ourselves through continued denial of pain and suffering contributes to depression and other mental disorders including suicide. Giving ourselves permission to forgive the self requires careful listening and compassionate loving in order to mediate the internal rage festering in the pain.

Another simple exercise, called the Examen, which St. Ignatius taught as part of his discipline of the inner life, includes asking what you are grateful for (his word is consolation) and what you were not grateful for (his word is desolation) each day, and what the call is for you as a result.

Evelyn Underhill, a gifted twentieth century writer on the inner life, writes of this principle of moving deeply inward and then moving back out to the world with a new perspective in her book, Practical Mysticism.