Ch. 5 The Quest (continued)
Stages of Faith
James Fowler's Stages of Faith gave me back my sanity. That may be a tad dramatic since I had already begun to become saner before I discovered the book, but it really provided more solid footing to some hunches I had been making. Even this far in to my journey, I had never come across the book or the notion of a dark night of the soul. Until this writing of GOD-centric, I have never spoken much of this quest or any other part of my life with God so there would have been no reason for someone to have brought The Dark Night of the Soul to my attention. I really thought that I was all alone in my abandonment which does not make sense since I also had a rudimentary belief that I was experiencing a growing up stage in my relationship to God. If I needed to grow up, it would have been reasonable for me to have assumed that other people also had needed to grow up but I was not that reasonable. Feeling all alone, booted out of the nest, cuddle blanket ripped away, I intuited that God was pushing me forward to the next stage, encouraging me to mature in my spiritual development but this was the best language that I had to describe it and I had no idea where I might be heading other than growing-up.
Enter James Fowler. Like most psychology majors, I had long enjoyed a good developmental theory for providing a broad guideline of how human beings may progress cognitively, psychosocially, morally but I did not take them literally ~ no surprise there ~ and I did not take James Fowler's stages of spiritual development as the one and only path that every single human being had taken throughout all history. I don't think Dr. Fowler takes his own theory that way. Even so, I was deeply consoled that, according to the Stages of Faith, I was a normal young adult critically reflecting “meanings as separable from the symbolic media that express them” in Stage 4's Individuative-Reflective faith. What a relief! I jest but I really did feel that way. I was normal. What I was going through was predictable and eventually I would pass through this developmental stage. According to Fowler, I was on my way to Stage 5's Conjunctive faith and I suspect he was mostly right though some elements of Stages 5 & 6 seemed to have found their way into my faith development when I was still in Stage 3. I remained very committed to taking my own genuine path rather than trying to follow Dr. Fowler's but my gratitude for his work remains to this day.
I felt confirmed in my hunch that God had booted me out of the nest because it was time for me to grow up but, why, oh why, I asked, would God have booted me at that moment in my life “just when I needed Him most” as the song said. Since I had left for college confident that my suffering days would be behind me and that I would emerge triumphant over my circumstances and instead fell apart, I thought it would have been more merciful for God to have continued to be there for me in our practice of the presence relationship until my emotional turmoil died down. Why didn't God continue to let me have my cuddle blanket while I wrestled with Camus' one truly serious philosophical problem? I understood that I needed to grow up but it seemed like God's timing for the booting could have been better. Lots of people never even make it to Stage 4, why did God think it was so urgent that I leave the nest at age eighteen. Couldn't twenty have worked just as well? It took me two decades, twenty years, to find a satisfying answer to that question.
