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For me, Stage 5 is elusive. Fowler’s description is thick. So, if you feel you understand, or even partly understand Stage 5, what does it mean in 30 words or less? Here is mine:
“S5 is where you no longer believe the gospel as its literally or traditionally taught. But you find your own way to be active and at peace within it”.
Quote:Free to be immersed in and vulnerable to any story you want, and to believe them; yet not attached to them for your sense of self, nor needing anyone’s validation.
Hah! Got it to exactly 30 words.
:clap: I disagree that a Stage 5 person is necessarily active in their church, but that could be your form of Stage 5. There are LDS who left the Church and never returned who think in a stage 5 framework.
SilentDawning wrote:For me, Stage 5 is elusive. Fowler’s description is thick. So, if you feel you understand, or even partly understand Stage 5, what does it mean in 30 words or less?…Here is mine:”S5 is where you no longer believe the gospel as its literally or traditionally taught. But you find your own way to be active and at peace within it”.
In 30 words or less, I think Stage 5 basically means:
Quote:Better understanding and acceptance of how well you can really know things and control them or not compared to Stage 4.
I have some additional thoughts on this. For example, I think these stages are sometimes related to the stages of grief where people often react with denial and anger before accepting the reality of the situation (if they ever do). Also, I don’t know that active involvement in any organized religion is really a necessary requirement to reach a state of mind like Stage 5 describes. In fact, I think the LDS Church is so strongly geared around the Stage 2-3 mindset and unfriendly toward the kind of thinking characterized by Stage 4-5 that it often takes a lot of patience and conscious effort to try to make Church activity work without getting aggravated by it.
I can do it in one word. Peace. This reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon about 25 years ago when people were doing a lot of jogging. One person is introducing two people to each other and says “this is ___, 20 miles a week, this is___ 15 miles a week. I guess my one word is status. Just the cynic in me.
cwald wrote:I can do it in one word.
Peace. But what if you just aren’t feeling the peace? What went wrong and what should be done about it? Or are you just out of luck in that case? Further complicating things is that sometimes straightforward attempts to find some peace and comfort in some ways will almost certainly disturb the peace in other areas.
To answer DA’s question, there are arrows in your quiver you can shoot at the problem of NOT being at peace. The list is not exhaustive, but these are themes I’ve read: 1. Reinterpret traditionally held beliefs and policies in a way that brings you peace, through parsing.
2. Set boundaries and lessen your service in areas that are agnst-producing.
3. Really get down to personal prayer, and come to an understanding between yourself and the Lord what being a Christian and a Mormon really means to you — and live that.
4. Distance yourself from the tiring/objectionable aspects of Church service and focus on character and family development — using those parts of the Church that help you get to that end. De-intensify the other parts from your life.
5. Stop beleiving the extreme claims of our religion and relate to it as a temporal organization. As DA once said, the whole thing often makes a lot more sense and reduces disappointment when you finally make that leap.
6. Fix your wanter. Stop wanting all the things the Church says we should want after deep introspection, study and prayer. Many of them are unverifiable anyway.
7. Get on your own clock as fast as possible; recognize you are in control of your relationshipw with God, and have freedom to choose.
These are simple themes that I have seen here…perhaps there are more I am missing.
I can’t do just 30 words. I have analyzed and detailed my current position and faith statements on my introduction, “Bad Things Happen to Good People.”
I think stage 4 or individualized faith is represented when I assemble my beliefs based upon my individual needs and experiences. In my example, I experienced something like a revelation that “God loves me.” I could also feel that the music and other sources that I found helpful in assembling this belief were put in my path by God and that it was the Holy Spirit inside of me that made the lyrics jump out at me etc. I do not think that there always needs to be tension in this stage (meaning that you may remain in this stage even after moving past the tension). At some point one may feel very confident and content with their individualized beliefs and not mind that others believe differently. I guess I would label it as the “What is true for me?” stage.
I think stage 5 or conjunctive faith is represented because I have also analyzed enough to realize some of the needs that were present and were ultimately addressed by the formation of those beliefs. As I assess and evaluate other possible faith statements that would also address those same needs, I realize the following: 1) My faith statement was not the only possible conclusion, given my needs and starting point, that may have worked for me. 2) That others are in large part reacting to their needs either collectively in a stage 3 manner or individually in a stage 4 manner. Perhaps it is the “truth is relative” stage.
To bring in a profession analogy, Stage 3 might be an assigned profession like in “A Bee Movie” where everyone is assigned a role for the good of the hive, they meaningfully contribute, and many feel peace and identity within this arrangement. Stage 4 may be an individual that feels a different calling than the one he has been assigned (like the Jerry Seinfeld Bee, or the dancing penguin in Happy Feet, or the kid from the coal mine town that wants to build rockets, or the kid that loved to dance but was told that it was a sissy desire). There may be some angst here, because of breaking away from the group for your source of identity but there may come a point where you make peace with that tension and still continue in stage 4 because you feel you were “born to dance, or fly, or build rockets.”
I think stage 5 occurs when you discover and identify the need inside of you that made dancing or flying or building rockets so appealing. Also that, whatever profession became your calling, there may have been a range of professions that would have similarly filled your needs. It seems that you almost become a hobbyist anthropologist in viewing things not necessarily in right or wrong terms but in observing human behaviors collectively and as individuals. Asking, “What makes their behavior important to them?” and honoring that custom and its importance because “they and theirs” are no less important or valid than “you and yours.”
From Brian’s explanation, it seems that in stage 5 it is difficult to muster the passion that you may have been able to feel for a particular faith statement or position at at different stage in your life because spiritual truths may no longer be absolute for you, perhaps they are even no longer absolute on a personal level as you may find in stage 4, but have become relative and even transitional.
For my personal journey right now, I find it helpful to compartmentalize my stage 4 from my stage 5. I need my stage 4 to be real and true at least for myself, if it has any hope of providing meaning to this chaotic world. If stage 5 takes over and my faith statement becomes just one possible approach among many then my faith statement loses the power it may otherwise have had and leaves me hungry and wanting to know what it all means.
This has been my thought process on these stages so far, I welcome feedback.
See, I see your Stage 4 as an achievement of Stage 5. Where you recognize your own need to dance, and you dance. Or, you fill that need in some other way, thus achieving peace. It’s when you feel you should dance, and you can’t without feeling like a loser that keeps us stick in Stage 4….Stage 5 is where we feel comfortable with our needs as a dancer, and fulfill them in a way that is meaningful for us. It’s what I’ve been trying to do with the financial/business orientation of the Church. I feel like I need more independence from that aspect of the Church, where I am less a drone to feed its business operations, and more of an independent entity with my own needs that I meet in my own unique way.
Quote:There are LDS who left the Church and never returned who think in a stage 5 framework.
So, Brian — what does their Stage 5 statement sound like? If you can envision someone other than yourself who feels they have achieved that stage?
As a simplistic, summary definition, “peace” works for me, with one caveat: Quote:Peace with your personal view, after being exposed to conflicting views and finding what works for you personally.
A central difference between classic Stage 3 (which includes a form of real peace) and Stage 5 is that Stage 5 peace has been created / crafted consciously with an understanding of various options – a reconciliation or, ironically, restoration in a very real way. The exact nature of the former peace isn’t restored, but the general condition of peace is. It’s just a peace that can withstand buffeting and generates regular modification in many areas. It’s peace amid change, rather than peace as a result of constancy and lack of change.
In a religious sense, it’s a restoration of true faith over reliance almost exclusively on calcified creeds.
It’s the heart of “pure Mormonism” and the concept of ongoing-revelation and eternal growth, imo.
I hate to say this on staylds, but I really agree with ray. I think ray has found stage 5 in the mormon religion, and i have had to leave mormonism to find stage 5. Really, I feel really really good now. I have SOME stage 5 now – but I had to leave the church to find it. I would like to be in the church and have stage five, but that didn’t work for me. If it works for you – I wish you the best.
btw – the ME podcasts with Borough is THE BEST “staylds” interview I’ve ever heard. Seriously. Really really good, and makes me want to go back to church. Check it out friends.
Out.
I want to make my Stage 5 one where I am as active as my inner peace will allow — ideally, a temple recommend holder who serves in some meaningful capacity for the rest of my life. This means figuring out how to obey the more objectionable commandments without angst. I am working through that now….my biggest problem is tithing. The take, take, take mentality of some of the leaders also gets me, but I think that can be with by setting boundaries and learning not to feel guilty when a calling becomes too much and its time to leave it on my own timeline….but tithing – that is a hard one. It is easily managed if you reach the conclusion that a full-tithe is in the eyes of the beholder, however, there may well be disagreement if that definition is shared publicly with your priesthood holders in a tithing settlement interview. That is the big conundrum right now. i”m at peace with my own conclusion about what a full-tithe represents after looking at the problem from all angles, and finding my own way. But if you openly state that definition and the leadership objects, then you have to learn to be at peace in the Church without a TR.
While this is specific to my situation, I think it shows the kind of conundrums you face when trying to find peace. I think some have found peace by simply deciding not to hold a TR. In a way, it’s not all bad except for being shut out of major life events with your family, and the ability to perform priesthood ordinations of your son(s). Leadership is not hte only form of service one can do meaningfully in one’s life…and sometimes, it can have a very lack lustre reward to effort ratio.
SD, I think stage 5 is about recognizing it is OK to have conundrums. I believe Ray has found his peace, but he continues to share things that frustrate him at church. But he stays, because having frustration, paradox, and uncertainty is a welcome companion to having spiritual upliftment, love, compassion, and peace. It is about realizing there is no illusion of it all being perfect or having unrealistic expectations. I think this is why it can be reached in or out of the church, and why a person does not have to “trick” themselves into staying in the church, or lie about how they feel.
If I had to pick less than 30 words…I’d say:
Quote:What Roy said in more than 30 words.
cwald wrote:the ME podcasts with Borough is THE BEST “staylds” interview I’ve ever heard. Seriously.
Thanks, I will check this out.
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