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I saw this at Patheos and am passing on the long quotes in the review…. Quote:“Whether we are active members, inactive members, or active members who are considering going inactive, my sense is that we all seek to authentically express our relationship to Mormonism. For some, leaving the Church is tempting but would ultimately be gut-wrenching; too much of our identity belongs to it and we feel called to find a way to make it work. For others, staying in the Church feels dishonest. There are too many beliefs and practices that no longer resonate with us, and the pain of attending church week after week has started to drown out the spiritual benefits of community worship. Many in these predicaments feel that in order to be authentic, in order to show up more fully and engage with the faith community more genuinely, they have to be able to show up with all of themselves…. Whether we are active or inactive, radical or straight-laced, my argument is that we can all learn to express our unique growth in healthier ways. Through insights from the field of adult development, we can learn to recognize and validate the myriad relationships we all form with Mormonism. And we can thrive together as a community of support that has learned to honor one another’s process of spiritual unfolding.”
Quote:Instead of the urgent, one-and-done crisis, we can keep calm and prepare for continual deaths and rebirths through stages of development. That is how we grow.
Quote:“‘Crisis” implies a state of emergency. “Transition,” however, points to a deeper calm—even a sense of discovery as one chapter ends and another begins…For those in faith transition, for those in full-blown faith crisis, I would suggest that the question might not be whether you’re still Mormon or still have faith in the Gospel. The more inspired question may be: How might this current disorienting dilemma in your life point to a deeper faith already emerging? What in you is dying, and what is resurrecting in new form? The study of adult development shows us that we all die to past selves and are born into new personhood again and again. Can we die to our smaller understanding and live, in the words of Rilke, to be defeated by greater and greater things?”
That is also how communities develop. But when those stages (and the diversity they produce) are stifled and that spiritual biodiversity is siphoned off (through self-exile or marginalization), the community will break down.
Quote:“As a passionate-wanderer-gone-active member, I have questions that I believe apply to many of us in twenty-first-century Mormonism. What would have happened if my years away from the Church were culturally recognized as a faith transition? What if we had better tools to understand why people leave and to provide the right kind of support for their own conversion process? ….I understand that not everybody who leaves our fold will wish to come back, but I also know that if we were to redraw our maps that many who feel estranged would not make the same mistake I did of exiling themselves. In the crucible of their own conversion, maybe they would find unexpected solace among us. With an increased awareness of developmental diversity, maybe we could all learn to bear one another’s burdens more generously. It is a possibility too important not to explore.”
Quote:“…We need all the stages, all possible perspectives, in order to thrive… As with any ecosystem, when any one species begins to dominate, the natural balance and harmony of the system breaks down. When any given perspective begins to dominate others, we all grow dimmer. So there is developmental diversity and there is dominion. The one leads to greater life, the other, to sickness in one form or another.”
We can be more open to that spiritual biodiversity if we recognize the particular genius of each stage, and remember that “further” does not mean “better”; it only means more complex, and part of that complexity depends on integrating the contributions and insights of the previous stages as we move into new ones.
“Each stage has its own worldview, its own talents, its own genius. Different stage features are adaptive to different situations at different times. I can’t stress this enough: higher in no way amounts to better when it comes to human development. The stages we observe and measure are said to be increasingly complex. So-called higher stages can hold more perspectives than those that precede them…[But] growing up into later stages is only part of the story. We are just beginning to understand in the field of development what it means to “grow down,” to endlessly refine the capacities and gifts from the earlier stages we inhabit.”
Quote:Make room for doubt at the table. It is the expression of epistemological humility, of the recognition that we are finite creatures who must make meaning from our limited language and perspectives; embrace doubt’s role in keeping us from worshiping our stories, and keeping us open to Truth
“What we’ll see together in our exploration is that doubt can be successfully managed and more or less exiled at earlier stages of development. But there is a tipping point in our spiritual growth beyond which it becomes necessary to take on more complexity and allow doubt a permanent seat at the table. We come to recognize that doubt, our former foe, actually exists to support, animate, and ultimately give rise to the deeper faith we seek….Without doubt, we confuse our small faith with Transcendent Faith. The story we tell about experience comes to replace the actual experience. We mistake the map for the territory. We inadvertently make idols of the empty symbols of language and forget what we had set out to worship in the first place. Doubt your stories. Doubt that you understand the final meaning of life. But do not doubt the reality of the Divine (even if you don’t call it the Divine). That’s the message.”
Quote:“….Note that I am not suggesting a relativistic approach to faith here, one where each and every view is taken to be as good as any other. In fact, I am suggesting the opposite: as our faith and understanding mature, our views become more comprehensive. They reflect more of the Truth. It is only when we take beliefs to be final and absolute, rather than representations of the Truth, that our development becomes arrested.”
Thanks for sharing, Ann. I do relate to some of those quotes, particularly the one about crisis and transition since I believe both exists and I believe I have experienced both and continue to experience transition. I’m glad you all keep me posted on the best of the rest of our part of the bloggernacle.
Thank you Ann. Beautiful quotes. It looks enticing, I just wish it was kindle-able. Thanks for the quotes. They’re great. To be honest – sometimes I get discouraged at what seems like the slow pace of change. I do not feel like I belong in the church. I hear General Conference and think “same old, same old.” Reading this review this morning gives me hope for the rebirth of the church.
Thank you.
DBMormon just posted his interview with McConkie. FYI, since I was curious, his great-uncle is Bruce R. and his grandfather is Joseph Wirthlin. http://www.mormondiscussionpodcast.org/2015/10/thomas-wirthlin-mcconkie-developmental-map/ I think he might end up being a very effective teacher of Fowler-type ideas for an LDS audience. Would love to know others’ thoughts.
First, I love the quotes you provided so we don’t have to read the link. Second, I love the quotes! The idea of “showing up with all of yourself”, or “transition” as opposed to other terms, of rebirth, and how communities develop — all that makes a lot of sense. I like comment about how the regular church attendance often nullifies the spiritual benefits. He said a lot of what I’m thinking all in a few paragraphs.
Love Roy’s comment above too — I feel almost exactly the same way.
SD
I half-listened to a couple of interviews. He left the church as a young teenager and came back in his early thirties. He mentioned the loving way his Grandfather Wirthlin dealt with him, especially when crunch time came amongst the 90 cousins and he wasn’t going on a mission. He skips several childhood stages and combines the “causal” ones, saying that adults spend 90% of adulthood here in the five stages below. He stresses that we want to incorporate the former stage when we move to the next, like Russian nesting dolls.
Stage/EssenceStrengths/ ChallengesDiplomat/ObeyHigher Purpose, Fulfillment, Belonging/ Blind Follower, Judgmental, Guilt & Shame
Quote:There is a “specific tension many Mormons will feel when reading about the Diplomat. The …obedience to authority, yielding to the collective – are cornerstones of our faith community. And yet they have fallen on tough times elsewhere. Critics will even point to these characteristics as hallmarks of immaturity. [But] qualities that arise at the Diplomat stage are foundational and essential for flourishing in adult life. When we hold ourselves accountable to tradition, to lineage, to the collective, we draw from some of the deepest resources available in human life. We strengthen freedom with responsibility. To leave the considerable gifts of the diplomat behind is to be left to our own strength, to be rootless.”
Quote:“Repressed or embraced, Diplomat is certainly present is all of us as a load-bearing structure, there to offer its considerable gifts and support our continual unfolding. “
Expert/DefendPersonal Authority, Open-minded, Curiosity/ Closed-minded, Dark Night of the Senses, PerfectionismQuote:“The ‘truth’ as dictated by one’s culture is no longer an absolutely reliable touchstone.”
Quote:“There is a deeper vulnerability that can present at this stage. …Because someone negotiating this new terrain is shifting from a concrete to more subtle worldview, their relationship with the Divine … undergoes a dramatic transformation. People in this phase can feel a certain dryness in the spiritual practices that one fed them very deeply. … St John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and poet, originally referred to this shift as the ‘dark night of the senses.’ What was tangible and certain can now feel vague and ungraspable. … It can be helpful as parents, mentors, and friends of Experts to help them recognize that a simple thought, a feeling, an impression are all potential forms of Divine guidance.”
Achiever/ChoosePersonal Goal-Setting, Agency, Character Development, Patience/ Sense of Deficiency, Self-Centered, PolarizedQuote:“More in touch with the interior life than ever before, at the Achiever stage we develop a great capacity to recognize the interiors of others. Our shared humanity is a more steady presence in awareness. We start to clearly discern the dignity of all humans and advocate for equality in all aspects of civic life. This is the stage of universal human rights. From a religious standpoint, we can begin to deeply sense the worth of a human soul.”
Quote:“We’re intimate with our own beliefs at this stage, and we’re more affected by what others believe, too. ‘If others think this way, they must have their reasons, just like I have mine.”
Quote:“The culture of scapegoating doubters can be alienating to [Achievers.] At Achiever, our instincts call us to a deeper reckoning with ourselves and what we hold to be true. We start to build momentum of Faith [He’s talked earlier about “Faith” and “faith”]. It’s a kind of fearlessness … willing to encounter almost anything in the name of our search, wherever the path may take us. Those who warn the Achiever against such a search can start to sound like the opposition itself.”
Individualist/IncludeProcess-Oriented, Innovative, Richness in Diversity, Robust Faith/ Trouble Prioritizing, Exclusive Inclusion, Poorly UnderstoodQuote:“The Individualist begins to part with the surety that Truth can be absolutely comprehended by a limited mind. They begin to search out the different contexts that inevitably shape human understanding. What Terryl Givens calls the ‘rhetoric of certainty’ in Mormonism can particularly grate on us at this stage.”
Quote:“With this new capacity to see ourselves and the world contextually, we become enthralled by all the factors that affect and influence our understanding. The challenge is to get to the kernel of what matters most. We can’t quite see which contexts are more important than others at this stage. This trouble prioritizing can devolve into rampant relativism and rigid claims like ‘nobody can know anything absolutely,’ (Except for me – I know that nobody else can know anything….)
Quote:
We begin to appreciate life in all its guises and permutations.
Strategist/IntegrateDevelopment Itself, Lifelong Learning, Principled, Truth as One Whole/ Impatience with Growth, Subtle FundamentalismQuote:“The Strategist phase has a distinctively Mormon flavor. There is an inherent hunger to keep growing, and an intuition of what a long way we still have to go.”
He talks about a tendency at this stage to “overweening pride.”
Quote:“At Strategist we’re aware that it’s not just what we know that is constantly changing, but how we know it. … Because we can see that we’re growing, we often become supercharged with a desire to take up practices that allow us to continue along our developmental trajectory. Marcel Proust beautifully writes: ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’ At Strategist we’ve reached the first stage of adult development dedicated to forming those new eyes, realizing that there is no end to the landscapes we can see, no final pair of eyes from which to gaze.”
Causal Tier– The trajectory of development in this tier [which has several layers] is a deepening realization that all spirit is matter and all matter spirit. Quote:When we are deeply integrated, the anxiety to be somewhere else, to accomplish more, quiets down to a whisper and gives way to a kind of awestruck and holy silence. There is nothing left but to bless and be blessed
.
This was a pretty great overview of the book, but I lost it all 👿 and only have patience to put this much back together. I’m enjoying the book. One big quibble I have is with the title. I know that “crisis” brings your intended audience to attention, but this book is so much bigger. I’d prefer, “Nurturing Mature Mormon Faith : It’s Not a Crisis.”I half-listened to a couple of interviews. He left the church as a young teenager and came back in his early thirties. He mentioned the loving way his Grandfather Wirthlin dealt with him, especially when crunch time came amongst the 90 cousins and he wasn’t going on a mission.
He skips several childhood stages and combines the “causal” ones, saying that adults spend 90% of adulthood here in the five stages below. He stresses that we want to incorporate the former stage when we move to the next, like Russian nesting dolls.
Stage/EssenceStrengths/ ChallengesDiplomat/ObeyHigher Purpose, Fulfillment, Belonging/ Blind Follower, Judgmental, Guilt & ShameQuote:There is a “specific tension many Mormons will feel when reading about the Diplomat. The …obedience to authority, yielding to the collective – are cornerstones of our faith community. And yet they have fallen on tough times elsewhere. Critics will even point to these characteristics as hallmarks of immaturity. [But] qualities that arise at the Diplomat stage are foundational and essential for flourishing in adult life. When we hold ourselves accountable to tradition, to lineage, to the collective, we draw from some of the deepest resources available in human life. We strengthen freedom with responsibility. To leave the considerable gifts of the diplomat behind is to be left to our own strength, to be rootless….”
Quote:“Repressed or embraced, Diplomat is certainly present is all of us as a load-bearing structure, there to offer its considerable gifts and support our continual unfolding. “
Expert/DefendPersonal Authority, Open-minded, Curiosity/ Closed-minded, Dark Night of the Senses, PerfectionismQuote:“The ‘truth’ as dictated by one’s culture is no longer an absolutely reliable touchstone.”
Quote:“There is a deeper vulnerability that can present at this stage. …Because someone negotiating this new terrain is shifting from a concrete to more subtle worldview, their relationship with the Divine … undergoes a dramatic transformation. People in this phase can feel a certain dryness in the spiritual practices that one fed them very deeply. … St John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and poet, originally referred to this shift as the ‘dark night of the senses.’ What was tangible and certain can now feel vague and ungraspable. … It can be helpful as parents, mentors, and friends of Experts to help them recognize that a simple thought, a feeling, an impression are all potential forms of Divine guidance.”
Achiever/ChoosePersonal Goal-Setting, Agency, Character Development, Patience/ Sense of Deficiency, Self-Centered, PolarizedQuote:“More in touch with the interior life than ever before, at the Achiever stage we develop a great capacity to recognize the interiors of others. Our shared humanity is a more steady presence in awareness. We start to clearly discern the dignity of all humans and advocate for equality in all aspects of civic life. This is the stage of universal human rights. From a religious standpoint, we can begin to deeply sense the worth of a human soul.”
Quote:“We’re intimate with our own beliefs at this stage, and we’re more affected by what others believe, too. ‘If others think this way, they must have their reasons, just like I have mine.”
Quote:“The culture of scapegoating doubters can be alienating to [Achievers.] At Achiever, our instincts call us to a deeper reckoning with ourselves and what we hold to be true. We start to build momentum of Faith [He’s talked earlier about “Faith” and “faith”]. It’s a kind of fearlessness … willing to encounter almost anything in the name of our search, wherever the path may take us. Those who warn the Achiever against such a search can start to sound like the opposition itself.”
Individualist/IncludeProcess-Oriented, Innovative, Richness in Diversity, Robust Faith/ Trouble Prioritizing, Exclusive Inclusion, Poorly UnderstoodQuote:“Seeing clearly that all-knowing is necessarily contextual, the Individualist begins to part with the surety that Truth can be absolutely comprehended by the limited mind. … the ‘rhetoric of certainty’ in Mormonism can particularly grate on us at this stage.”
Quote:“…the awareness of contexts leaves us more open to new truths than we’ve ever been. We vividly experience the limitations of our own knowing and seeing at this stage and seek new perspectives to round ourselves out…
Strategist/IntegrateDevelopment Itself, Lifelong Learning, Principled, Truth as One Whole/ Impatience with Growth, Subtle FundamentalismQuote:“The Strategist phase has a distinctively Mormon flavor. There is an inherent hunger to keep growing, and an intuition of what a long way we still have to go.”
(He talks about a tendency at this stage to “overweening pride,” but I won’t quote that.)
Quote:“At Strategist we’re aware that it’s not just what we know that is constantly changing, but how we know it. … Because we can see that we’re growing, we often become supercharged with a desire to take up practices that allow us to continue along our developmental trajectory. Marcel Proust beautifully writes: ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’ At Strategist we’ve reached the first stage of adult development dedicated to forming those new eyes, realizing that there is no end to the landscapes we can see, no final pair of eyes from which to gaze.”
Causal Tier– The trajectory of development in this tier [which has several layers] is a deepening realization that all spirit is matter and all matter spirit. Quote:When we are deeply integrated, the anxiety to be somewhere else, to accomplish more, quiets down to a whisper and gives way to a kind of awestruck and holy silence. There is nothing left but to bless and be blessed.
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