Feeling the Winds of God

The burning of the leaves - Binyon

In a February 23 meditation by Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr, spiritual development is proposed to happen in three stages: order, disorder, reorder. Although his meaning is often made a bit opaque by his odd use of language (invented phrases like “unitive consciousness”) I think his stages of spiritual development resonate with my experience. Only, I would have put it like this:

Order: It’s where our spiritual journey begins. We understand all things through the screen of our family and community. Challenges to our faith tenets are threatening so are often summarily rejected; the unfamiliar feels dangerous. We are spiritually self-centered; the world revolves around us and our perception of God is highly influenced by our personal needs—a struggle to make the spiritual reality match our life’s realities, alleviate our fears.

Disorder: Gradually, broadening experience begins to challenge our belief in the necessity of certainty. We encounter other spiritual outlooks and are urged to accept that doubting once-held views of God and our place in the universe among a diverse humanity is survivable. We are pressured to release ourselves from the posture of self-defense and are offered the privilege of “falling in love” with God and others. At this stage, we are much in need of mentors, teachers to blaze new, better, more loving trails for us; every step feels dangerous.

Reorder: At some point in our spiritual journey, a new order will hopefully emerge. Call it the comprehension of unity, an understanding that all existence and its creative source are indivisible. No tribes, no adversarial divisions, no outside and inside. For Christians, the model for a reordered spiritual state is Jesus Christ; the state is called “The Kingdom of God.”

So the question raised is obviously, “At what level of spiritual maturity am I?” Like a doctor diagnosing illness through symptoms, let me propose a few spiritual symptoms: (There I go, inventing phrases that others will only puzzle at . . . like Rohr does in his meditation!)

Spiritual Symptomology 101:

Stage 1: Order (Anyone who has taught a Sunday School class of 9 – 12 year-old youth will recognize these.)

1. Excessive application of deductive reasoning to every issue, i.e. grasping back for a rule that answers the question.
2. Tendency to interpret sources in a way that reinforces the righteousness of one’s personal position, that calms one’s fears.
3. Reverting to anger, self-pity, frustration when faced with alternatives that don’t match one’s preferred understanding, resentment toward those who differ from us in understanding.

Stage 2: Disorder (Spend time with college or seminary students in a relaxed atmosphere and hear their candid discussion of questions that are troubling them or appear unsolvable and witness a struggle to navigate the sea of disorder.)

1. Doubt, and fear of possible consequences when admitting to uncertainty.
2. A struggle with feelings of threat and uncleanness when faced with interpretations that “don’t fit” with earlier understandings.
3. Repeated forays into “untying the boat and seeing where the current takes you” and scurrying back to the safety of the dock. (Dropping out is a symptom of this symptom.)
4. Feelings of helplessness, abandonment, often leading to reversion to the order/safety of Stage 1.

Stage 3: Reorder (Observe persons who are relaxed in any company, who discuss, debate freely but don’t argue, and you may have met a Stage 3.)

1. This person has grasped the meaning of love as an indivisible and universal force for good, and has bathed in the warmth of knowing God’s love for him/her and others is real and unconditional.
2. No longer needs to divide humanity into good and evil, black and white, right and wrong because God’s love—if he loves ME—likely doesn’t exclude any other child of his creation.
3. Sympathy and empathy have replaced judgment and condemnation; Stage 3s are peacemakers. When critical differences threaten to divide, they don’t choose a side so much as they work to make the differences an opportunity for the spiritual growth of all concerned.
4. Is fully conscious of the organic and vital relationship among all living and non-living things of earth, therefore has a profound respect for life and the earth that sustains it.
5. Has accepted his/her mortality and made peace with the march of life to its inevitable conclusion; doesn’t live in denial.

I’m not sure Rohr would endorse my ramblings on spiritual growth, but I found wrestling with the concept provided some help in understanding why the world—even the faith world—experiences so much anger and unhappiness. However much Stage 3 should be our goal, we tend to teach and preach too much at the level of Stage 1 or 2, urging people too much to keep their boats firmly anchored to the safety of the dock.

When Jesus looked down on Jerusalem and lamented the inhabitant’s unwillingness to commit to the love in which he was prepared to embrace them, it was, arguably, their arrested spiritual development he was talking about: clinging to Stage 1 when the doors of the kingdom were open for them, keeping their boats firmly tied to the dock of illusionary safety.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7: 13 & 14 NIV)

PS. I was constantly reminded as I wrote this of the hymn I feel the winds of God today. An amateur singing of the hymn along with the lyrics is HERE.