STAGE FIVE: RELATE
Will anyone care when I’m gone? Does my life make a difference to others?
The birthing of call, like all births, needs a family, a community context in which to thrive and grow. That is the essence of Stage Five- discovering and building those surrounding relationships. Everyone makes adjustments around a birth. Soulwork has that affect too. When we change from the inside out, everyone around us is affected in some way. It is in this stage that our framework for decision-making expands to include others. They may be people who are not directly involved in the risks we have decided to take. They may be a different set of people than those we depended on in earlier stages. But we need the “otherness” of people who share facets of a single whole if we are to recover the sacredness of life.
Like the tendency of single-cells to multiply and organize, there is a natural transition from singular risks to some organizational form. What began as a unique and personal invitation to newness will spread to others. Our task in this stage is to connect with a larger community who can share in our sense of purpose, find a common language, common symbols, and a common story. This stage requires community for celebration, correction, and systemic impact.
But more importantly, in this arena, there is a need to be see and to be seen. In this work, there is a need to both be witness and to be a witness to someone else. It is the reason that some shared practice that somehow reflects our worldview (such as the practice of worship or some regular spiritual disciplines) reveals group dynamics and beliefs. For the soul, relating to others (with like or different perspectives) is not just healthier, it is absolutely critical.
COUNTERPART OF RECLAIM
In many ways, relating to a new community based on a different understanding of God in Stage Five puts flesh and blood on the stories and traditions reclaimed in Stage Two. Both stages are collective and communal. What quickens as remembrance in Stage Two becomes the link for relating in Stage Five.
For us, reclaiming parts of our own story that we may have rejected begins to take on some new organizational form in the world in Stage Five. We may start or join a group that will encourage the call we have claimed. Relating to others around call will probably be a place where we can “tell our story” in different ways. It will always be a place where we can take action in concert with others on behalf of some larger vision of what life is for.
ORGANIC vs. MECHANICAL WORLD VIEW
Long before modern cosmologists began writing about a relational worldview based on quantum physics, the biblical story portrayed God as one who calls ordinary people into leadership and action within community. The biblical image of community is like a body energized by the soul of call. Each part has a different function, different needs, and different connection with the whole. Ideally, people who share their call become a such community, sharing gifts, honing sensitivities for mutual creativity, and being shaped by one another and the Spirit in the process. Yet it would be inaccurate to imagine that community means uniformity. A called community will always include people we do not like, who reflect our shadow side. One of the gifts of soulwork is learning to live and with with people unlike ourselves. Organic communities will always be in flux because everytime something new is added, the whole relational structure must adjust.
In reality, our culture works against organic community. We have been taught that economic organizations cannot function this way because it limits predictability and quality control. Businesses try to operate within mechanical model where people are treated as interchangeable parts. In this worldview, people are motivated by competition, privacy, entitlement, rights, individualism, and a ladder of success that that has room for only one on top. The mechanical model gathers individuals into large, faceless conglomerates, spitting out standardized menus to keep the economic engines going. Those on the inside denigrate care for outsiders, clinging to the fantasy that everyone can enjoy a high standard of living if they just work hard enough.
But the truth is, the urge toward relationship is strong enough to transcend even the most mechanical model of centralized efficiency. Our bodies know that we are not machines. Our senses are constantly scanning for input of tastes, sounds, smells, and sights. Our bodies remind us that we are not interchangeable parts of a mechanical universe. We breath in the air that has been breathed out by our neighbors. We use words because we want to communicate, to join with others. We meet at the level of our humanity long before economics and politics divide us into groups and categories.
Human groupings also remind us that uniformity is only temporary. Creativity keeps breaking through. Humor harbors another perspective; artists and writers point to another reality. Economic, political, and religious organizations have an organic element because we bring our humanity to the organizational mix.
Now listen to this. Call cannot be manifested fully without community! There is no such thing as an “individual” call, even though call enters the world through one person’s revelation and risk. Through held and nurtured by one person, a call must quicken response in another and then another. Through call, we are each drawn to leadership and responsibility for the piece of eternity that is ours to tend. As we discover the points of our connection, we also become aware of our interdependence. This allows us to be imperfect, to be fully human instead of some idealized package of goodness or skills. When we discover that our creativity thrives where there is room for giving and receiving help from others, we knowingly participate in the “dance of creation.” It is only then that we can begin to experience the fullness of purpose for which we have been created.
LEADERSHIP
Leadership in community of imperfect human beings is exercised differently by different types of people. Some leaders are wonderful at creating order and organization. They use this skill to allow creativity to emerge that benefits the entire community. There are other types of leaders who are well educated and master of specific gifts. They are the ones who play the role of confessor and priest in charge of initiating others into the mysteries of transformation. This person stands as a mediating figure between divine and human realms.
In either case, leadership that emerges from call must have qualities of both one who creates order and who plays a priestly role between the divine and human realms. We must have a steady focus that all of this occurs because what God has already done and is doing.
FINDING COMMUNITY
What we are drawn to can tell us much about the call that is emerging in us, like a seed sprouting when it has the right growing conditions. Among institutional forms of our culture, religious communities can be a place where we nourish call. In Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg describes three distinct traditions in Hebrew scripture in which peoplel encounter God. First, there is an EXODUS perspective focused on deliverance from the dominant system following a strong leaders like Moses. Secondly, there is an EXILE perspective focused on fellowship and small group support for living a disciplined life in an alien culture like Esther. Thirdly, there is a PRIESTLY perspective focused on rules and rituals to define membership. Modern churches reflect one of these three perspectives in their life and liturgy.
If we need or want deliverance from enslavement, we will be drawn to an EXODUS community, toward a charismatic leader who can lead us toward an alternative reality. Exodus communities provide an alternative vision from the dominant culture. For members, they are life-giving and often liberating.
If we are not called to escape, but rather to live an alternative vision amid structures created and run by others, we will be drawn to an EXILE community where we can find support for the tough choices that face us in the places where we live and work. Exile communities exist within the dominant culture and depend more on a disciplined inner life and small committed teams, or mission groups, to withstand cultural pressures that would co-opt loyalties and vision of its members.
Or if we want a “pure society” of like-minded persons, we may be drawn to a church where the rules are clear, doctrines definitive, and the rituals give us the security of the PRIESTLY strand of faith. Priestly communities focus on activities within the community rather than on interactions with the surrounding world.
CALLED COMMUNITY
A “called” community shares a clear purpose, with enough structure and tradition to offer mutual guidance and opportunities to experiment with call and enough commitment to allow the deeper currents of soulwork time to develop. Religious orders have traditionally been the only way to experience a called community, but today small working teams, meditation and retreat centers, and even twelve-step groups function this way. Spiritual community, wherever it happens, is a place where we practice loving those with whom we do not have much in common- except our common call. We need to remember that word “religious” comes from the Latin ligare, to bind or connect. Religious life is about reconnection with the ligaments that give a community both flexibility and strength. It is in these communities, we wrestle with what it means to both take leadership and kinship with others in new ways.
A World of Dreams 