SPIRITUAL MATURITY
Sample Chapter

1/The Project

The Elephant
About twenty years ago, as I was thumbing through a rack of posters at a little shop next to my favorite restaurant, I read “Esperanza.” The words resonated with something deep inside me. “Hmmm. That’s lovely,” I murmured. It read:

There will come a time, I know, when people will take delight in one another, when each will be a star to the other, and when each will listen to his fellow as to music. The free men will walk upon the earth, men great in their freedom. They will walk with open hearts, and the heart of each will be pure of envy and greed, and therefore all mankind will be without malice, and there will be nothing to divorce the heart from reason. Then life will be one great
service to man! His figure will be raised to lofty heights--for to free men all heights are attainable. Then we shall live in truth and freedom and in beauty, and those will be accounted
the best who will the more widely embrace the world with their hearts, and whose love of it will be the profoundest; those will be the best who will be the freest; for in them is the greatest beauty. Then life will be great, and the people will be great who live that life.
                           Excerpt from MOTHER by Maxim Gorky

Since I was waiting to be called for dinner, I left to go back to the restaurant.

Over the next few days, at quiet times, I found my mind returning to the experience of reading that parchment-paper poster, even though I couldn’t remember the words. Finally, I could stand it no more. I had to have that poster. I rushed back to the shop, hoping that it would still be there. “What if it was sold?” I thought. “What if I couldn’t even recognize it?” Desperately I looked through the rack again. “Maybe that was a one-time experience, only for that day.” Then, at last, I found it. As I read it quickly, it seemed like empty words on a piece
of paper. I was disappointed that I didn’t have the profound experience of the first reading, but I bought the poster, anyway.

When I returned home, I read it again, and again. My appreciation returned. I framed it, by just sticking it under the glass of a lithograph I had been given, and hung it on my bedroom wall. The poster has remained in my homes ever since, a little crooked, with the shading from the lithograph showing through the parchment, but at least color coordinated with the matting.

As the poster suggests, I am an idealist. I have, however, become a bit more cynical with time. I no longer believe that the attainment of Gorky’s “Esperanza” is possible in my lifetime. But it remains my heart’s desire.

I keep a file labeled “Quotations” with scraps of paper, handouts from workshops, and mimeographed copies of magazine and newspaper cutouts. In addition to “Esperanza,” only three others have made it to a place of prominence in my mind and a place in my home. My
current apartment is the first home in which I have lived, moved into at a very busy time in my life, that has not had plaques with “Desiderata” and “The prayer of St. Francis” hanging on my bathroom walls. The walls remain bare.

But the third, a Sufi quote, remains in the front of an address book from over fifteen years ago. I don’t know where I first read it, but I keep that tattered and worn address book only to have this quote:

Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world, who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each of us is part of her heart and therefore endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in the totality of that pain. You are called upon to meet it in joy, instead of self-pity. The secret: offer your heart as a vehicle to transform cosmic suffering into joy.

I have spent my life as a “spiritual seeker,” and have had many adventures on that journey--adventures with seemingly conflicting disciplines and traditions. For years, I thought I was looking for myself. And then I realized that I was looking for God. After I’d found God, my concern turned to how better to serve Him (a conventional pronoun for a non-gender specific deity). But, I have been most impressed with the poem, found preceding this chapter, that I read as a child, about six blind men describing an elephant. That image remained stored in my consciousness. My most recent experience is with traditional Christianity. I am a Christian both in belief and practice. To gain a Biblical perspective, I attended and graduated from an Evangelical Christian seminary in Vancouver, B.C. in May of 1996. But despite my evangelical training, I have often shocked some of my contemporaries by quoting the blind men-elephant metaphor and saying, “I just don’t think we have the whole elephant.”

I believe that only God has a large enough perspective to see (or, in fact, to be) “the whole elephant.” It may be presumptuous of us, as humans, even to try to define it. But I’m looking for a glimpse of that metaphorical elephant, and I want, respectfully, to share that
glimpse with you. It is my intention to get a grasp of the elephant which is reflected in our spirituality--in our relationship with God--by looking at what might be called “spiritual maturity.” Just what is spiritual maturity? How do we recognize it? Does it bear any relationship to other, more common metaphors used to define man--social, cultural, chronological, psychological, or moral maturity? What is it affected by and what does it affect?

To this end, I have interviewed more than thirty people whom I consider to be spiritually mature or to have a sense of that maturity: clergymen--Catholic, Protestant and Jewish; college professors; monks and nuns; a Native American elder; believers in Islam, and
practitioners of both Hindu techniques and Buddhist meditation. I have interviewed members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon (both spiritual programs), an African-American Sufi, a deacon for a predominantly black Baptist Church, and a couple of personal friends.

Most walk outside the world’s material values, yet all live comfortably inside themselves and in the world. Talking with them provided a richness that I hope this book will represent.

There are very definite theological differences in this group, not only between, for example, a Buddhist and a Jew, but also by broad religious categories found within, for example, Christianity. There are the differences between Protestant and Catholic denominations, but then again, there are Fundamentalist, Evangelical, and Mainline
Protestants. And even within these three categories, there are points of social/political doctrine on which they disagree--for example, the role of homosexuals and the ordination of women.

Their points-of-view differ vastly. But it is not my intention to settle any of those differences here. I am looking for something else. I am looking for God, and I believe He can be reflected in our varied relationships with Him. And in those relationships, one may get a glimpse of the whole elephant.

I celebrate our similarities, rather than repudiate our differences. And it is to this purpose that I offer this book. May you enjoy looking for the similarities in practice, in thought, in experience, and in belief; and may you be broadened by the differences in each of those
areas. Take them in. Sit with them. Imagine a close friend or a pastor having made the statements. Look for God in them. Does his spirit go beyond the confines of your tradition? Does it help you to glimpse the whole elephant rather than merely to describe only the trunk or a leg?

Creating a Dialogue
In order to get a taste of what was to follow, I selected at random seven from my stack of computer printouts of transcribed interviews and let my imagination run. I created a hypothetical dialogue among these people, who hold very different points of view, using the
actual words from their interviews, but inventing their attitudes in a verbal exchange. The group consists of a Bible church pastor, a law school professor, a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, the abbot of a Zen monastery, a Roman Catholic sister who is an instructor in
Spiritual Direction, a Baptist worship leader who is a doctoral candidate and course facilitator for a seminary, and a Methodist pastor. I imagined two of them as reluctant participants: one,
the member of Alcoholics Anonymous, because he is still bearing the scars of ecclesiastical abuse and is not exactly a fan of organized religion; the second is the Bible pastor, who appeared suspicious of my having been a psychotherapist and also, I imagined, of mingling
with other leaders of non-Bible based religions. I imagined the law professor bridging the gap with the A.A. member by stating that he had left the same church and that his anger had eventually diminished as his spirituality grew. I invite you to enter my fantasy:

Always the teacher, the law professor begins by giving his definition of spiritual maturity: “Coming of age in the spirit.” While at first everyone nods wisely in reflection, they soon realize that each have differing definitions of “spirit” and even of “coming of age.”

The Methodist pastor picks up the thread. “The [spiritually mature] person would have an awareness of the divine in life. He would have a sense in which they would understand that which we call God and feel some connectedness and relatedness to that God.” Looking around for agreement, he continues, “They would be able to utilize the rites and rituals of their faith in an effective manner with as little sense of magic or mere wish-fulfillment as possible. They would be able to give witness in a variety of ways, whatever is appropriate that comes
with their setting.” He points out, aware of the diversity of the setting, that what he was saying could be taken in “the broadest possible sense. This application would apply to a Buddhist, or a Muslim, as well as a Jew or a Christian.”

Afraid that the conversation might digress, the Baptist worship leader enters the conversation to qualify: “[Spiritual maturity] is not something we can produce. It’s Christlikeness produced inside us through friendship with the triune God.” He explains that what spiritual maturity means to the Christian is “Holy-Spirit maturity.” He elaborates: he means Holy-Spirit-produced maturity. “That’s what sets it apart from merely another form of selfactualization. It goes beyond that.”

“We don’t learn this by experience,” the Bible pastor chimes in. “We don’t learn this by discovery. We don’t go up on a mountain to discover God. We don’t go out into the desert and discover God. The only way that we can know the ways of God is because he has revealed them to us, through his written revelation.”

At this point the Buddhist abbot gives the interviewer a knowing look, reflecting on his moment of spiritual awakening, alone in the desert. “To me, it [spiritual maturity] has to be an intimate experience of what we call the absolute. In Zen, we call it Buddha. You call it Christ
consciousness.” Then, reluctant to offend the Christians present, he said somewhat tentatively, “to have a direct experience of one’s Buddha nature, and then how we manifest it moment to moment in our lives.” The group grappled with his interpretation for a moment and hypothesized that what non-Christians might interpret as “Christ consciousness” was more than just consciousness but the actual presence of the Holy Spirit.

Having perked up with the Buddhist’s comments, the member of Alcoholics Anonymous added, “I believe that spiritual maturity is undoubtedly the most important thing in a person’s life, and it is certainly what I want more than anything in my life.” He sees spiritual maturity as the end point or the central point of many of the apparently distinct paths taken by Christ or Buddha, by Gandhi or Mother Teresa. “The path that I’ve found, finally, is the path of the
twelve steps, which basically reduce to ‘trust God, clean house, and help others.’ What a simple statement of spiritual maturity!”

Bristling somewhat, the Bible pastor points out that the twelve steps mention only a higher power. The A.A. member quickly counters with the fact that The Twelve Steps, in written form, mention God by name four times and use the personal pronoun ‘Him’ or ‘His’ three times. It is only in the second step that he, she or it is referred to as “a power greater than ourselves,” which God certainly is. “Organized religion!” mumbles the A.A. member under his breath. “I hate it.”

The law professor, again, enters the discussion. “I think that God would look rather humorously at the way we enclose, define and confine both God and ourselves,” he explains. “My belief system is thoroughly grounded in the Christian tradition, but I feel God’s spirit
beyond the Christian tradition, in Buddhist, or Sufi, or Islamic and Hindu spirituality. I think, in terms of mysticism, they have been important to me.”

“I think there is a lot that is fruitful in the movement to appreciate other spiritualities,” the spiritual director cautioned, her Irish heritage still apparent in her voice. “But I think we Westerners need to be cautious, because spirituality takes its cohesion and meaning from an
internal consistency. And so, to be eclectic about spirituality can be a hazard. It can’t be just picked up and put in undigested into the Western style and vice versa.”

The Methodist pastor agreed, with a qualification. “Folks are turning their backs on what Jesus said, ‘I have other sheep that are not of this flock,’” he says. “There is a strong possibility that there are other ways for expressing that commitment to the divine--the desire to
live in unity with the divine and in harmony with other human beings and, in fact, with all of creation--that we may, in fact, not participate in and may never participate in. But we need to know that they are out there.”

The Buddhist abbot nods in agreement. “I think there is a certain spiritual maturity that comes with people who are really into any spiritual practice--deep into whatever spiritual practice. They seem to be open to all others--seem to have respect for one another.” On that
upbeat note, our imaginary conversation ends, but we can see the potential pitfalls if they had all been together. They might have shared different thoughts in different ways.

Lessons in Tolerance
About two thirds of the way through my research for this book, I was asked, as the author of the book, Mormons in Transition, to speak to a support group of former Mormons. These people had left the L.D.S. [Mormon] church and now considered themselves traditional Christians. There were also never-Mormon Christians there, some who were living in the area and wanted understanding, and some who had an interest in evangelizing current Mormons. I have spoken to many such groups and have had varied experiences. But I looked forward to
attending this particular group because my previous experiences had been positive.

The day of my presentation was cold, colder than I had ever remembered, with temperatures hovering just above zero, but with a wind chill that plunged to who knows how low. The evening was a disaster for me, personally. I didn’t sleep well after my presentation
and woke early the next morning feeling beaten up. I felt wounded, so I examined what had happened the evening before.

Two encounters stood out: The first was with a man, a former Mormon, who, at one point, spoke about Catholicism and how wrong that church was, and how we had to be careful of all Catholics. All I had the strength to do was counter with, “There are some very fine
Christian Catholics.” I justified his intolerance to myself by attributing it to his having left a very dogmatic and authoritarian religion, which presented itself as the only true church. I credited his behavior to his not, as yet, having a relationship with Jesus and just moving the template formed by his Mormonism to his current Christian belief, thus making all other churches wrong. “The Lord will bring him around,” I thought.

But a few minutes after that encounter, I mentioned that I was currently attending Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, which prompted a second man to go on at length about liberal churches and the dangers of attending them. This man I knew. I had met him the previous
summer when he had brought a group of missionaries to Utah to witness to Mormons. At that time, I could chalk up his arrogance to his youth. But on this night, I felt bruised by the intolerance of these two men, each having “the answer.” It seemed as if each thought their
piece of the elephant was the whole animal.

These incidents reminded me of another day, when I was peddling Mormons in Transition to “reform-minded” Mormons at a conference. I went to hear one particular lecture by a man whom I know to be both loving and lovable. Jim is a former-Mormon writer, now
ordained as Four Square minister. Nonetheless, we are all vulnerable to getting entangled in a discussion, and, during the question and answer period following his talk, Jim was hooked by a doctrinal question. He and the man who had posed the question were going back and forth, each justifying his individual, firmly-held position.

I was standing in the back of the room with a man who had shown interest in my subject and had several times during the weekend come by my table to chat. As we listened, he leaned over to me and whispered, “I have only one question: Where’s Jesus?”

Precisely. When we get into arguing that I’m right and you’re wrong, we may be defending our religious beliefs, but we lose touch with our spiritual center. And it is in that center that we may find much more in common than our theological differences would ever suggest. It is in that center, I believe, that we find God, however he may manifest himself to us. I am, now, much more in touch with that point than I was when I began my research for this book. And I see that we can’t enter the global culture of the 21st Century, each clinging feverishly to our own little piece of the elephant.

My Intolerance Uncovered
All human beings have particular biases--beliefs that we hold to be true, whether we are aware of them or not. One question I asked, rather awkwardly, of the first few people interviewed was, “Who would this [work] be incomplete without my interviewing?” One referred me to a Franciscan nun in Las Vegas, and my good friend, Dave Rowe, a conservative Baptist worship leader and seminary graduate, asked, “Do you have a Muslim?” Immediately, thinking
only of our country’s long-standing enmity with Saddam Hussein, in which we have painted him as an evil despot, I said, “No. I wouldn’t even know how to find one.” Dave shared his experiences with the Islamic religion, calmed my fears, and we jointly looked up a number in the telephone book under “Mosques.” I reached a man there a few days later, who referred me to yet another--a prayer leader, as it turned out.

I was nervous heading for the mosque to meet him. It was the only time I was concerned about what was appropriate to wear. I chose an ankle-length, long-sleeved, grey wool dress. As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a man waiting. “We’ll have to go to my house,” he said after coming over to my car. “Please. My wife has [a] medical appointment. You can follow me.” Oddly enough, I felt relieved to be going to his home rather than to his place of worship. When we arrived, I saw that his oldest daughter and his wife were in traditional Muslim dress.

What surprised me was the calm with which he managed his family, the quiet and respectful air in that small apartment, and the gentleness coupled with enthusiasm with which he shared his religious faith. “Oh, my goodness,” I thought. “Are we all the same?” Certainly
our beliefs are different: though in Islam, they accept Jesus Christ as a prophet preceding Muhammad. But the biblical values are present in the religion and to a high degree in this man's example. I left, Qur’an in hand, with little doubt why I was called to write this book.

Why Me, O Lord?
Reflecting on that call, I remembered when I called my long-time friend, Tom, a Catholic priest living in California, after I had accepted the call to be baptized in a local African- American Baptist church. He had come to visit me a month earlier, and I had taken him to church with me. Tom had majored in music in his undergraduate schooling, and I had heard the blues-rock band he had formed play some mean music. So I thought he would enjoy the whole gospel experience, which proved true. But when I called to tell him that I had accepted
the invitation to be baptized, he was overwhelmed. “You’re such a broad thinker. You’ve read Merton, the Taoists, you’ve worked the Course in Miracles. It just never occurred to me that you’d ever be baptized and particularly not in an Evangelical church!”

He continues to check on me to make sure that this step was one of growth and not one of regression. He always expresses his relief when the answer is that I am still Leslie and am still growing.

I experience my membership in the body of Christ. I don’t know whether it is a symptom of my having been raised in what I perceived as a repressive church or just my unwillingness to be tied down, but I feel myself a member of a much larger body than can be contained in any church structure or doctrine. I am often invited to speak at churches not of my denomination, ranging from the most conservative to the most liberal. All have greeted me kindly. I attend daily morning prayer with a different denomination than I attend most Sundays,
and I participate in a Centering-Prayer group in yet another denomination one night a week. I have included that practice in my meditation period at home.

I believe that it is not the Christian religion alone that is commanded not to judge, but at the same time to seek discernment. And most of all, we are commanded to love our fellow man. But I believe we must know each other before we can love each other, so this book is offered as an introduction and an invitation: Let’s meet at the crossroads of spiritual maturity.

Method to my Madness
I interviewed thirty-three individuals whom I thought could well represent spiritual maturity for a specific religion, ethnic group or spiritual practice, and later determined that three of the interviews would not further this work. Therefore, most of what follows is based on thirty interviews, in which I received answers to nine, ten, or eleven questions based on the experience of the interview subject. Being an entrepreneurial type, always fine tuning my aim
after I have begun shooting, I didn’t firm up my questions until the fourth or fifth interview. So there is some variation in answers. Some questions used in the interviews needed further explanation or elaboration. Since my study wasn’t statistical, I tried to make the interview casual, conversational. Some of the respondents were quite expansive in their speaking, while others were terse. I recorded the conversations and then transcribed what was recorded. I found the material valuable. It is my hope that you will, too.

For the most part, the people were asked the following questions:

What is your definition of spiritual maturity?
What are the characteristics of spiritual maturity?
How do spiritual maturity and psychological maturity relate?
How about moral maturity?
Does spiritual maturity require a group or can it be attained alone?
How do you guide or support others in attaining it?
Are there stages in progressing towards it?
Is there a relationship between spiritual maturity and social action?
How does spiritual maturity interact with the culture and vice versa?
Are there institutions or churches that promote more or less spiritual maturity?
Where are you individually along the path?

Piles of Paper on the Floor
“What happened here?” exclaimed a friend, as she walked into my living room, which had become the center of the organizing phase of my project. Piles of paper, computer printout from thirty interviews, appeared to be strewn about the floor. At that point in time, the project seemed like a massive problem. How could I manage it?

I got out my magic markers and began reading the transcriptions, marking all answers to the first question, “What is spiritual maturity?” with the bright green marker. I then put similar answers in piles, seven of them. Wow! This was going to be harder than I thought.

Some other categories emerged as I continued to re-read the interviews. The answers fell into three broad categories: People responded with answers that were loosely about individuals (themselves and/or others), about people’s relationship with God, or answers that were given in theological terms. But sorting these required basic decisions. For example, although some of the pastors defined spiritual maturity in terms of their relationship with God, they talked about it in a much more theoretical/theological way. So I included them with the theological grouping. Eventually, I was comfortable with this process of sorting.

I moved on to the next question and gathered up the three piles of the first question to start the process over again. The answers to, “What are the characteristics of a spiritually mature person?” were much more varied than the answers to the first question and presented
new problems. This one appeared to be truly unmanageable. I couldn’t list all the people who agreed on one certain characteristic. That would need a computer to calculate and would be dry and boring in the reading. Two answers, however, stuck out: one by a woman who
teaches spiritual direction, and the other by the member of Alcoholics Anonymous. They were both, in my opinion, marvelous discourses. I decided to give them in their entirety, and then give examples of the other qualitative and anecdotal answers given by the remainder of the
respondents. After that, the organizational project got easier.

With the ninth question, “Are there stages of spiritual growth?” for example, the respondents fell into two categories I call, “forest people” and “tree people.” The forest people see the big picture, the ups and downs, the struggles, but caution, as did the Catholic priest,
“As soon as you demarcate them [specific steps], then it’s going to be something that I’m going to want to accomplish. It’s better for me to recognize stages in retrospect.”

The tree people are just looking with more focus; some because of training, some because it is their nature. These vary from the woman who compared the stages of spiritual growth to the three stages of Moses’ life, to the pastors who have watched their congregations,
to the member of Alcoholics Anonymous who referred to a 1000-point scale.

The last chapter of the book is devoted to another interview, but not on spiritual maturity. A friend, who had referred me to the Sufi, called while I was taking these interviews. She had just returned from Washington, D.C., and a visit to the Holocaust museum. As she told me about her visit, I was transfixed. It was a powerful experience.

After pondering what she related, I left messages on both her answering machines at work and at home, asking her to repeat her experience of visiting the museum for my tape recorder. She called early the next morning. So I close this book with her picture of the
possible cost we incur if we insist on clinging to and vigorously defending our own beliefs and judging those who do not agree with them.

There is great diversity in the narratives in all of these chapters, which imlies that no one can single-handedly represent his denomination or practice. These are merely the views of each pilgrim on the road to spiritual maturity–I hope, together they provide a glimpse of the whole elephant.

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