Let me review our series, “Forming Faith Over a Lifetime”. As spiritual people, we experience different stages of faith as we go through life, from infancy to adulthood. They are like points on a spiral path that goes around a mountain repeatedly as it goes up the mountain. We carry the strengths of each stage into our future.

These movements of faith describe not what a person believes, but how a person shapes their belief.

Movement from one pattern to another is fueled by change. When the answers provided by one way of thinking no longer satisfy, the person is pushed into new thinking that offers more complexity, more flexibility.

Last week, I describe the 4th stage of taking responsibility for our beliefs, of owning our own faith. This is the time of life in which we struggle to articulate, “I believe!” We talk about how lonely and confusing this transition is for most people. We affirm how important it is to have a community that isn’t afraid of questions.

Today we explore Stage 5, the faith of midlife and beyond. This is the stage of life that Marcus Borg calls “post-naiveté”, a return to simplicity. Yet, the simplicity is born out of the struggle to build a personal faith. The simplicity comes from surviving the tragedies of life. The simplicity emerges on the other side of complexity.

(IMAGE: TOPO MAP OF CRYSTAL PEAK)

One of the purposes of our thinking is to provide us with a map of what we experience. So it is with our faith-thinking. The Bible, and creeds, and songs are all maps charting the experiences of people who are in relationship to God.

Stage 4 believers want the map to be as true as it can be, with all the correct facts, with boundaries carefully drawn, and everything neatly in place. In this new Stage 5, it is as if the believer leaves the map and returns to the territory that the map has charted, the territory being the experiences that are the very stuff of faith.

This is a topographical map of Crystal Peak in Summit County, near Breckenridge.

The map charts the contours of this 13,852’ mountain. The lines of the map show changes in elevation, the closer together the lines, the steeper the contour of the land. You can see that the west and north faces of the mountain are very steep because the map lines almost touch. Running to the northwest is a narrow ridge upon which hikers can access the summit.

(IMAGE: TOPO MAP OF FRANCIE’S HUT)

This map shows the location and shape of the land around Francie’s Hut, one of the backcountry cabins of the 10th Mountain Division, near Crystal Peak. Rev. Dave hosts the recent Mountain Spiritual Retreat in this location, August 11-14. Note that the cabin is located in an area full of meadows. You can tell because the lines are quite far apart, indicating relatively level ground.

Stage 5 persons discover that their maps are limited in capturing the beauty of the landscape.

(IMAGE: FRANCIE’S HUT)

This is the trail approaching Francie’s Hut. The former map lacks the ability to communicate the colors of the meadow, the smell of the forest, the breezes cooling the sweat-soaked shirt under the weight of the backpack, and the sense of accomplishment at a hike completed.

(IMAGE: CLIMBING)

Believers in this stage of faith also sense that something in addition to maps is needed to put one in touch with the fullness of reality.

This is the climb to the summit of Crystal Peak. My husband tells me that there is no way that a map whose lines are getting closer together can prepare you for the steepness of a boulder field at that elevation. Three steps. Stop and breathe. Three steps. Stop and breathe.

(IMAGE: GROUP)

In this season of faith, there is a readiness to surrender to the vastness of God, like living life from the summit of a mountain peak. Seekers recognize that God meets different people in different ways at different times. Multiple pathways lead to what is Holy.

IMAGE: (DAVE ON CRYSTAL PEAK)

This is a season of rest and reflection. This is a season when the traumas of life can be embraced as lessons for the journey. God’s goodness can be profoundly trusted. God’s grace is worthy of worship and life’s devotion.

(IMAGE: CLIMBING DOWN)

Diverse companions accompany each other on the spiritual journey. Each tells a story. Each sees God in different ways. The dialogue is rich. Many different communities of people feel like home.

(TEXT SLIDE) WISDOM OF AGING: All of our “maps” are incomplete.

All of us know people who have matured well, whose wisdom we seek when we need a listening ear.

I have dinner several weeks ago with Bishop Mary Ann. Her husband, Jeff, once tells me that when I get to know Mary Ann better I will discover that there is one word that describes her faith. That word is “yes”. Mary Ann is so at home in her own faith that she can give any new idea a fair, non-judgmental hearing. Mary Ann knows that all of our maps for thinking about faith are incomplete. They are limited in capturing the depth of faith.

(TEXT SLIDE) Surrender to God.

Persons in this stage are able to surrender their lives to the richness of who God is and ways God loves the world. These folks walk for peace, volunteer with Hospice, hold the hands of the dying, seek Muslim and Jewish friends. They worship just as easily among atheists and evangelicals. They seek new learning, so they make great teachers.

(TEXT SLIDE) Deep appreciation for symbol.

Stage 5 persons are open to the possibility that symbols like the cross, bread, or light can communicate in ways that are deeper and more powerful than the most scholarly descriptions. They are aware of the depths of knowing something within themselves that defies the description of language.

(TEXT SLIDE) Beyond intellect in a felt sense of God.

Faith-knowing, which at Stage 4 is chiefly intellectual, becomes open to a felt sense of God, a knowing which can be apprehended only at deeper levels of awareness than reasoning provides. This does not mean that the reasoning gained in pursuing one’s own faith is sacrificed. Rather there is a personal expansion and deepening of knowing beyond anything yet attained.

(TEXT SLIDE) Comfortable with difference.

At Stage 5, the believer is ready for dialogue with others who also have deeply felt convictions about what they believe. A Stage 4 encounter of this type would result in an argument or debate, each person becoming more convinced that his or her viewpoint is the only correct one. At Stage 5, there is interchange, even openness to conversion, and at least some learning of new ways to look at things.

(TEXT SLIDE) Is open to many new “conversions”.

This stage calls for understanding, literally “standing under” where the other person is standing, and seeing the world from that vantage point. Only the person who has confidence in her or her own positions of faith will be able to engage in such dialogue freely and openly.

I have always imagined the writer of the book of Hebrews in this season of life. In Hebrews, Jesus is no longer simply a person whose teachings inspire devotion. He becomes a symbol of laying down one’s life for all people. The writer wants Jewish Christians to know that Jesus can be trusted, that Jesus can reveal the heart of God.

After the litany of the faithful, he asserts that one form of religion cannot be made perfect, cannot have complete understanding, without those who have gone before. He implies that persons who follow different pathways to God need each other in order to know God. He suggests that we can treasure the differences between people without any need to change them.

(IMAGE: PENDANT)

Last year, my Wednesday evening Disciple Bible Study Class gives me a pendant that suggests this connection. The Jewish menorah and the Christian fish come together to make the star, connecting both traditions through the lineage of David and Jesus. The pendant says that Jews and Christians are brothers and sisters in faith.

The gift that persons in this season of life give to others is SOUL-FRIENDING. A soul-friend is a spiritual companion, a mentor. In the Celtic tradition, every pilgrim has a soul-friend with whom they can share their struggles. The soul-friend is able to shape another’s heart without imposing, pressuring, or coercing. In return, the soul-friend delights of a younger companion.

In the movie, Finding Forrester, Jamal Wallace, an aspiring writer, become friends with the author, William Forrester. In the face of much personal loss, Mr. Forrester withdraws from life. In the mentoring of Jamel’s writing, William lets go of his pain as Jamal finds his own voice in the written word. When Jamal is accused of plagiarizing, he protects Mr. Forrester’s identity. Mr. Forrester comes out of hiding to clear the name of his young friend. As the scene unfolds, Mr. Forrester has just read a newly-composed work to the students. A scene from Finding Forrester.

Persons in the wisdom of aging can build the family of God by soul-friending, by living easily in the contradictions of life, and holding the hands of the young.

It is a season of integrity, of letting go, of trusting God’s voice, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”