The Call to the Soul: Six Stages of
Spiritual Development
by Marjory Zoet Bankson
Philadelphia: Innisfree Press, 1999. 192 pp. Paperback.
Reviewed by Sharon
Billings
To
all in EEWC, Marjory Zoet Bankson is one of us.
We have experienced her over time: her artfulness with
sculpted clay, shaped concepts in the form of plenary addresses,
the healing of reconciliation through our organizational
separation in 1986, her wisdom and inspiration on the printed
page.
And
now, in our present age of instant technology, with concerns as
weighty and enormous as our global community (where is Atlas when
we need him!), she has discerned our compensatory need to turn
inward and offered us her thoughts on the Call to the Soul.
Marjory
brings her Biblical and classical education to describe the six
stages of development experienced while discerning God's call upon
our lives.
She proceeds using three lenses: (a) the life cycle of
call, (b) adult developmental stages that correlate with the four
questions: Who Am I? What Is My Work? What Is My Gift? What Is My
Legacy? and (c) the specific personalities and behaviors of both
Esther and Gideon during their respective calls, as recorded in
Scripture. It is a web, woven in such a pattern as to capture some
part of each of us.
Soulwork
is an engaging concept at the present time, attracting numerous
authors and popularizing the field of spiritual direction across
denominations. This book is an invaluable contribution to the
discussion.
Many
of us find life astounding—unbelievable
sometimes—even as we are staring at the facts. But, can you
imagine being Esther, plucked from anonymity and raised to the
highest female position in the land?
Marjory has. And she takes us with her, integrating faith
and lifework. Some of our inherited theologies have suggested this
process would be easy, knowable, expected; but Marjory deals more
humanely with us.
Acknowledging
first our Resistance, she highlights our tendencies to deny our
own strengths.
She follows with the second stage: “to reclaim from the
unconscious collective of past associations who we truly are. . .
.We will have to recall past connections, reweave the story of
past history, and recover gifts that connect us to family, to
work, to nature, to God. . . .We seek the form behind our
skills—the original seed of the call, the DNA of our souls"
(pp. 64-65).
In
stage three, Revelation, we begin moving forward,
as “we glimpse another dimension where possibility
abounds and fear is, for the moment, overtaken. . . .we can see
the whole from a divine perspective. . . . There is a struggle
between caution and custom, between what we ‘know’ and a brief
glimpse of something larger than ourselves” (p. 84).
Hallelujah!
It can't come too quickly, can it?
Silence becomes our companion, healing and expansion the
results.
We have likely been asked to trade in our practiced
defenses for the larger benefit of responding to Mystery.
In
this newly idyllic state, we need to brush up on our mythology,
for here comes The Poison River.
Testing, stripping down, confrontation conspire.
“We arrive at the river bank, naked of what has sustained
us in the past,” Marjory writes, “and we must find a way to
trust the unknown future, even when our logic says no!” (p.100).
If I
may editorialize: our logic does not just say
no.
It shouts
no!
But the call of consciousness is stronger, and we plunge
in, accompanied by a community of those who are also underway.
Stage
four is one of those four letter words: Risk.
Action. Outward declaration. A time to take a stand.
This is where separation might occur from old friends, from
people invested in maintaining the status quo.
Here's a charming thought: “If the Innocent's question of
God in Stage One is 'Who are you?' then God's question of us in
Stage Four is,
'And who are you?’”
In this birthing state, a midwife is welcome, new rituals are
desirable, and Spirit becomes a “living, breathing form of
being. Soulwork drops down to the belly, where breathing centers
the body in a deeper kind of knowing and creativity can be
sustained—even though the final form is not yet assured”(p.
123).
To Relate,
ah joy!
“That is the essence of Stage Five—discovering and
building those surrounding relationships.” As a newborn baby
impacts the whole, everyone around us is affected by our
transition in some way.
One
of the outcomes is that new community emerges, offering communion,
accountability, service. (Marjory's long relationship with Church
of the Saviour in Washington DC provides one model for this
expression.)
Enough complexities accompany to invite new skill building
in leadership, kinship, “wrestling with the ambiguities of power
and opposition. We are called to stretch beyond what we have done
in the past.”
The
resulting experiences of celebration, grief, lived life may cause
us to find satisfaction, a home among our now chosen family,
answering—possibly exceeding—the unmet longings from our
biological families.
And
finally, “completing the cycle of soulwork means integration,
endings, release.” Release!
Do we even need to know Marjory's version, or can we at
this moment just reflect upon our own experiences of this glory?
In
Release, much is left behind. But what arrives is the concept and
experience of servant leadership.
Unattached to our own previous agendas, we are now freed
unto the present, opening ourselves to what is, and learning to
release what has been dear, while embracing faith that something
else is possible.
We
learn that we do not own anything, that nothing is permanent,
concludes Marjory.
Amen says the reviewer!
The
last chapter “Headwaters,”
means exactly what its title conjures. Let's conclude with
Marjory's exact words: “At the point where the last stage of the
soulwork cycle touches the first stage of the next round,
trickling headwaters mark the passage between the three public
stages at the end of one soulwork cycle and the more private
stages at the beginning of a new cycle, where a new call must
incubate inside once again”(p. 165).
And
finally, the Marjory we have known since 1985 as President of
Faith At Work, uses her last 13 pages to offer a fully detailed
weekend Soulwork Cycle Retreat.
Bless
you, Marjory!
Reviewer Sharon Billings, Council member and former EEWC Coordinator,
writes that her review came from her heart and her humanity as
well as from her studies and work in psychotherapy, feminist
spirituality, and spiritual direction.
© 1999
Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus |
