Tn the 1980’s several scholars critiqued developmental ideas about faith, and also the focus on defining adolescence as being about independence. In short, some of this critique was about the male tendency to always see the spiritual as the “other”, as external, or something to be attained. Thanks to Erikson and other theorists, identity became about separation from one’s parents and the forging of independence.
These people including, Carol Gilligan and Gabriel Moran, I think quite rightly suggested that spiritual growth might be just as much about interdependence and integration. To see spiritual growth as a web is to see it not about as going somewhere else, or becoming more independent, or even about becoming someone other than who we are. The web as a metaphor is about the divine being with and within us, and about deepening interconnectedness. It is about an inner journey of discovery the sacred in who we are being directly connected to an outward journey of discovering the sacred in others.
So ‘web’ spirituality is about becoming who we really are, about the kind of wholeness that comes with a true integration of our being, and this can’t happen without a corresponding growth in mutual connectedness and community with others. For people who experience this, process and presence are important. Spirituality is not a personal journey, it is a shared experience. I suggest that this kind of spirituality is vocational, because it can’t be separated from the whole of your life and who you are, it is about being more that doing – you see it as encompassing all of your person and your relationships.
It seems to me that people in this arena seek and value companions, not to ‘go somewhere’ with, but to ‘be’ with in the mystery of relationship and community. A web also has connecting points – nodes or hubs – so hosts who provide relational, spiritual and physical spaces to ‘be’ are necessary and valued. If you think that think metaphor has a feminist sense to it, you’re absolutely right. But I also think of it as environmental or ecological – it’s about the integration of who we are with other and our world.
Where have you experienced this notion of spiritual growth as a web?
Where are you called upon to be a companion or host?
