Stages of Faith: Tides and Spirals

Stages of Faith: Invitations, Not Instructions

What if the way we make meaning shifts and flows—like tides rather than steps?
The idea of stages of faith can be helpful, not because it tells us where we “should” be, but because it shows us the diverse ways humans experience and explore meaning. These frameworks offer gentle maps—not rating systems—for understanding how we and others might be engaging with spirituality at a given moment.

Rather than labeling anyone or measuring spiritual “progress,” these models invite curiosity. They help us, as spiritual companions, offer invitations and questions that resonate with the way someone is currently making meaning.

Gentle Models, Not Judgment

The idea of stages of faith can be used like a bludgeon or used to denigrate types of meaning-makeing. Some models are deeply infused in the 'white savior' or modernist world views. As with any model, seek out more than one to shake up your assumptions, and stay open to real, lived, experience.

A stage of faith isn’t a rank. It’s not about being more advanced or enlightened. It’s just one lens for understanding how a person—sometimes a child, sometimes an elder—makes meaning, seeks connection, and responds to the sacred.

We move in and out of stages. Life challenges, spiritual experiences, trauma, and growth can all shift how we relate to our beliefs and practices. Even within one day, we may dip into different modes of spiritual meaning-making.

Understanding common patterns can help us travel beside others more gently.

Sandpiper beach, Waldport Oregon Photo by Hawthorne Post

Key Models of Stages of Faith

Fowler’s Stages of Faith

James Fowler’s classic work maps six stages of faith development, from early intuitive experiences through reflective and universalizing faith. His work, based in Piaget’s cognitive development theory, comes from a particular time and culture, but still offers a foundational framework.
📘 Summary: https://deep-psychology.com/stages-of-faith-james-fowler/

Ken Wilber’s Integral Stages

Wilber’s “holonic” model emphasizes how each stage includes and transcends the one before. He charts stages from egocentric awareness to deep transpersonal insight. His work can be especially helpful in understanding post-rational and pluralistic spiritualities. For me, his work opened my mind to the idea of stages as a spiral instead of stair-steps. 
🌀 Summary: https://www.institute4learning.com/2020/02/05/the-stages-of-life-according-to-ken-wilber/
🔍 More detail (in Ken Wilber's words): https://web.archive.org/web/20230606092815/https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/integral-spirituality-2/
🌱 Reflection blog: abeltaine.blogspot.com/2017/09/thats-primitive-sorting.html

Other Models of Spiritual Growth

There are other helpful models, some drawing from world religions, psychology, and personal development.

• Kirstie Pursey’s Seven Stages offer accessible language around awakening and integration:
  learning-mind.com/spiritual-growth-stages

• Roger Gabriel’s Seven Stages (Chopra Center) blend Eastern and Western spiritual frameworks:
  https://www.consciousevolution.tv/spiritual-evolutionary-training/the-7-stages-of-spiritual-development-the-chopra-center.php

• (As a Counter-Example) M. Scott Peck’s model as summarized by Inas Younis:
  patheos.com/blogs/altmuslim/2018/03/five-stages-of-spiritual-growth

• Unitarian Universalist metaphor-based models offer poetic imagery for unfolding spiritual lives:
  uua.org/tapestry/youth/wholeness/workshop2
  Google Doc UU metaphor model

Why It Matters for Companionship

When we sit with seekers, these models can help us tune into what kind of meaning-making might be most resonant. For example:

• Someone in a mythic-literal stage may find comfort in ritual or traditional stories.

• A reflective explorer might need space to question inherited beliefs.

• A transcendent stage seeker might speak in metaphor or paradox.

We don’t need to diagnose a stage. But we can listen for how someone makes meaning and offer tools, stories, or silence accordingly.

Quinto do Regleira, Sintra, Portugal Photo by Hawthorne Post

Trauma and Shifting Stages

People healing from trauma may revisit earlier stages, question previous certainties, or struggle with the concept of “faith” altogether. That’s not regression—it’s sacred work.

Stages of faith models shouldn’t be weaponized. Instead, they can offer us gentle language for being present with explorers exactly where they are, helping them uncover which metaphors, stories, or questions feel life-giving now.

'Initiation Well' at Quinto do Regleira, Sintra, Portugal Photo by Hawthorne Post

Try It: A Reflective Practice

Choose one of the stage models above. As you read:

• Ask yourself: What resonates? What doesn’t?

• Where do you perceive yourself right now?

• What invitations might be helpful to someone who makes meaning differently than you?

Remember, these aren’t “levels.” They’re languages. Try to attend to what each stage is trying to say about the sacred.

Beloved, you are whole, holy & worthy,

Rev. Amy

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For Further Exploration

• Fowler, James. Stages of Faith – A foundational model of faith development, exploring shifts from childhood belief to universalizing faith.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240528184134/http://www.psychologycharts.com/james-fowler-stages-of-faith.html

• Dillard, Joseph (summary). Understanding Wilber’s Developmental Stages – A helpful overview of Ken Wilber’s framework and its implications for spiritual practice.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250315101928/https://www.integraldeeplistening.com/understanding-wilbers-developmental-stages/

• Pursey, Kirstie. The Seven Stages of Spiritual Growth – Clear and simple stage descriptions grounded in self-discovery.
https://www.learning-mind.com/spiritual-growth-stages/

• Gabriel, Roger. The Seven Stages of Spiritual Development – Describes an inward journey of unfolding wisdom through multiple traditions.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240808024230/https://chopra.com/blogs/personal-growth/the-7-stages-of-spiritual-development

• Beltaine, Amy. That's Primitive Sorting – A personal reflection on how the Wilber model supports multi-tradition spiritual growth.
http://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2017/09/thats-primitive-sorting.html

• UUA Tapestry: Stages of Faith Development – Introduces a poetic, metaphor-based framework used in Unitarian Universalist formation.
https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/youth/wholeness/workshop2/167602.shtml

When the World is on Fire: Why Spiritual Care Still Matters

Not everyone has to be a fire fighter to put out a fire. Some of us have to be water carriers.

When authoritarianism rises, when rights are stripped away, when the fabric of society frays—what is the point of tending to small things? What is the point of spiritual care when fascism gains ground?

The answer is simple, but not easy: the work of spiritual care still matters. In fact, it matters more.

Naming the Tensions

In a moment like this, we’re pulled in many directions.

• Panic: Drop everything. Scream. Mobilize.
• Grief: Lie down and cry. Lose faith in what we do.
• Numbness: Pretend it’s not happening. Keep busy. Keep scrolling.
• Determination: Carry on with work and routines as if nothing has changed.

And for those of us whose work centers around care, spirit, healing, and justice, there’s an added tension:

How do I do this work now? Is it selfish to keep tending to my practice, to my livelihood, to my own healing while the world is burning?

Burning dumpster at George Floyd protests in Washington DC, Lafayette Square by Rosa Pineda CC4.0

Yes, Your Work Still Matters

I want to say this clearly: spiritual care is not a luxury. It is not optional. It is not secondary to “real” resistance.

Spiritual care is part of resistance.

The practices we offer—presence, reflection, discernment, connection, grief-holding, joy-tending—these are what keep people human in the face of dehumanization. These are what make the difference between despair and determination, between burnout and resilience.

If you’re a caregiver, a healer, a spiritual companion, your work is part of the resistance. You are offering people a lifeline. You are helping them find their ground when the world is shaking.

Personal Crisis in Public Crisis

And what if your personal life is also unraveling? What if you’re navigating divorce, illness, poverty, grief?

Well, of course that is happening. Life is still “life-ing.”. That’s not a disqualification. That’s part of the truth.

Your heartbreak does not make your care less valuable. It may, in fact, deepen it.

Your questions about what to keep, what to let go, and what to rebuild—those are holy questions.

There’s no shame in regrouping. There’s no shame in starting over. There is no shame in needing care and offering it. We are in this together, and none of us is immune to the ache of these times.

So How Do We Go On?

• Gently. With ourselves. With one another. With the work.
• Imperfectly. Trusting that “enough” is still sacred.
• Creatively. Letting old models go if needed, experimenting with what still resonates.
• With discernment. Listening for what’s real, what’s needed, what’s yours to hold.

Try This

1. Set a timer for ten minutes.
2. Ask yourself: What part of my work still feels alive?
3. Write down whatever comes. Don’t judge.
4. Then ask: What needs to rest? What’s worth tending now?

You’re not alone in this.

The work of care—spiritual, emotional, communal—is never easy, and even less so in times of crisis. But it is still ours to do. Not perfectly. Not endlessly. But with presence, with honesty, and with courage. The world may be on fire, and still, we keep lighting candles. Not to deny the dark, but to remember we are not forsaken. Our work remains. We remain. Let’s keep tending the sacred together.

Beloved, you are whole, holy, and worthy,

Rev. Amy

The Sacred Fire of Anger

Making Friends with Anger

A reflection for spiritual companions and seekers alike

There is a kind of fire that burns clean.

Too often we are taught to fear anger. To suppress it, silence it, spiritualize it away. We are told that “good” people are calm, measured, forgiving, never furious. Especially those of us socialized to be caretakers—women, queer folks, BIPOC, disabled folks—we are often expected to bear injustice quietly, or at most with polite critique.

But righteous rage is sacred. It is holy energy. It says: this is not okay. It fuels resistance. It fuels change. And it can also fuel care.

Fiery outline of the word LOVE, CC0

When my mom was dying of cancer, I found myself filled with an anger that surprised me. Anger at the disease, at what it was stealing, at the helplessness of it all. But that fire lit something in me. It gave me the energy to speak brave, vulnerable words to her—words I might not have dared if I’d only stayed in grief or numbness. 

Anger gave me the energy to show up for an abused elder, advocating for his safety and doing what needed to be done to remove him from the dangerous situation. That anger didn’t turn violent. It created boundaries. It was fierce love.

Anger doesn’t have to mean harm. In fact, when we repress it, that’s when it turns inwards—into shame, illness, bitterness. But when expressed wisely—at the right time, in the right way—it can open doors to healing and justice.

Woman holding torch with blue background, CC0

Sometimes I curse to myself—mutter sharp words, swear under my breath, or speak with a kind of fire that helps move the energy through me and out. It’s not always pretty, but it’s honest. These words are often born of a need to stay grounded, to give form to my anger so it doesn’t fester unspoken. Anger, after all, is movement—it wants expression, wants release. In those moments, I don’t fear the heat of my words. I let them rise, trusting that even rage can be sacred when it flows rather than festers.

And sometimes I joke that I want to cast a curse. But not a curse meant to cause misfortune or harm. No, the curses I imagine are acts of transformation. A spell like: “May you be filled with compassion.” Or: “May you feel how your words land on someone’s spirit.” Or: “May the next person you try to insult surprise you with their dignity.” These are the kinds of spells I want to send into the world—fierce and clear, rooted in care. They arise from a place where anger meets love, where the commitment to change burns just as hot as the outrage itself.

As spiritual companions, we often sit with those whose anger is tangled up in grief, trauma, or injustice. Our role is not to calm them down. Our role is to hold space for their fire, and help them discern how to use it. Anger might be the very thing that empowers someone to set a boundary, or to leave a toxic system, or to speak truth after a lifetime of silence.

Welcoming fire in stone fireplace, CC0

In a world that is constantly offering reasons to feel powerless—racism, transphobia, climate crisis, war—it is anger that can move us from despair to action. It is anger that interrupts complacency. And it is anger, strangely, that sometimes helps us love better. Because we care that much. Not the kind of love that is about being nice, or even kind, but fierce love—the kind that tells the truth, that shows up, that protects the most vulnerable. The kind of love that makes change.

May we give ourselves, and those we walk with, permission to feel angry.

May we learn to channel that energy into courageous compassion.

And may we honor the sacred fire—not to destroy, but to illuminate the path toward justice and wholeness.

Beloved, you are whole, holy, and worthy,

Rev. Amy

Kindness in a Time of Claws

Searching through the Rubble for Kindness

When layoffs were sweeping through my workplace many years ago, I watched people I had thought of as kind and decent become cruel. Colleagues who once smiled in the hallways began hoarding resources, undermining one another, and snapping at anyone they perceived as vulnerable. I was shocked—and to be honest, deeply disillusioned. It was one of my earliest adult encounters with how fear and scarcity can twist people.

I did some reading at the time, trying to understand. The answers were complicated—and they still are.

Image Credit: Bonsales, Shutterstock

I want to believe people are good. Some might call that Pollyanna-ish, especially when we’re surrounded by cruelty, bullying, or indifference. But even if some people lose their way, that doesn’t mean we should stop believing in goodness—or trying to practice it ourselves.

Recent research reveals that in disasters, many people do rise to the occasion. Sociologists studying natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes have found that people often show extraordinary generosity and cooperation—what some call catastrophe compassion. When the world collapses around us, many of us build communities rather than barricades.¹

But that’s not the only pattern. When people feel threatened—whether by job loss, cultural change, or political power shifts—they can also behave like trapped animals. They snap at the hands trying to feed them or free them. This isn’t just metaphor. Neuroscience tells us that when we perceive danger, our amygdala (the threat detector) overrides the parts of our brain responsible for empathy, reason, and long-term thinking. We go into survival mode.²

That’s where we find ourselves now. I see this in the MAGA faithful. I see it in those who are drawn to fascist ideologies—even those who would be targeted by such regimes. It’s disheartening. And infuriating. And painful.

But it may also be fear.

That doesn’t excuse hate. It doesn’t mean we don’t set boundaries. But it may mean that kindness—real kindness, the kind that is rooted in strength, courage, and healthy boundaries—has more power than we think. That gentleness is not weakness. That compassion doesn’t mean avoiding the truth, but facing it with dignity.

We can be good even when others are not.

And sometimes, people surprise us. Even those who’ve lashed out in pain may, someday, reach back in peace. I’ve seen it happen. It may not be everyone. But it might be someone.

What about bullies?

Bullying isn’t always about cruelty for its own sake. Psychologists point out that many bullies act out of a need for control, fear of being powerless, or a belief that harshness is the only way to be safe.³ In the same way that political extremism can become a hard shell around fear or shame, bullying can be a survival tactic that outlasts the original threat. But people can grow beyond it. What helps? Real relationships. Accountability. New narratives about who they are and what strength looks like. I’ve seen it happen. People can soften. People can change.

So let’s practice kindness—not just for them, but for ourselves. Let’s find refuge in our own integrity. Let’s be the kind of neighbor we’d want to search for in the rubble.

Try It: Reflecting on Courageous Kindness

• Recall a time when you felt backed into a corner. What helped you not lash out—or helped you return to kindness later?

• Is there someone you’re tempted to write off as “irredeemable”? What do you imagine they’re afraid of? (This doesn’t mean excusing harm, nor putting yourself in harm's way—but it might offer insight.)

• Practice one act of proactive kindness today—especially one that’s a bit uncomfortable. Kindness is easy when you think someone deserves it. Real courage shows up when kindness is not returned.

You might find grounding in this practice:

https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/04/metta-meditation-holding-infant.html

I'd love to receive your responses to this. It is a challenge to balance kindness with boundaries, a passion for justice with compassion. What's working (or not working) for you?

Beloved,

You are whole, holy, and worthy,

Rev. Amy