The House of My Soul is Small...

Many years ago I began regularly praying a prayer of St. Augustine's: "The house of my soul is small; do Thou enter in and enlarge it..." I believe God hears these simple and sincerely repeated prayers and He has been answering this prayer for me bit by bit (and continues to do so). I've discovered that having my heart enlarged is costly but more than worth it. I want to have a heart that is increasingly like His - large and able to encompass all people of all types and ethnicities and persuasions.

I recently read a wonderful book on human development by James W. Fowler, Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian in which he brings together theology and developmental psychology and practical ethics to show how communities of faith can support and nurture individuals as they shape themselves and are shaped.

Fowler presents seven stages of faith in human development, the last one being one in which the follower of Jesus begins to see and value other beings from the standpoint of the loving Creator rather than from the standpoint of a vulnerable, fearful, defensive creature.

I found this book very helpful for understanding my own growth and also that of others who I have the joy of mentoring. The seventh stage of faith is, I believe, the answer to this prayer of St. Augustine's: "The house of my soul is small; do Thou enter in and enlarge it."

In this post I will simply list the seven stages of faith and in the following weeks I'll go through each one more carefully, explaining each one as Fowler presents them. The seven stages he proposes are the following:
1) Primal Faith - the infant stage: a simple faith of basic trust
2) Intuitive-Projective Faith - the toddler stage: when perception, feelings and imagination make up the child's principal ways of knowing
3) Mythic-Literal Faith - stage when a child starts to school: a faith that relies on "the stories, rules, and implicit values of the family's community of meanings"
4) Syntheic-Conventional Faith - early adolescence stage: cognitive development comes here and causes the child to become self-conscious as he/she is more aware of the fact that others think differently than they do
5) Individuative-Reflective Faith - young adult/adult stage: process of "objectifying, examining, and making  critical choices about the defining elements of their identity and faith"
6) Conjunctive Faith - mid-life stage: growing sense that "truth is more multiform and complex than most of the clear, either-or categories" of earlier stages
7) Universalizing Faith - mature adulthood stage: a faith that is the "fruit of a person's total and pervasive response in love and trust to the radical love of God"