The Fourfold Journey
The metaphor of journey is especially helpful in times of exile. Attentiveness to four paths, in particular, helps to nurture and nourish the leader as poet and prophet:
- The Inward Journey in the formation of Core Identity;
- The Upward Journey in the shaping of Character;
- The Outward Journey in the discernment of Call; and
- The Forward Journey in the development of Competencies.
Socrates said: Know yourself. Cicero said: Control yourself. Jesus said: Give yourself. Taken together, these three aspects of development become the means by which leaders are shaped to live and serve as poet and prophet in the context of exile. Indeed, they are inter-dependent, for one cannot give of oneself without first knowing and thereby controlling oneself.
The task of the inward path is to know ourselves. Through the upward journey, we learn to control ourselves. With the outward journey we are set free to give ourselves. With the forward journey, we come to live not just for ourselves, but also for the Shalom of the communities to which we have been sent in exile. Dag Hammarskj�ld once said that, "The longest journey is the journey inward." Perhaps that is why so few make the journey. All too often, the development of leaders is focused on the acquisition of functional competences, rather than the shaping of the person. The heresy of the urgent would have us believe that we don't have time for the inward journey, for knowing ourselves. Yet we will not be able to endure the pain of exile, let alone lead, apart from knowing ourselves.
Knowing ourselves involves looking at our lives from a developmental (mental), systemic (emotional), and socio-religious (spiritual) perspective. Imagine a pair of trifocals in which one is able to view (and thereby understand) one's life from three different horizons: distant, intermediate, and near. On the near horizon, we attend to our development through the intentional living of key questions: Who am I? What relationships have shaped my understanding of self? What are my gifts? What is my legacy? Moving to the intermediate horizon, we come to understand ourselves through the lens of our relationships. The distant horizon of the socio-religious lens allows meaning to emerge as Meta narratives inform our understanding of self and help to shape meaning out of our existence. The vehicle by which to understand these three horizons of the inward journey is that of story.
Jim Loehr speaks to the importance of leaders knowing their stories, especially in times of exile: "Stories impose meaning on the chaos; they organize and give context to our sensory experiences, which otherwise might seem like no more than a fairly colorless sequence of fact. Facts are meaningless until you create a story around them."[1] Narrative knowing is different from analytic knowing. Narrative knowing helps us to deal with the complexities of human experience that cannot be understood by the rational mind alone. Stories provide the means by which to live with contradiction, compromise, conflict and even crisis. Leaders cannot help others to make sense of the present chaos, unless they have done so themselves. We are what we remember. But our remembering requires a willingness to engage the whole of our stories. In a society that shuns weakness and rejects failure, this is risky work. Yet it is essential work for those called to lead others through the wilderness.
The challenge, of course, is that all of us carry within ourselves false stories. Unless we take the time to name our false narratives, we will likely impose our biases, blindness, and fears upon others. Jim Loehr underscores this: "Unhealthy storytelling is characterized by a diet of faulty thinking and, ultimately, long-term negative consequences... hardening of categories, narrowing of the possibilities, calcification of perception."[2] False stories literally reconfigure our neural pathways. One cannot serve as poet and prophet when one's beliefs are rooted in a flawed understanding of self and world. Intimacy, generativity, and integrity are all born of claiming the whole of one's story. Only as we engage our shadows, will we come to accept the reality that we carry within us both weakness and strength, good and bad, are we able to nurture compassion for both self and others?
Cicero said: Control yourself. As daunting as the inward journey can seem, the upward journey is perhaps the most challenging and yet most liberating. As the White Queen said to Alice in Wonderland: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." While knowing one's story is a start, the leader must also attend to the formation of character born of learning to control one's emotions. The upward journey challenges the leader to address the reality of shadows and name wounds in need of healing. Without compassion born of knowing our story, it is not likely that we will bear compassion into the lives of others. Unless we take responsibility for failures and choose to be healed, we will inflict our own unresolved issues upon others. Rather than create the means by which to live in the midst of doubt, we will seek certainty. Rather than engaging the pain that results in true transformation, we will choose instead the temporal relief of quick resolution.
The upward journey calls us to be attentive to our yearning for wholeness in the face of our own brokenness. It prepares us to confront the gaps between the ideal and the real within ourselves. Through the upward journey, we learn how to hold anxiety and live in the midst of ambiguity. When we claim the whole of our story, when we dare to name the shadows within us, we are able to control ourselves, even in the midst of exile. It is then we are set free to give of ourselves in a profound way. In the words of Florida Scott Maxwell: "You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done you are fierce with reality."[3]
Jesus said: Give yourself. As we are intentional about the inward and upward journeys, we are set free to give of ourselves through the outward journey. The problems facing our communities are acute and real. The governance and structures we have built are not sustainable, nor do they bear life. Economic, environmental, and social ills demand a response. Yet, we must remember that there is no quick fix. There are no technical solutions that can be learned from an instruction manual. There is no map or GPS technology to route our way. Instead, we must embrace the liminality of our time. In times of exile, we need poets and prophets who move us beyond the false belief that our world is unchangeable to claiming our responsibility to seek the Shalom of the communities to which we have been sent in exile. The learnings of the first two movements of the fourfold journey can never be fully realized apart from the second two movements: our Shalom is dependent upon the Shalom of our communities. Ultimately, for our gifts to be fully realized, they must be used in service to people and planet.
We are created to give. Each one of us has a need to contribute to the common good. Yet, we cannot fully give of ourselves, apart from knowing our strengths and passions. When reflecting on call born of the outward journey, I am reminded of a profound insight shared by Peter Drucker: "Most people think they know their gifts; they are wrong." Such an insight underscores the need and importance of both assessment and mentoring in the discernment of call.
Yet, even as specific assessments are helpful in coming to understand temperament, gifts and passions, and preferences with regard to change, call takes shape and form in the context of community. For this reason, we need seasoned guides to help in the discernment of call. Ultimately, "call is an invitation to wholeness, a spiritual prompting to complete the work of love that we are here to do."[4]
Know. Control. Give. Live. It is as simple and difficult as that. When we dare to make the fourfold journey, we find ourselves secure in our core identity, our character grounded in integrity, and our call born out of the intersection of our strengths and gifts with the world's needs. It is then we are able to guide others to seek the Shalom of the cities to which we having been sent in exile, because we know in the very fiber of our being that in its Shalom will be our Shalom. It is then we are able to live for the sake of people, planet and profit!
Deborah Rundlett, general presbyter
[4] Bankson, Marjorie Zoet. The Call to the Soul. (Philadelphia: Innisfree Press, Inc., 1999), p. 19.