From the amorphoseness of primal faith to the capacity for paradoxical thinking of conjunctive faith, there has been an ever deepening and expanding embrace a world which has become larger with each turn. A child moves first from awareness of self and caretaker as an extention of self to the awareness of other in the form of parents and family. Discovering institutions and the roles of authority and peer groups a child's circle of relation continues to grow to include friends and associates beyond the nuclear family. Expanding even futher the adolescent or young adult begins to recognize her/his larger society and life within the public arena until s/he reaches an awareness of out world community.
As a human being reaches this completing stage of universalizing faith s/he turns her/his perspective from awareness of the world towards a consciousness of the manifestation and embodiement of God in all that is. The person of universalizing faith moves beyond the inter-dependent self sacrifice that Kegan speaks of in his final stage of the relational interindividual self, towards a willing self surrender or kenosis (i.e. self emptying) for and with God. This is a level of faith which has moved beyond a beliefabout God to a deep abiding in God.
It may be important to note that few human's reach this state of faith, for with this capacity to regard the holiness in all life, the arbitrary boundaries of race, nationality, region, class, gender, etc cease to hold the meanings our world uses to justify its nationalism, greed and violence. It seems that for most of us the security of our roles and ego identities hold us back from the decentralization of self that this level of faith demands. However, as children of God/dess created to strive toward deepening communion, may we be reminded to turn to the simplicity of the prayer which asks:
