Women religious are called to evolve to the inter-individual stage

As we navigate the journey from an institutional stage to an interindividual stage of development, women religious would be wise to heed the insights of Bob Dylan and Walt Whitman. This, in addition to turning to God, the fellowship of saints, and the support of one another, could add profound depth to the journey.

Human developmental psychologist Robert Kegan, in his book The evolving self, has noted that everyone on the planet is affected by this universal evolutionary movement. We don’t really have a choice. We are already moving. We can only choose How we are moving: what we keep and what we let go.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries have been both revolutionary and evolutionary. Our heated physical environment and its impact on all beings are clear. If planet Earth is to sustain life, we must change our attitudes and adopt radically new habits. So a warning from Dylan is worth thinking about: ‘Life is not about finding yourself, or finding anything. Life is about creating yourself.” But so does Whitman’s proclamation: “I celebrate myself and sing myself.”

Kegan tells us that evolving to the interindividual stage will only be beneficial if we welcome others into our “space,” celebrate them as they “sing themselves,” and work with them to meet the changing needs of all creatures.

To accomplish this demanding work, women religious will have to take good care of themselves as individuals and as a community. They will have to be perfectly collegial and inclusive.

Fortunately, they have the ability to do this because they have collective wisdom gleaned from years of experience. Moreover, they can rely more strongly on their feminine instincts than they could do during the institutional phase of individual and communal development.

To be successful, women religious will also need to nurture their creative, courageous spirit, which must begin with increasing their tolerance for contradictions, paradoxes and ambiguity. Because the way they were formed and lived their daily lives for decades was characterized by permanence, security and unquestioned acceptance. There may have been a tension between what they longed for and what they could actually do, but they had reason to believe that they were accomplishing the will of God.

The Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965 opened the door to a new view of religious life, based on both original charisms and contemporary realities. But at the same time, institutional thinking limited what could actually be changed. Moreover, strong responses on the part of select members of the Church and society – including some women religious – undermined anything but superficial changes.

Nevertheless, women religious are still called to evolve to the inter-individual stage. It is a bidirectional phenomenon. It is ‘inter’ in the sense of honoring and integrating all members of the human community. It’s not exclusive. And it is “individual” in the sense that it requires women religious to remain themselves and allow others to do the same.

The “good news” is that the integration of these two directions will yield a positive result. It will enable sisters to reach new levels of intimacy with themselves and with others.

Ambiguity will turn into certainty, as one thing will merge with its opposite, Notre Dame Sr. assures. Melannie Svoboda us in When the Blue Heron Flies: Prayer Poems to Nourish the Spirit:

Learn to live with ambiguity, with blurred lines, blurred edges,
flowing seams where one thing turns into the opposite.
Be patient with all that is uncertain in your life.
Enjoy mixtures, make friends with apparent opposites,
don’t be in such a rush to get closure every time.

The “bad news” is that adopting a “both-and” attitude and way of making meaning is psychologically challenging. It sounds good in principle, but if you want to put it into practice you have to be very flexible and careful: willing to stay with contradiction, paradox, uncertainty and ambiguity until consensus is reached.

Women religious in general will therefore need to develop new skills in the field of civil dialogue. They will need to change their hearts to overcome their tendency to be achievement-oriented and discouraged and/or angry when “things take too long.”

Kegan’s advice should be helpful. Kegan recommends that one make a conscious effort to be creative by being curious and playful. By reframing serious work as play, one will become more comfortable with not knowing. It will reduce anxiety if one fails to determine meaning until the completion of the process in which one is involved approaches.

Kegan assures one that the best chance of ultimately arriving at workable solutions depends heavily on acclimating to a sense of flow. Recognizing constant change is more realistic than believing it will end with a new solution.

In fact, Kegan, along with prophetic writers like Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, Abraham Maslow, Teilhard de Chardin, Carl Jung, and Lawrence Kohlberg, say that in time we will have to resonate with yet another evolutionary movement. It will be a spiritual stage: a union of the human with the divine Other, God.

From a psychological perspective, women religious will indeed benefit from keeping in mind that going through developmental stages is a given for human beings. “The fundamental basis of personality is evolutionary activity,” Kegan writes.

Back to the tasks to which women religious are called today. They need to stop being achievers who want to achieve. They must become ‘beings’ who are interpersonally and intimately connected. They must have the intention to be themselves and give others the same opportunities.

Furthermore, they are called to live with contradiction and paradox and embrace the tension between them. Instead of driving them away and forcing a common solution to the problems, they should respect the differences until they are truly oriented and nourished by them. Because all people are a unique icon of God. All are members of one human community. They all potentially contribute to our understanding of the Creator’s will and plan.

Some practical examples of what women religious need to work on:

• They remind themselves that even an evolutionary movement of development involves to some extent the death of an old self for the sake of the birth of a new self, as Svoboda says.
• We must remember that “all transitions involve leaving behind a consolidated self before a new self can take its place,” in Kegan’s words.
• Take better care of yourself psychologically and physically by expressing yourself all emotions as close as possible to the moment they experience them.
• Finding physical ways to express emotions, because “nature intended that all emotions lead to immediate physical activity,” as Dr. Helen Flanders Dunbar explained. Consider dancing to express selected emotions.
• Replacing winning over others by co-designing win-win solutions with them.
• Solving problems by working together all involved rather than doing so alone or with selected others.
• Increasing the time they spend gathering information before drawing conclusions through brainstorming.
• Being curious increases comfort with the tension inherent in paradox and contradiction. For example, they can ask those they find difficult to love how they can do so better.
• Deepen their tolerance for ambiguity by listening to others with openness.
• Be more creative in coming up with solutions.
• Where possible, make solutions provisional by identifying times and/or occasions when they can be re-evaluated. Kegan says that every shift in evolutionary growth involves “putting into perspective what was considered the ultimate” and making the conscious choice to do so.
• Weakening their tendency to judge and condemn by coming up with more than one or two hypotheses about why they and others have opinions and act in certain ways. Then systematically test these hypotheses.
• Resisting judgment, as Kegan advises, by saying to others things like, “I can’t judge you as bad or wrong.” Likewise, you can resist affirming a judgment by saying something like, “I can’t affirm what you’re doing.”