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3 Metaphors for Healthy Spirituality (Part 5): The Tricycle

March 13, 2021 / Matt McMann / 0 Comments

As a kid, I had a Big Wheel.

With the aptly named big wheel in front and two smaller wheels in back, I was the king of the driveway. Little did I know that almost fifty years later, my tricycle toy would become a powerful metaphor for healthy spirituality.

Today I’m sharing the third and final metaphor of this series – The Tricycle. The Cosmic Egg gave us a map of reality with My Story, Our Story, and The Story. The Three Boxes showed us how to travel across that map via the Order, Disorder, and Reorder Boxes. The Tricycle metaphor helps us navigate whichever Box we find ourselves in. I extend my appreciation once again to author and teacher Richard Rohr for each of these teaching tools.

Picture a tricycle. The front wheel is Personal Experience. One back wheel is Sacred Stories, and the other, Tradition.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

We can define Personal Experience as the summation of our everyday, real-life encounters. Things we see, hear, feel, taste, touch, smell, and do. Interactions with people and our environment. Pleasures we savor. Hardships we endure. Events, actions, and memories we recall with fondness or regret. These are our Personal Experiences.

SACRED STORIES

Sacred Stories are the cherished, revered, perhaps even idolized source materials of spiritual systems. The Quran of Islam. The Talmud of Judaism. The Bible of Christianity. The Vedas of Hinduism. The Tripitaka of Buddhism. The Book of Mormon of The Latter-day Saints. The creation stories of indigenous people groups. These are writings and oral histories from various spiritual perspectives that try to answer some of life’s biggest questions – where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? How should we live?

TRADITION

Let’s define Tradition as the way people attempt to apply Sacred Stories to their lives. Each spiritual system has its own prayers, services, liturgies, rituals, ceremonies, styles of dress, and ways of doing things. Tradition is the history of how past adherents have tried to understand and live out a particular brand of spirituality.

BALANCE YOUR WHEELS

Some spiritual systems emphasize Personal Experience, some Sacred Stories, and others Tradition. The metaphor of The Tricycle teaches that a healthy spirituality embraces them all. Importantly, it places Personal Experience as the front wheel because that is our primary way of understanding the world. Our myriad of experiences are unique to us and incredibly formative, shaping our worldview in profound ways.

As important as Personal Experience is, it’s also crucial to know our place within our Sacred Stories and to learn the lessons they teach. And why we would ignore the hard-won wisdom offered by those who have gone before us through Tradition? Without all three components, our spirituality will be out of balance. We won’t get far on a tricycle that’s missing a wheel.

HOW THE TRICYCLE METAPHOR HELPED ME

When I was in my period of deep spiritual struggle (you can read that story here), The Tricycle metaphor gave me the gift of validating my Personal Experience. I recognize that depending too much on my own experiences, without healthy external reference points, can lead me to believe in false realities. But without Personal Experiences in the lead position, other problems arise.

Here’s an example. The evangelical Christian system I’ve been in most of my life places its Sacred Story, the Bible, as the front wheel. And not just the Bible, but that system’s particular interpretation of the Bible. So whenever I had real-life personal experiences that ran counter to the Biblical interpretation my system taught, it caused me a lot of confusion and stress. That’s what led me into the Disorder Box, as I shared in my last post. When I finally rotated the wheels on my spiritual Tricycle, placing Personal Experience at the front, with strong support from Sacred Stories and Tradition in the back, I found my way to a healthier spirituality.

WHERE THE TRICYCLE HAS LED ME

If you’re wondering where my spiritual Tricycle has led me, I’ll share some of my current thinking based on my own experience. I believe that we all come from God‘s love, exist in God’s love, and will be welcomed back to God‘s love when die. I believe that God is in everyone and everything. This allows me to look at all people as my spiritual family, even those of another faith or who claim no faith at all. I can gaze at creation and see, as Saint Francis did, “Sister Moon” and “Brother Sun.” This is not pantheism, a belief that everything is God, but panentheism, a belief that God is in everything.

RIDING YOUR TRICYCLE

So how about you? Which wheel is at the front of your spiritual Tricycle? Does a rotation need to be made? Are you out of balance? Is there a wheel missing? Prioritize your Personal Experience. Know your Sacred Stories. Honor your Tradition. Remember The Cosmic Egg. Work through The Three Boxes. Balance the wheels of your Tricycle. If you do, you’ll find your way to a healthy spirituality, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

For more on these ideas, I highly recommend Richard Rohr’s daily email mediations and Another Name For Everything podcast.

3 Metaphors for Healthy Spirituality (Part 4): The Three Boxes

March 6, 2021 / Matt McMann / 0 Comments

Fair warning – the second Box is not fun.

Now that I’ve introduced the series, told a story of my spiritual struggles, and unpacked the metaphor of The Cosmic Egg, I’ll share the second metaphor that guided me through my deep spiritual fog – The Three Boxes. While this analogy can resonate with anyone who practices spirituality, I think it’s especially applicable to those who have a history with an organized religious system.

Imagine three boxes sitting on a table. The first box is labeled Order, the second Disorder, and the third Reorder. Each box represents a stage on the journey to a healthy spirituality.

THE ORDER BOX

When we’re young, we need order. Structure. Rules. Clear direction. In the Order Box, things are black and white. There is no gray. The benefit of this stage is clear when we think of how we raise our children. We teach them to always be kind and eat their vegetables, but to never lie or run into the street. The subtleties of exceptions to those rules would be lost on them. Our early days in a spiritual system are often similar, especially in highly structured ones. We are given the rules. What’s true and what’s not. What’s right and what’s wrong. Everything is communicated with an air of certainty. A clear sense of Order provides the structure and stability needed for a safe, secure foundation.

While the Order Box is a helpful and probably necessary place to start, at some point its rigid simplicity begins to show. Life is complicated. Humans are messy. A certain belief that seemed reasonable when presented in a religious service makes less sense when you’re doing life with a co-worker. The “right” belief begins to feel somehow less loving than the “wrong” one. People don’t fit neatly into the categories our Order Box creates for them. Goodness and grace pop up in unexpected places. We start to question what we’ve been taught, and once we pull on that thread, a lot can unravel. At this point, we face a choice – run back to the safety and simplicity of the Order Box or climb willingly into the Disorder Box.

THE DISORDER BOX

The Disorder Box is where we get serious about examining our spirituality. This space is rife with confusion, doubt, and frustration. Anchor lines are cut. Support pillars are toppled. Previously unquestioned beliefs are placed under a microscope. Where the Order Box is all about construction, the Disorder Box is all about deconstruction. It’s a very unsettling and disorienting place to be.

I had one foot in this box for decades. In the early days, it started with me parting ways with more traditional Christian teachings on gender roles, then on homosexuality. I jumped fully into the Disorder Box seven years ago, and wrestled with such topics as the the validity of other faiths, the existence of hell, the impact of evolution, the role of the church, and Biblical interpretation. It was a lonely, frightening, and difficult journey, one I don’t think I could have faced without a small group of spiritual confidants who helped me process my doubts.

While in the midst of feeling adrift in this roiling spiritual sea, a friend recommended the writings of Richard Rohr. His daily email meditations became a lifeline, exposing me to a spirituality that had its roots in my own Christian tradition, but had grown beyond it in compelling ways. When I read about his metaphor of The Three Boxes, I realized I was sitting squarely in the Disorder Box. And while that was still an uncomfortable place, learning that it had a name and was a necessary stage of spiritual growth made all the difference. It was like I’d been suffering from a vague, unknown illness, and had finally found a clear diagnosis and a path toward recovery. I doggedly continued analyzing and sifting, searching and discovering.

THE REORDER BOX

That process led me to the final stage – the Reorder Box. The swirling silt began to settle. The waves started to calm. Soon the fog thinned, and I spied a new coastline on the horizon. Deconstruction complete, I examined the rubble around me. Recovering the aspects of my former worldview that had survived honest scrutiny, and adding new treasures I’d discovered along the way, I began to rebuild. What emerged was a more humble, satisfying, and vibrant spirituality, one strong enough to embrace both diversity and mystery.

It’s been several years since I climbed into the Reorder Box. I can honestly tell you that it’s a wonderful place to be. The prize is more than worth the struggle. I have a deeper peace, a more resilient joy, and a greater love than I had before. Not to mention the confidence and relief born of having faced my demons and overcome.

THE OTHER SIDE

This cycle of Order, Disorder, and Reorder is not a one-time occurrence on the road to healthy spirituality. To differing degrees, it returns in various seasons. But for me, I believe the foundational shift has been made. As I go through The Three Boxes in the future, my experience will make the path clearer. The journey will be easier knowing how much better it will be on the other side.

NAMING YOUR BOX

So which Box do you find yourself in? Remember that all three are necessary and have their seasons. Today’s wonderfully freeing Reorder Box may become tomorrow’s constricting Order Box, leading you on another trip through the cycle. But have no fear. You are in good company. The path has been well traveled, and the reward is worth the struggle. Next week, I’ll share a final metaphor to help you navigate the Boxes – The Tricycle. Until then, examine your spirituality honestly. Work on what you find. Climb into the next Box. Invite trusted companions to share the road. If you do, you’ll find your way to a healthy spirituality, and take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

For a deeper look at The Three Boxes metaphor, I highly recommend Richard Rohr’s The Three Boxes meditation and his podcast Another Name for Everything.

3 Metaphors for Healthy Spirituality (Part 3): The Cosmic Egg

February 27, 2021 / Matt McMann / 0 Comments

The best egg I’ve ever had is a cosmic one.

In part one of this series, I laid the foundation. In part two, I told a story of my spiritual struggles. In this post, I’ll share the first of three metaphors that helped me through those difficult years – the Cosmic Egg. I learned about the Egg from author and teacher Richard Rohr, who adopted it from The Crack in the Cosmic Egg by Joseph Chilton Pearce.

Picture healthy spirituality as an egg. The center yolk is My Story. The white surrounding the yolk is Our Story. The shell containing the whole is The Story. The three Stories form a collective whole, one nested inside the other like the parts of an egg.

The yolk of My Story

Most of us begin life almost exclusively focused on the yolk of My Story – my needs, my desires, my dreams, my ego, my hurts, my personality, my agenda, my problems, my experiences. The lens through which we view life is largely self-referential. Our first thought about most things is, “How does this affect me?” This is a normal and necessary starting point for virtually all of us.

The egg whites of Our Story

As we hopefully mature, we move into the egg whites of Our Story. In this stage, we begin to identify more strongly with our place inside of groups. Our family, our state, our country, our race, our religion, our gender, our team, our occupation. We learn to better interact with others, to compromise, to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. We experience both the benefits and the difficulties of belonging to a larger unit. In addition to our My Story view, we now see ourselves and the world through the lens of our associations.

The shell of The Story

If we continue our growth journey, we finally move into the shell of The Story. Containing both My Story and Our Story, The Story is where we move beyond the biases and limitations of our identity groups. We recognize not only our personal shortcomings in My Story, but also the failings of Our Story, realizing at last the essence of The Story – that all of humanity and creation is an interconnected whole, held together by something bigger than us all. What that something is depends on what you believe. For me, it’s God. The Story is the realm of transcendent meaning where we find the highest virtues to which we aspire – unconditional love, real forgiveness, deep humility, true self-acceptance, authentic goodness, unshakeable peace. These lead us to a total, loving inclusion of everyone and everything, including ourselves.

A Unified Whole

Each of the three Stories is good and necessary, one building on the next. The skills acquired and lessons learned in the smaller stages prepare us for the larger ones. Each must be experienced. There is no “spiritual bypassing.” And once The Story is encountered, the goal is not to eliminate My Story or Our Story but to hold them as a unified whole. Like three notes sounding in harmony, they collectively bring beauty and color to our life’s music. That is a healthy spirituality.

Even if we’ve done the hard work necessary to reach The Story, there is no static state where we can declare, “I’ve arrived.” We slide in and out of that sense of wholeness all the time. But with experience, we can more quickly recognize when we’ve slipped into too much My Story thinking, which leads to narcissism, or too much Our Story thinking, which leads to being judgmental and exclusionary. It becomes easier to once again focus on The Story and work our way back to a unified whole.

How The Cosmic Egg helped me

The Cosmic Egg metaphor clarified my spiritual struggles and helped me understand why I’d grown increasingly dissatisfied with some of mainline Christianity’s teachings. While Our Story gives much needed context to My Story and a wonderful sense of belonging, it also opens the door to the great danger of thinking that OUR Story is THE Story. This is the trap I’d fallen into – believing that only the Our Story of Christianity provided the true path to The Story.

I had a desperate need for a stranglehold on the truth. To be right. To have all the answers. Because if someone else’s spiritual Our Story was equally valid, then my Our Story must be wrong. It took me a long time to realize that my exaggerated Our Story view was blocking my full understanding of and appreciation for the beautiful inclusiveness of The Story. The God whom I now find at the heart of The Story is bigger, more amazing, and more loving than my previous worldview allowed me to imagine.

Eating The Cosmic Egg

Unfortunately, an overly inflated view of Our Story isn’t unique to me or to Christianity. We see this on full display in American politics and culture. White nationalism is a glaring example of an Our Story gone horribly wrong. The belief held by former president Trump and some of his most ardent supporters that the 2020 election was stolen from them, without evidence, is another example of an Our Story creating its own false reality. While those are recent examples, inflated Our Story problems can be found in virtually every political party, country, religion, and group.

The metaphor of the Cosmic Egg provides a wonderful path to healthy spirituality, but as the above examples show, the painful difficulty often comes in moving from one stage to the next. In my next post, I’ll share a second metaphor that helped me make those transitions – The Three Boxes.

So where are you in The Cosmic Egg? How’s your balance of My Story, Our Story, and The Story? What does your version of The Story look like? How do you live it out? Chew on these questions. Talk about them with people you trust. Have the courage to take an honest look in the mirror. If you do, you’ll find your way to a healthy spirituality, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

For a deeper look at the Cosmic Egg metaphor, I highly recommend Richard Rohr’s Cosmic Egg written meditations and podcast on Another Name for Everything.

Becoming Yourself