Centers of value: answering the four questions in writing
Write down what you give your life to, who you are committed to in life and death, what you hope for, and who you share your most sacred hopes with.
Perché funziona
Fowler treated faith as the quest for meaning organized around centers of value, and he held that these need not be religious or spiritual. Writing answers to questions that surface those centers separates the centers you name from the ones your commitments already show. Mallery and Mallery (2022) describe meaning in Fowler’s model as derived from how a person relates to the centers that matter most to them.
Come farlo
- Set aside twenty minutes and write, not type, one answer for each question.
- For “what do I give my life to”, list what your calendar and bank statement already show, not what you admire.
- For “who am I committed to in life and death”, name people, causes or places, and write what that commitment costs you.
- For “what do I hope for”, write the hopes that would still matter if no one ever saw them.
- Circle the one center that appears in more than one answer, and write a sentence on how you relate to it.
Prove scientifiche
The questions come from the interview framework behind Fowler’s model, as paraphrased by Mallery and Mallery (2022). Those authors propose a self-report scale built around these centers and report exploratory factor analyses (a statistical way of grouping questionnaire items that move together). The exercise itself has not been tested. (mechanistic)
The four questions are a paraphrase of the interview concerns Mallery and Mallery set out, not verbatim interview wording. Their 2022 sample was college students at a Christian university plus US online-panel participants, and the authors note that cross-cultural universality cannot be examined with it.
Fonti
- Mallery, S. T., & Mallery, P. (2022). Centers of value and the quest for meaning in faith development: A measurement approach. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 975160.
- Fowler, J. W. (1981). Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Errore comune
Answering with the center you think you are supposed to have, often the one your family or community approves of, rather than the one your time and money already show.
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Altre pratiche per James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, Made Practical
- Faith timeline: mapping what you trusted at each age
Draw your life as one line and mark, age by age, what you trusted to make sense of things and where that trust changed hands.
- Master stories: naming the story you were handed about how life works
Write the story you live by, and name who or what you picture holding the final say when things go wrong.
- Retelling one disagreement from the other side
Write your position on one unsettled disagreement, then write theirs well enough that they would recognise it as their own.
- Mapping the circle of people you feel close to
List the people you feel most responsible to and close to, and mark which of them hold a belief or value that differs from yours.
- Holding two frames at once without picking a winner
Name the two ways of making sense of one question that both feel partly true right now, and write what each one still gets right.
- Talking with someone about a conviction you do not share
Ask someone who holds a conviction you do not share what it protects for them, repeat their answer back until they say it is right, then say what you still hold.
- Asking whether an old frame still fits this moment
When you notice yourself reaching for a belief you were raised with, ask whether it fits the situation in front of you, and write what the situation actually needs.
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