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.
Why it works
Fowler’s 1991 abstract defines faith through three things a person holds: a center of values, images of power, and master stories. Writing the master story and the power you picture behind it moves that frame from something you see through to something you can look at, which is the precondition for examining it. This mechanism is an inference from the 1991 definition and has not been tested against outcomes.
How to do it
- Finish three different versions of this sentence: “Things work out when…”.
- Name the power you picture when things go wrong: a person, a principle, chance, yourself, or something larger than you.
- Write the story your family or community told about how life goes, in one paragraph.
- Mark the sentence you would still say if the people listening were different.
- Write one line describing the story you would choose to live by, and what it would ask of you.
Evidence
Fowler’s 1991 abstract defines faith in terms of each person’s center of values, images of power and master stories. Turning that definition into a writing exercise is an inference, and the exercise has not been tested. (mechanistic)
Cited from the article’s indexed abstract; the full text was not read. The abstract gives the definition and says nothing about the outcomes of this exercise.
Sources
Common mistake
Treating the story you were handed as the truth about the world, or swapping it for a new story in a single sitting. The exercise makes the frame visible; it does not require replacing it.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Related concepts
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Ego Development Theory: What It Is and How It Is Measured
The frame you make meaning through, how researchers measure it, and how to work with it without ranking anyone
- Spiral Dynamics, Made Practical
Understanding how value systems develop and how to navigate across them
- The Self-Transforming Mind: Kegan’s Fifth Order, Made Practical
When your own way of seeing becomes something you can look at, question, and let be changed
- The Construct-Aware and Unitive Stages of Adult Development
Seeing the self and its stories as constructions — what it looks like, how rare it is, and what it does not promise
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
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