I loved science fair projects when I was a kid.

Everything about them was appealing – finding a big question to ask, figuring out what I could do as an experiment to answer that question, researching about why the answers might be important and how they could be applied, and working to present the whole thing in a beautiful and engaging way. It felt like doing something truly meaningful, like somehow my trifold display board with its construction paper letters was contributing to the overall knowledge-base of humanity.

My first-ever science fair project was in grade six. I decided that I was going to grow bean plants, and my test was going to determine which kind of water made the plants grow best. I had four groups of plants – one group was watered with the potable water from our tap, the second group with distilled water that we bought at the grocery store, the third with melted snow from our yard (it was very early spring in northwestern Ontario, so there was plenty), and the fourth with “backwashed” water saved from our periodic filtration of our well water.

I predicted that the very best option would be the distilled water, because it was the cleanest and most pure. If that was the gold-standard for water for us humans to drink, surely the beans couldn’t disagree! I figured that the lineup of best results to worst would be: distilled, tap, snow, icky-looking backwash. I was quite proud of my hypothesis and was absolutely certain that it was correct.

To my parents’ everlasting credit, they gave me no hints or prompts, nor did they try to sneakily lead me to one hypothesis or another. They just said, “Okay, let’s see what happens,” and so I strode forth, a 10-year-old scientist petitioning the universe for its secrets. 

Of course, growing bean plants was a long, slow process. My project had no flashy instant drama like the frantic gush of a baking soda volcano or the gooey smash of an egg that reached its breaking point under a stack of bricks. And yet, over time, there was growth. As I paid attention, I could sometimes see differences in my plants from one day to the next. Pretty soon, the results were making themselves quite clear.

I had been wrong.

One group was far and away the healthiest, lushest, tallest plants, and that was the group that got the gross-looking brown backwash water. One group was far and away the weakest and limpest, and that was the group that got the distilled water.

How could this be?! I was gobsmacked that I had gotten my best-to-worst list entirely backwards. Surprise surprise, the water that I had praised for its perfect purity had had all of the minerals and bits of organic material removed. It left the plants hungry. And the sludgy brown backwash mess – the water that we would throw away each month as waste – was packed full of those things.

I was sorely tempted to do a little “revisionist history” with my hypothesis and submit the project as though I had been right all along. Problem was, my sixth-grade teacher was in fact my own dad, and he would be well aware that I was playing fast and loose with the scientific method. So I had to start my conclusion with those very humbling words – “The results showed that my hypothesis was wrong.”

In my faith journey over the last 15 years or so, my soul has been repeating those words to me. “The results are showing that my hypothesis was wrong.” Sometimes as a faint whisper, sometimes with operatic power. Ideas of what purity meant, ideas of what flourishing spiritual life meant – doxa and praxis that I had thought was universally, irrefutably applicable – wasn’t working. I could see growth and abundant life outside of that more than in, and it rattled me.

Ten-year-old me staring at my hand-drawn bar graph glumly felt that all in all, this meant that my experiment was a failure and therefore I was a failure as a scientist. In my thirties, looking over my theological roots felt much the same. And beans are one thing, but my whole worldview and concept of God was another.

But my dad, who truly was an excellent teacher, offered some wise correction to my disappointment about the bean-growing project. “The best science doesn’t come from confirmation of what we already assumed,” he said to me. “When scientists try something and it doesn’t end up the way they had expected, that’s where the real discoveries happen. You just have to be humble enough to not take it personally, and curious enough to say, ‘Okay. So what does this mean?’”

It would have saved me a great deal of spiritual anguish through my thirties and early forties if I had been able to apply this wisdom to my faith as well – but it’s very hard to find objectivity when you’re examining your own spiritual path. Especially so when there’s a competing internal voice that shouts, “THIS IS BACKSLIDING.”

Recently I happened across an article about the work of James Fowler, who was a psychologist, a theologian, and a Methodist minister. Fowler researched and wrote extensively about what he defined as the “seven stages of faith”. We’re very familiar with the idea of developmental psychology, and Fowler argued that the same concept should be applied to spiritual growth over one’s lifetime – in other words, developmental faith. I was so captivated by this idea that I ordered his book, Stages of Faith, immediately.

When I got to the chapter covering Stage 5, what Fowler called “Conjunctive Faith”, I wept. It was as though the chapter was written about me specifically – I think there are more sentences in that chapter that I underlined than those that I didn’t. Fowler didn’t see my struggles as “backsliding” or even, using the popular and less pejorative term, as “deconstructing”. I was moving forward in the development of my faith, becoming open to construct more complexity into my spiritual journey. I was recognizing that the simplicity of my distilled-water faith framework was not as life-giving as the nutrient-rich, messy waters of divine Mystery.

Fowler’s writing helped take away the last bits of pain that I felt in saying, “I was wrong,” and truly let me move into, “Okay. So what does this mean?” 

Right now, what it means to me is a call to keep pursuing the humility and curiosity to embrace discovery, to be well watered, and to celebrate growth in myself and others.