A Labyrinthine Journey

It doesn’t take much to convince people that we are in a time of crisis. Many of us have been struggling with things for a while, but in the last few months (and longer) our entire society and our world-wide system has been disintegrating through circumstance and invasive anxiety. It doesn’t take much for us to be afraid, does it? While there are many ways we can exhibit anxiety and fear, this latest crisis has hit our pocketbooks. (Other crises in our history hit other parts of our relationships and culture, this one has attached itself to our finances). We see it in reduced spending and company layoffs. We experience it with foreclosures and the perceived terror of the markets. In our congregation, this is the first year in many when December donations did not catch up the expenses of the year. The weather can accept some responsibility, yet I think we are afraid to give.

As I began my ministry, I was formed by the writings of Edwin Friedman on Bowen Family Systems theory (his foundational book is Generation to Generation: Family Process is Church and Synagogue). His ideas about how church families functioned and eventually his ideas about leadership are in my core. He died of a heart attack 13 years ago while writing A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. I have a well-worn copy of the first edition that his widow and some friends published themselves, while I was doing continuing education with them in Bethesda in 1999. That book comes off the shelves of my library more than most books. Every time it does it becomes God’s gift to me again.

For Ed, the “key to the kingdom” in leadership was to recognize the pervasive nature of anxiety that is present in crisis and to respond in a non-anxious way that leverages crisis into growth and positive change. History is filled with times when crisis led to short-term disintegration, but out of the ashes a greater strength was found (US Civil War, World War II, are only two examples).

As I consider the anxiety we face through our current state of crisis, we have a choice to make. Will we give into the fear and anxiety that pervades our media and culture or will we use this crisis as an invitation of faith to step up and see what strength we already have through Christ. God calls us to not simply survive but through the Holy Spirit to do greater things for God’s glory.

To offer practical help to live more in that freedom, I share a list of “Principles of Functioning” that Ed Friedman has in his chapter on facing crisis (A Failure of Nerve, p. 302 in the October, 1999 edition as published by the Estate of Edwin Friedman).

• Keep up your functioning; don’t let crisis become the axis around which your world revolves.
• Develop a support system outside of the work system, such as professional helpers, family, and friends.
• Stay focused on long-term goals.
• Deep breathing, prayer and meditation.
• Listen to your body
• Watch the triangles.
• Work out the balance between being responsible for self and being labeled obstreperous [stubbornly defiant].
• Keep the system loose with humor.
• It’s time to make decisions when the same question brings no new information.
• Accept the possibility that one’s own functioning brought it on, which means that one may be able to influence one’s recuperation.

Let us Trust in God’s love more than we believe in the Fear that paralyzes us!

Every few weeks I have the privilege of writing a column for the church page of our local newspaper. Below is this week’s submission. They don’t know it, but I will tell you that it is based on the 9 points of the Enneagram. (beginning with 1 going all the way to 9). I hope you like it.

Welcome to 09! With a new year, we are reminded of the invitation that is always there to choose new attitudes and new directions for our life. In honor of the Ninth year of this new Millennium, I want to offer 9 ways toward wholeness and holiness.

• Look for and honor the God-given good in others, thus freeing yourself and them from the weight of judgment and resentment.
• Be more compassionate to yourself just as you are compassionate toward others. Remember that it is a good thing to allow others (and even yourself) to care for you.
• Accept that your life is worth the world to God (John 3:16-17). Because of God’s promise of grace look forward to each new day with hope and anticipation.
• Take some time to listen for God’s dreams in your life. Find the way for God to create those great things in and through you.
• Be more open to how others can help you as well as how God uses you to help others. Remember the equation of love: the more you are open to give, the more you are open to gather.
• Accept the promise of God to love you abundantly (John 10:10). With courage, face the hard times of life with God’s presence and strength that supports, holds, and guides you.
• Make time each day for laughter and play with others: family members, old friends, and hopefully new friends.
• Be more generous and merciful toward those nearest you who are sometimes the hardest ones to me generous and merciful toward: family, friends, and neighbors. Because Jesus is generous and merciful to you, you are able to share freely.
• Accept the promise that God loves you (John 15:9). Spend more time each day nurturing that love relationship with God.

Remember that any day of the year can be the start of a new life with God’s love.

What are some of the basic spiritual questions we all share? Does my life have meaning? Am I left alone and helpless or do I have enough for life? Where do I find wholeness?

As I started studying the Enneagram I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to keep track of all the various traits and characteristics of the different types. I also come to the enneagram from the perspective that it helps provide an orientation map to the energies of life, the spiritual and emotional system that helps to motivate us and form our living.

At a certain point I began to see patterns. Patterns of 3 that interwove themselves together to give us our own particular place in the world. I found looking at 3 patterns of 3 to be most helpful. The first is the 3 archetypal corners of the Enneagram. The second brings in the work of Karen Horney and her strategies for coping. The third comes from Don Riso and Russ Hudson and present our preferred ways of dealing with conflict, what they call the Harmonic Response Triad. More on the latter two triads, but I want to begin with what I see as the Core Corners of the Enneagram: the Archetype Corners.

I use the term archtype to show these 3 Core questions or energies as universal. Every one of us as  we embark on our spiritual journey keep dealing with these 3 Core energies throughout our life in various forms. Yet, we each have a Core question that we keep returning to again and again. Almost as if it becomes a tether for the kite of our spiritual life, we never leave it (or any of the other Core energies) behind. It is almost like an area of greatest vulnerability and sensitivity.

If you look at the Enneagram symbol you will see it contains a triangle that points to types 3, 6, and 9. Those are the archetype points. From Christian scripture they have been named Hope, Faith, and Love. Within the Enneagram tradition they are the Heart area, the Head area, and the Gut or Instinct area. As I tried to sort through them, I see them as Desire for Meaning, Search for Sufficiency and Connection, and Seeking Wholeness.

The 3 corner affects the Enneatypes 2-3-4. It is seen as the Heart/Hope center, where we seek contact with the Essence of life through feelings (mostly other people’s). This archetype expresses the desire to both find meaning in life or to express that meaning in life. So the energy of this corner (and the archetype) is related to issues of significance, success, acceptance, and value. If one is connected to a sense of value in their life they seek to express it through beauty (4), love (2) and action (3). If one is missing that then one struggles with hopelessness and become driven to prove one’s value through doing good (2), through creativity and drama (4), or through doing whatever is needed to be seen as a success (3).

The 6 corner affects the Enneatypes 5-6-7. It is seen as the Head/Faith center. This corner is focused on the desire to Have enough or to be enough. This can be related to having enough energy and strength (6), enough variety and options (7), or enough information or resources (5). There is a strong aspect of being sensitive to connection in this corner of the Enneagram. With that sense of connection and sufficiency there is great courage and a sense of security and safety. However, if that is shaken by a sense of fear or a perception of scarcity, the defenses go up (6), and one becomes driven to seek and to hold onto all that is needed to regain that sense of security. For the 5 that comes through as the idea that More is always better. For the 7, the drive is toward greater diversity and options.

The 9 corner affects the Enneatypes 8-9-1. It has been seen as the body/gut center, but as an 8 myself that had no meaning to me. I did like the idea of seeing it as the Instinct/Love Center with something to do with Will and choosing. As I was first trying to get a handle on this corner I saw it related to a desire to choose and to be chosen. Yet, I am currently moving more toward the idea of this center being related to wholeness and balance. The instinct and will certainly are a part of it, but that seems to relate to more of what is going on. When one is simply engaged with life, one lives out the good naturally. Our outer lives are lives in integrity and harmony with our inner experience of the Essence of God (9). We find ourselves choosing and living the right things (1) or a life that is grounded in creative and just power (8). However, when one loses touch with one’s own self and life is no longer One but broken and split we seek to restore that balance by working to be on the winning side (8), by maintaining and enforcing the purity of righteousness (1), or by trying to will oneself back into Being (9).

When I get to writing about the individual types (especially the home types of the corners) I will expand more. Also, ask questions. What may be clear to my mind will not come clear through these words.

Next will be the Hornevian Movement Triads.

When I first met the Enneagram, I had a mixed reaction to it. I was excited to see how the insights of this map to the soul could be used for my own journey as well as in my ministry of preaching and direction. That excitement continues especially as I keep on digging deeper into it. In November, I was blessed to lead 23 others in catching some of this excitement and some of these insights. I have even received a few nice emails expressing gratitude for that day. That is very nice.

However, the mixed part of my reaction was the more extreme pathological approach that many of the authors I read used. Especially with my type (8). The descriptions seem to be very tilted toward the worst parts of our behavior. On the one hand these authors would be talking about the importance of avoiding the use of the Enneagram as a source of judgment, but then the very descriptions they use are pretty much all couched in terms of negativity. For my type, the descriptions talked about an extreme aggressive attitude toward people and the use and abuse of them for my own benefit. The descriptions would say something about the positive approach to things, but those descriptions of the strong protector would be overwhelmed by the dictatorial tyrant. It’s no wonder as I was trying out various type inventories my 8 score would often be 3rd or 4th in line.

At one level I can understand where that came from: many of those who have formulated the descriptions of the Enneagram in these first few generations were writing from the perspectives of diagnostitions who were used to viewing the pathology or unhealthy aspects of personality. In fact, Claudio Naranjo’s major contribution to the literature of the Enneagram connects the Enneatypes to the traditional categories of psychoses and neuroses (Enneagram Monthly, Susan Rhodes, Depathologizing the Enneagram).

For me, that only has limited attraction. As a preacher, teacher, and spiritual director, I am less interested in diagnosing the pathologies than I am more interested in what motivates us and can be resources for our wholeness and holiness. In the article above, as well as a couple others that I have read recently, there is a growing call for a new focus on the Enneagram. Susan Rhodes talks about Depathologizing the Enneagram, but we cannot truly remove the pathology, because those unhealthy parts of our being cannot be ignored.

Instead, I have been thinking about taking a cue from a movement within the church and even within systems theories of seeing the Emergent Qualities of the Enneagram.

I have found it very helpful to begin my thoughts and focus on the Essential Qualities and the Holy Ideas that the Enneagram points to. This is an approach that A. H. Almaas and Sandra Maitri have helped me to begin with. What is the presence of God/Essence/Life wanting to create within us, the unfold as an Emergence within our lives? Then we can place in its proper context where we get stuck and go astray. With that greater context it is easier for us to avail ourselves of that Emergent energy and those resources for wholeness to be more fully who we are already.

I have been spending a lot of time gathering in ideas related to the Enneagram and sorting through them to make them a part of me. Now I am going to start playing these ideas out. Feel free to enter the discussion.

This last Sunday in worship we considered the witness of Anna and Simeon to waiting for the gift of God. And I am noticing that I have been focused on waiting for quite a while. This isn’t just an Advent thing, but something deeper in myself that is waiting for something. Not sure what that is at the moment, but the how of waiting is important to me personally in thie present moment.

In thinking about waiting there are a number of ways to wait that don’t work well.

The first way would be Anxious Waiting. At one level, we don’t think too much about saying that we are anxiously waiting for something to happen or someone to arrive. However, the core word is “anxiety.” This is a waiting that is colored with fear and doubt. We want to wait. We want the promise to be true. We want the awaited one to get here, but we aren’t sure. Our waiting is filled with Maybe. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I missed it somehow. Maybe God really didn’t mean it. The uncertainty becomes acidic to the spirit as time lengthens between the promise given and the answer’s arrival.

One direction to go when the waiting time lengthens is what I call Imitation Patience. This is the empty appearance of waiting when one has given up. We have always been told that patience is a virtue and so even when we have given up on the hope of the awaited promise we still think we need to put up the appearance of patience. Yet, it is a sham. We get to the end of each day, we look back and see the lack of transformation and we think, “Just as I thought … nothing … again … and forever.”

Another response to the lengthening waiting time (which for many of us in our age of the Instant can be measured in nano-seconds) is to give up on waiting at all: impatience wins. This, too, is a giving up on the promise ever coming, but then takes over the reins. The thought comes to us that God’s not going to give us what we want (or what we think God wanted to do with us in the first place) so that means that we need to take care of things ourselves. We try to sanctify the impatience by saying that we are just giving God a hand in fulfilling God’s promise, but we betray our giving up on the promise when we become very certain about what God is supposed to be doing in our lives.

We can and do choose those ways of waiting quite often. And as time marches on and we are unable to see God’s promise fulfilled in our lives and world they become greater temptations. However, we are offered another way of waiting. This way is what Anna and Simeon witness to in the Gospel story.

I call this way of waiting Holy Anticipation. This way of waiting is grounded in faith in the promise given. Well, actually, it is more deeply grounded in the One who promises. And maybe that is a clue to how this way of waiting can be time-proof. The promise is one thing, but if we keep our lives grounded on trusting the One of Grace and Love who gave the promise then we can be more open and flexible to the variable forms the fulfillment brings. So certainty in the Promisor is one key to Holy Anticipation.

The other key is openness to whatever God wants to do in answering the promise. We get stuck when we think too specifically about how the promise will be answered. How often do we miss the gift offered to us because it didn’t come in the form we expected. I heard a retreat leader once define Expectation as “preconceived resentment.” I can imagine Simeon and Anna spending their lives going to Temple looking at each person that arrives and each family that brings in their children to be blessed wondering if this one is the promised one. Is this the Hope of Israel? Can this next one be the Consolation of Your people?

We are invited to enter into each new day with that kind of Holy Anticipation. God, is this your promise? What gracious and glorious thing are doing through this person, this event, this act of mine, this gift of another, etc.? Holy Anticipation is a completely open heart that with certainty looks for how God is using each moment of each day for our good and God’s glory.