As far as the East is from the West

"As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he put our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who are faithful."

-Psalm 103:12-13

Friends who follow my blogging know I've fallen silent here over the summer.  I've been unable to explain why I stopped writing.  The motivation and desire just seemed to leave me, and I felt little regret about it, though I missed the contact writing provided with kindred spirits.  I don't know what is different today, except that I again felt the motivation and desire to write.

I feel as though the Spirit has been working on many dimensions of my inner life these long months of spring and summer, though I can hardly name all the ways.  But one message was clear to me when I awoke at 4:30 this morning.  "Nurture your heart of compassion," the Spirit said to me.  And then here again, in Scripture, is a message about the divine virtue of compassion.

I've been working with the Enneagram for many months now, trying to understand myself more clearly.  Deep inner fears and motivations have been exposed, some familiar and others utterly surprising.  I am extremely hard on myself, for sure, and in subtle ways I am hard on others.  This is part of being a ONE on the Enneagram.  ONEs, at their best, are visionary idealists.  Think of Mahatma Gandhi.  

I'm no Gandhi, of course.  Average ONEs tend to be crusaders in small and large ways, working diligently to improve themselves, their workplaces, their societies.  But average ONEs also suffer from severe spells of hypercriticism and resentment as they (and everyone else) perpetually fail to live up to the ONEs ideals of completeness, wholeness, balance, justice, etc.  Over time, they can become depressed and disgruntled with everything, and lose their generally optimistic, hopeful character.  

I am at risk for this, and have struggled with it in one way or another my whole adult life.  In many ways, my spiritual life itself is a manifestation of these dynamics.  I woke up this morning thinking of some difficult people I work with, quiet resentment boiling deep within myself, and that's when the Spirit spoke to me: "Nurture your heart of compassion.  Open your heart to them in compassion, understanding, and forgiveness."  I knew the Spirit was not just talking about my relationship with others, but my relationship to my own heart.

I responded as a ONE.  "But, if I respond to injustice with compassion and understanding, who will fix the injustices?"

(My, what hubris!)

"I will," answered the Spirit.  "Besides, you will not lose your passionate vision of integrity for yourself and for the world.  This is a part of your gift.  By opening your heart of compassion, your vision will become more vivid, vibrant and powerful for others."

I did not go back to sleep after that.

In one way or another, this is what the Spirit has been working on in my for quite some time now.  Perhaps it's been the same message in different forms, applied to various areas of my life.  Ironically, I have resisted the message.  In some ways, I've become even more closed and self-protected in my ONEness, doubling up my dissatisfaction with self and others.

And yet, the Spirit has bypassed my resistance, pursuing me relentlessly, pursuing me with compassion.  

Confessions of a Radical

As a ONE on the Enneagram, I have always had a compulsion for trying to improve things--for improving the world and especially for improving myself.  My desire to fix the world manifested mostly in through a keen interest in politics and social movements.  My childhood heroes were not Spiderman or even Luke Skywalker (though I was quite the fan of both), not sports heroes or movie stars, but rather Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi.  

Seriously.  These were the men I wanted to emulate.

So I was interested in history, in politics, and especially in the spiritual dimensions of social transformation.  In college I was heavily involved in peace and environmental activism on campus and in the classroom.  I first studied journalism, but then decided that I wanted to get down to the roots of why there was injustice in the world and how to correct it, and ended up taking my degree in philosophy and religion.  I went to grad school to study theology and ethics.  But this wasn't "in the trenches" enough for me, so I became a teacher with the intent of transforming the world one kid at a time, and foolishly thought that with my "spare" time I would continue to devote myself to community activism.

Of course, I quickly discovered that teachers don't really have that much spare time, especially compared to college students.  So the activism slowed to a stop.  Meanwhile, working in the bureaucracy of the public schools led to cynicism.  My values didn't change, but my confidence in government did.  Always interested in all-encompassing political philosophies, I studied libertarianism and adopted a nearly anarchist outlook on social change.  But that critical stance toward the world remained.

There was a corresponding struggle for transformation going on inside me, which I'll write about some other time.  My point in all this is to demonstrate how thoroughly I actually am a ONE and always have been.  And it's always been all or nothing.  The world had to change according to my viewpoint, and my viewpoint was total: Marxism or anarcho-capitalism, the change was motivated by a comprehensive system of ideas that left little room for nuance or compromise.

One of the lessons of the Enneagram is that God is constantly inviting us to grow and become whole.  Now, this is a theme with great appeal for a ONE, of course.  But for a ONE, the growth means letting go of some of that harsh, critical stance toward the world.  I remain a ONE, but something happens to the way I manifest my personality as a ONE.  I move toward greater tolerance, understanding, compassion, and above all patience.

Something happened while I was in Norway that has caused a subtle but significant shift in my attitude toward the world of politics lately.  It wasn't that they saw the world differently than me, it's that the Norwegians bent all the definitions of politics I had come to know.  They are neither liberal nor conservative, neither socialist nor capitalist.  They are collectivists and individualists at the same time.

Some people have heard me talk or write about Norway and think I've just fallen in love with the people there and think they can do no wrong.  I do love Norway and the Norwegian people, but I have no such notions about the rightness or wrongness of their political system and attitudes.  They just demonstrate to me that there are multiple ways of looking at a problem, and far more than just two solutions.  Reflecting on the Norwegians has brought a kind of peace and deep reflection to my mind when I watch the news now or reflect on politics.  My absolutist perspective has been tempered by a new kind of openness and curiosity.  

This is how a ONE begins to come to redemption.  And this is just the beginning.

Knowing the "ONE"

A few months ago, while visiting friends, I noticed a book on their shelf about the Enneagram. I read and studied the Enneagram some many years ago, but had not thought about it in a long time. I borrowed their book and carried it around Norway during my trip, but didn't read much. Then last month at the LCG meeting the Enneagram surfaced again in the conversation, and with a few pointers from Michael, I resumed my studies using the Enneagram Institute's website and the Richard Rohr book, Discovering the Enneagram: An Ancient Tool for a New Spiritual Journey.

The Enneagram is a very old personality profile system likely developed by Sufi mystics but adopted in the last century by both Christian contemplatives interested in its uses for spiritual direction and by secular psychologists who saw it as a tool for human growth in general. The Enneagram proposes that there are nine basic personality types ('ennea' means 'nine' in Greek), though the system is subtle enough to recognize scores of combinations (hundreds when the various levels of growth and development are considered).

It's a humbling look into the human psyche, because the Enneagram pulls no punches. We are all deeply broken and our brokenness is laid bare when we study the features of our own personalities. The system is useful for identifying features within myself that I might not discover otherwise--and probably wouldn't--if it were left up to my own powers of introspection.

Long story short, I'm a "ONE" on the Enneagram. Riso and Hudson, the Enneagram Institute folks, call this type the Reformer. The name is nice, and there are many great gifts to this particular personality. We are dedicated to making things better--both ourselves the world. We are advocates for change and we are absolutely dedicated to growing individuals and society into more integrated, balanced versions of the ideals we believe in. Of course, this is also a very dangerous way to look at the world, and we become extremely critical and judgmental of everything and everybody, especially ourselves.

This is a kind of extreme description, a caricature of traits that make up the ONE's personality, but I identify myself in it thoroughly. In future posts over the next few weeks, I'll explore the Enneagram is greater depth, what I'm learning about myself and others through the process, and especially what God is revealing to me about how I can come to know Him better.