A friend of mine was asked
to comment on her relationship to ‘faith’ this past week. She shared that she
was extremely uncomfortable with the word and opted instead to replace it with
‘belief.’ I honor her discomfort and think that she probably is among
thousands, perhaps millions, who at this point in modern times, is leery of any
mention of faith, and certainly performances of faith.
But I’d challenge that
being faithful is what being human calls us to be. We are flawed and holy, we can empathize with ourselves and others
and also devastate one another.
Recently, I moved forward
on my heart’s calling to become a Circle of Trust facilitator with the Center
for Courage and Renewal, attending a retreat in the magical temperate
rainforest of Bainbridge Island. The hallmark of this program are retreats in
which space and wonder is cultivated to begin to listen to our spirits, our
souls. We are invited to return to and Remember our soul stories, those joys
and concerns at the core of who we truly are. To do this work is to be
faithful. While these are interfaith gatherings, specific religious faith is
not what I’m alluding to here. Parker Palmer, the founder of the Center and
prolific secular theologian, explained it earlier this year in an interview
with Krista Tippett of On Being (podcast). Parker shared:
“By
faithfulness, I mean, am I being faithful to my own gifts? Am I being faithful
to the needs I see around me, within my reach? And am I being faithful to those
points at which my gifts might intersect those needs in some life-giving way?
Um, you know, at age 75, I think about my mortality more than I did when I was
35 or 45. And, one of the things that's very, very clear to me is that when I'm
drawing my last breath, I will not be asking did I sell enough books? Did I get
enough good enough reviews? What do the numbers look like (sic), you know? I'm
going to be asking, given my limitations, given my fallibilities, cutting myself
a lot of slack for my failure to do so, did I use my limited lifetime to
show up fully as I knew how with what I've got? (italics added) That's what I call
faithfulness. And I think it's a matter of framing what we're doing as well as
those particular practices, like walking in the woods, like silence, like
reading poetry, that can bring us back to those points that you might call true
north.”
- Parker Palmer, On
Being Podcast, January 8, 2015
So faith isn’t a matter of
our egos’ desires and directions; it is a Deep Remembering of the sacred spark
within each of us. It is our soul’s story and movement. Sure, I could talk your
ear off with my ego stories: things that I’ve done, beliefs I have about the
world, friends and foes I’ve made. These ego stories generally help us
chronicle our time and keep track of ourselves in a linear fashion, both of
which tasks our minds greatly enjoy and find comfort in. There are soul stories
though, stories that reflect our inner being, our spirit, our sacredness. Much
to the chagrin of our logical mind, soul stories are often confusing and hard
to see in the light. Think of night vision: we actually see best at night with
our peripheral vision thanks to the functioning of our rods positioned on the
outskirts of our retinas. It’s no surprise to me then, as someone who loves
illumination and going at things straight ahead, full blast, and with eyes wide
open, that I sometimes miss the mark and leave my soul, and its wisdom, behind
me, thinking that my ego has got it all.
In the Enneagram
personality system, nine possible personality types emerge because individuals
of each of the types have forgotten some Holy Idea or spiritual truth of the
universal soul story. For me, as someone with the attributes of a Seven, at
times in my life, I’ve forgotten that life includes a range of emotions and
possibilities, all of which are worthy of my time and attention. When I forget
this Holy Idea, I end up with a very painful wound: that it’s not ok to depend
on others, that I won’t be taken care of, and deeper still, that I’ll be
trapped in pain. Yuck. I don’t know about you, but typically when I’m wounded
(physically or emotionally, take your pick), I move to protect that hurt with a
“cast.” What are the casts we use for these wounds of forgetting the sacred
ways of the world? Our personality structures! which allow us to function
fairly well on an ego level but not with the full range of e/motion (spiritual
level) that we would have without the cast. My cast as a Seven is to desire to be
happy, exploring and moving, and to plan my way out of having any unpleasant
run-ins with uncertainty or pain. I don’t want to feel trapped! Even worse,
when I do feel trapped, I can gravitate to the personality structures and
wounding of the One and think that I have the *right* answers, that it’s up to
me to make this world right. Talk about an impossible task!
What happens when you keep
a cast on a broken arm for a few months? The wound heals. Keep the cast on for
years and years? Muscles atrophy and die, leaving the person even more hurt and
wounded than before. You lose sense of your soul story, with flexing our egos
not being satisfying in the least, as it falls short of what we can do, who we
truly are with our soul stories shining forth. Take addictions, for example.
Carl Jung referred to addictions, the casts that many of us wear to “treat” our
wounds, as being a “thirst for wholeness.” Addictions can never fully address
the God-sized holes, or forgetting of our most essential sacred nature and connection.
What can address a hole that large? Fanaticism? Us/them thinking? Violence?
What fits into the hole is One Thing, and that’s where faithfulness comes in.
Faithfulness is having the
courage to take off my cast, to expose and heal my wounds, to flex my soul
towards my values and purpose, my True North. For me, this means to do what
feels very risky and to welcome in all emotions and experiences, to let things
play out as they naturally will and to not get so caught up in planning and
manipulating my way into the best
experience possible. Since the last time I blogged, major changes have begun to
happen in my life. With my cape of my inner self, my spirit, I leapt at
opportunities to listen attentively to what I want and need in my life. I
participated in that Circle of Trust with the Center for Courage and Renewal. I
began a romantic relationship with someone who is my equal (which totally
scares and excites the crap out of me, on a daily basis!). I have been daring
to engage in this world with faith, faith in myself, in our communities, and in
Something Greater Than Myself and of which I am a Part.
The thing about the
Enneagram that’s different than other personality inventories is that the goal
isn’t to put ourselves in to the boxes of the specific personality types.
Walking around and proudly professing my proclivities towards being a Seven on
the Enneagram isn’t all that useful. It’s ego work and only has me become more
attached to my cast. Instead, the Enneagram encourages us to get out of the box,
to eventually take on the skills and perspectives of all of the nine types,
living and moving more fully, more faithfully.
In times of terror, of
witnessing and experiencing the very flawed nature of human being, it can be
tempting to hold tight to our casts, our personalities, our egos. Our wounds
run so deep- how can take off our casts? Ultimately, those casts are preventing
us from flexing and moving with our spirits, our deeper wisdom of who we and
the world are. Rumi describes this letting go of that which does not serve us
when he wrote:
Out beyond ideas of
wrong-doing and right doing,
there is a field
I’ll meet you there
When the soul lies down in
that grass
the world is too full to
talk about.
Ideas, language, even the
phrase,
each
other
doesn’t
make any sense.
This moment
this love
comes to rest in me,
many beings
in one being.
In one wheat-grain
a thousand
sheaf stacks.
inside
the needle’s eye,
a turning night of stars.
(Translated by Coleman
Barks)
With faith then, the spark
of the Divine in me Remembers and bows to the Divine in each of you, as we take
courage and walk this world wounded. Namaste.
(For more information
about the Enneagram, check out online sources like https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/.
The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The complete guide to psychological and
spiritual growth for the nine personality types by Riso and Hudson informed much of my discussion
of the Enneagram in today’s blog post.)
