Tag Archives: richard rohr

The Second Call

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When I found myself “at the bottom,” with my life in shambles, a dear friend told me that if I chose to accept the gift of surrendering my life and learning to live in a new simple way—trusting God, cleaning house and serving others—that not only could I survive, I could actually grow through that trial. “If you do go on this journey,” he told me, “you will get to know yourself for the first time.”

Since then, I have lived my life, one day at a time, according to this new, simple program.

In somehow choosing this new path, I believe I have received what many call, “the second call.” I read these words this morning, from Brennan Manning’s Ragamuffin Gospel.

Second journeys usually end quietly with a new wisdom and a coming to a true sense of self that releases great power. The wisdom is that of an adult who has regained equilibrium, stabilized, and found fresh purpose and new dreams. It is a wisdom that gives some things up, lets some things die, and accepts human limitations. It is a wisdom that realizes: I cannot expect anyone to understand me fully. It is wisdom that admits the inevitability of old age and death.

The second journey begins when we know we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the morning program. (That’s really good-EC.)

The second call invites us to serious reflection on the nature and quality of our faith in the gospel of grace, our hope in the new and not yet, and our love for God and people. The second call is a summons to a deeper, more mature commitment of faith where the naiveté, first fervor, and untested idealism of the morning and the first commitment have been seasoned with pain, rejection, failure, loneliness, and self-knowledge.”

Brennan Manning, Ragamuffin Gospel

Over the past six months, I have experienced more pain, rejection, failure, and loneliness than I could have ever imagined possible, let alone endurable.

And yet here I stand (with, I hope, just a little self-knowledge).

This “second journey/call” is exciting, but also terrifying, because for the first time in a very long while, I’m aware that I am NOT in control, and nor am I meant to be. I am trying very hard to put my life in the hands of the God of Abram, and Isaac, and Moses, and David, and Elijah, and John the Baptizer and Jesus and Paul… and everyone else who embraced the mystery and took a step out their front door to follow the CALL to “become who they are meant to be.”

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What’s In A Number, Anyway?

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“Ohmygosh what number on the Enneagram are you?”

One of my dear friends was messaging me; her ears were burning after listening to one of the hip, podcasts-of-the-moment where the hosts had introduced the concept of “Enneagram,” a really, really ancient way of understanding our personalities and tendencies.

She was illuminated and enlightened (understandably so), and now she was curious to know where I fell on the 9-number “wheel” of the scheme.

“I bet you’re a FIVE,” she declared.

Fortunately, since the enneagram seems to be hot stuff right now, a guy named Ian Morgan Crone had recently written a book that addresses it, and very helpfully developed an online test to recommend a number for everyone. So I went and took the test, and shared my results with her.

I was just getting ready for my annual silence and solitude retreat at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit outside of Atlanta, so on the spur of the moment, I threw my copy of The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective (by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert) in my bag, thinking, “Maybe I’ll skim this while I’m away.” I’d read probably 60% of the book 2-3 years ago, and while I found it interesting, I got bogged down in the descriptions of each number, and eventually abandoned the book.

After I’d arrived and got settled in at the monastery, I still had a couple hours before Vespers (think, “dinner time prayer”), so I decided to sit down on a patio and do some reading and journaling. Call it intuition or the Holy Spirit, either way I picked up the Rohr book and started reading. I wanted to revisit the history and context of the enneagram before I reviewed my results, so I actually went back to the beginning and started reading.

Before I got to the descriptions, Rohr took me back (as he so often does) with this statement:

“In recent years a series of questionnaires has been drawn up so that people can discover to which Enneagram pattern they belong. Nevertheless, we recommend that readers take another approach first: *it makes sense to begin by reading through all nine descriptions. To some it will immediately be clear where they are ‘at home.’ … A good criteria is the following: if in reading the description of a type I get uneasy or am even humiliated, it could be that I’m on home ground.”

<sigh>

So, even though I had my pattern “in hand”, Rohr recommends that I read the whole book and come to conclusions more “organically.” (Part of this is because, according to the authors, the Enneagram is historically related to the seven capital, or “deadly” sins, so rather than *celebrate* my particular pattern, we are on more solid ground when we soberly look at the brokenness of each particular type first.)

So that’s what I did. The good news is that the type that I was drawn to actually reinforced the online questionnaire that I’d taken.

I was a “Nine”. 

Now, this actually shocked my friend because she was convinced that I was a “Five” (go and look these up for yourself if you’d like), but as I read the descriptions I knew without a doubt that I lacked the intellectual detachment that Fives had. I was a visceral, gut reactor to life (not always for the best), and could only detach myself through discipline and prayer.

But that was just the good news; there was some challenging information as well.

According to Rohr, while Nines are peacemakers and good at accepting other people, we (read: “I”) suffer from some critical deficiencies, or brokenness: we lack courage, we lack focus, we prefer the path of least resistance, it takes a long time for us to identify and name (and therefore own) our feelings, we withdraw.

Am I feeling good about myself yet?

What may have hit me the most was that Nines also have a tendency to be lazy and to avoid conflict.

Without going into too much of the detail, let’s just say that (a) I completely identify with these tendencies, (b) they are actually humiliating.

I’ve taken so many personality profiles: I’m mostly an INFP, my strengths are Contextualization, Indvididualization, Intellection, etc., etc.

This seemed somehow different; it hit me harder, where I’ve been “living” for a few years now.

For instance, because of my natural curiosity, I am fairly persistent about sniffing out the “next thing” theologically and/or spiritually (note: a lot of this is also driven by very personal needs and spiritual ambitions).

To be blunt, I’m typically pretty far ahead of the curve when it comes to spiritual trends, whether it’s liturgy, spiritual disciplines, or mindfulness…

… BUT NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT IT. 

My laziness, apathy, cynicism (“nobody will read this anyway”) and introverted nature all combine to make a stew and a gumbo that produces… at times very little.

Meanwhile, I watch people—some of them my friends—who are decidedly NOT NINES (LOL) write, publish, and broadcast much of the same information that I’d processed sometimes years before. I sit and I watch/listen/read, thinking… “Wow… uh. This is actually old news to me. If someone would just ask me, I could have told everybody this stuff two years ago…”

(typical NINE stuff…)

By the way, honest: This is not about how great I am, or how smart I am.

It’s actually kind of humiliating, and I’m also just trying to be honest.

Part of my spiritual journey means that I’m trying to work on accepting myself, in all my glorious limitations and strengths. Also, let me be clear, when Rohr also writes that “in a certain way NINE represents the original and unspoiled human essence,” I have to acknowledge that it’s not all bad to, well, be me.

But since the Enneagram is related to my brokenness, I need to acknowledge that there are still issues I need to work through. I need to get better at productive, redemptive conflict. I need to learn to give to the world what God is giving me. I need to steward my journey, both for myself and for the world.

It’s about giving, not promoting.

As I was thinking about writing this, I was thinking about some of the most powerful words that people can speak about me. My spirit rises within me (even at 48) when I hear people say about me, “Oh man, you really need to meet Eric Case; if you’re interested in (Subject X), he’s someone you have to know.”

Vanity, I know.

So there you go: I’m a NINE. Prone to laziness, conflict avoidance, and cynicism.

But if you’re exploring spirituality, productivity, creativity, or even the Enneagram, I’ve probably been there, and I *do* want to help.

 

Links:

The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert on Amazon.com

The Monastery of the Holy Spirit

Enneagram Test (related to Ian Morgan Crone’s book The Road Back to You)

Blogs related to my monastery trip.

 

Room With a View

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Some of you know that, for my graduation, I was given a retreat to a monastery by some friends and family. I went up to the Monastery of the Holy Spirit outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I’ve been there once before, but only stayed one night; this trip would be two days and two nights of silence and solitude (for me, this is a good thing).

When I checked into my modest room, I quickly went to the window and looked out. This IMG_4093was the scene that greeted me: the graves of the monks who have died in the monastery since its founding in the 1940s.

A room with a view, indeed.

I don’t know how this strikes you. Morbid? Disturbing?

For me, it was amazingly clarifying.

In Adam’s Return, Richard Rohr suggests that one of the key facts that a man must come to terms with is the fact that he (I) will die.

Two days of looking out a window at gravestones helps with this perspective.

Rohr does not suggest this to threaten us with judgment, or to insinuate that we all “get busy.” Rather, it’s meant to plant the seed that everything has the same end, and that part of my journey as a man (or human?) is to learn to release: my stuff, my agenda, my dreams, my family, my control, my ego.

I do believe in the resurrection, but I also know that the mortality rate is still right about 100%, and that, as best I can tell, you still can’t take it with you. It seems to me that we try as hard as we can to convince ourselves otherwise, but I wonder what it costs us. We think that we can maintain control and accumulate more and more and more and that we will never need to release.

And yet those gravestones point to a different reality.

In fact, so much of our spirituality has evolved to keep death as separate from us as possible. Last Christmas I was visiting my parent’s (psuedo) country church up in Virginia, and I was struck by the fact that there was a graveyard beside it.

Graveyards are no longer in the design plans of our safe suburban churches.

But what have we lost?

Have churches bought into the cultural message that promises eternal life, if not youth, and encourage us to attach, attach, attach to everything around us?

I am coming to believe that at some point much of life needs to be about surrender. Knowing that someday I will need to make the ultimate surrender helps just a little bit with that.

I’ll take the room with graveyard view, please.

 

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Five Books That (Re) Shaped My Spirituality

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I don’t know if you’re looking for something to read (I know I always am), but I thought I’d share some reads that have been pretty foundational in my life.

These five books really were responsible for some “left turns” in my life. They marked pretty large “sea changes” in my spirituality and belief. If you’re looking for something to challenge (and maybe even change) you, maybe pick them up and give them a read. Let me know what you think.

  1. Signature of Jesus. This book really changed the whole game for me. I’ve written about this before, but I just can’t begin to describe how much this book impacted me when I first read it. It called me deeper, beyond merely nodding “yes” (or shaking my head “no”) on a Sunday to a life of pursuing the rabbi from Nazareth. (Note: I’m still stumbling along.)
  2. Adam’s Return. I actually just read this a couple years back, but this was one of my initial exposures to Richard Rohr. More significantly, however, this was a powerful description of mature, Biblical masculinity. Though I read a lot of the popular evangelical attempts at this (Wild at Heart being the most popular), there was something in them that didn’t ring true to me. I could understand the barbarian/warrior metaphors but I also felt like they had a tendency to be destructive in my life. Rohr takes masculinity to the place where it most needs to go: to the cross and into the baptismal waters with Christ, and shows how our masculinity needs to be transformed—particularly in the vein of ego surrender and death to self—so that we can grow (old?) gracefully.
  3. The Illumined Heart. This little book was my introduction to the Eastern Orthodoxy. It was also a pretty significant step forward in my quest for a practical spirituality, an approach to faith that can be lived out in every day life.
  4. Surprised by Hope. Though I’d read a couple NT Wright books before, this was really the first one that catalyzed my understanding of his theology and started to re-shape my own. To be brief, Wright refutes the “practical gnosticism” in the church today that states that our ultimate destination is some kind of disembodied heaven. Wright reminds us that the Biblical view is that of resurrection. Our bodies matter; this world matters. When you understand that the point is not for us to be burned up, or that God’s just not going to throw the earth onto a trash heap, you realize that what you do now—whether it’s justice or art, discipleship, or service—has implications into eternity.
  5. The Divine Conspiracy. This book is a bit deep, and not always the easiest read, but this book planted inside me the revolutionary truth that Jesus wants to live his life through me. Spirituality is not “out there”, and Christianity is not something that is only lived through “special people” or “holy lives.” Rather, my life, right now, is where God wishes to take up residence.

So there they are. If you’re looking to open yourself up to some new ideas and/or new approaches to God and spirituality, I challenge you to dig into one (or more) of these.

Let me know how that works out for you…