Last night, as I taught a class on the false self through an Enneagram lens, something struck me that never fails to give me a certain reverence for the Narrative Tradition: a human being can never be reduced to a type.  

The very essence of each person is distinct and the stories which shape their becoming are rooted in a vast array of personal and cultural experiences.  

If you walked into the room last night and talked to each of the three Sixes sitting on the couch, you might never guess they are the same type regardless of your proficiency with the Enneagram.  The energy and body language of each is so different.  

All three participated in a meditation in which they were invited into the questions:

Who are you in the eyes of your mother?
…your father?
…your society?
…your best friend?
…your beloved?

My guess is that in the debrief, they identified with different qualities because each family has its own identity.

When I arrived home, the gift of the Narrative revealed itself once again.

I picked up a Rick Steves guidebook on Ireland and began to step into the culture of the ancestors who have shaped my family’s worldview.  

As I read, I had to set the book down as I inhaled deeply and thought, “This is remarkable. The Irish are in the fabric of me.”  I read Steves’ reflections on Ireland:

▪ Ask for directions.  It’s always a rich experience.

▪ An Irishman once joked, “How can I know what I think until I hear what I say?” 

▪ The Irish seem born with a love of music.  At social gatherings, everyone’s ready to sing his or her “party piece.” 

▪ Irish immigrants brought with them to the US the first political organization for the downtrodden.

▪ The Irish people have a worldwide reputation as talkative, athletic (missed that one), musical, moody romantics with a quick laugh and ready smile. 

▪ While much of Europe has buried older cultures under new, Ireland still reveals its cultural bedrock

GK Chesterton wrote:

The great Gaels of Ireland
The lord hath made them mad
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad. 

An exasperated Freud said, “The Irish are the only race whose insanities can not be cured by psychoanalysis.” 

Music. Humor. Gab. Darkness. Madness. Downtrodden. Unhibited sincerity. Showmanship. Moody.  

The Irish are in me even as I experience my Irishness through my distinctive type lens.

Layers upon layers build our identity.  Our Irish-ness, German-ness, British-ness, American-ness, Salvadoran-ness,  Korean-ness, Indian-ness, Jewish-ness, Catholic-ness, Buddhist-ness, Protestant-ness… the groups who’ve shaped us whether we live in opposition to them or in synch with them.  

The psychologist helps us track our stories so we can identify and dis-identify with the pieces that conditioned us.  

The spiritual director helps us let them go and relax into unconditioned divine Love.

Each has its inherent value.  

I’m not of the mind that spiritual practice is an ascetic, dry ascent to the evolutionary pinnacle of an elusive enlightenment.  

Rather, it is a descent:  an on the ground, nuts and bolts sacramental presence to each moment of our lives which invite us to open our arms in radical surrender to the qualities that open us and inhibit us from Love made manifest.  

The question is: When is our identity…our own personal narrative…serving Life and inhibiting Life? 

Yet, I also hale from a tradition that places the final answer in the unknowable…in something we call grace. The X factor in which we know absolutely Nothing.   We’ve a wordless sort of wonder for the ultimate Reality and an awareness that we are participating in a flow in which we are but a speck in a moment in time….all we need do is listen.  

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”   FREDERICK BUECHNER