Loving Our Whole Self

Good Morning, God!

I love this photo of the very top of a restoration of an old stone barn designed by the Shakers. Their not being interested in sex, I guess they had a lot of time and energy to put into Really GOOD Design. The barn was designed so the cows were in the middle level, hay was carted up to the top level and the manure was dumped into the bottom level where it, too, could be carted away. All the chores were simplified by building the barn on the side of a hill!

But, looking up at the top one can see that aesthetics were important, too.  And since I wanted to talk to You about the enneagram and Father Richard Rohr’s blogs about it, I chose this image to picture the Complete Self. And yes, God, now I see that the Light at the Center is symbolic, too.

Fr. Rohr quoted Teresa of Ávila, who said that “the sinner is actually one who does not love himself or herself enough. We do not see or admire the whole self; so we split and try to love the good self and reject the bad self.”

I’m smiling because I think what I have been doing is RENAMING my sins. For example, my enneagram type is mostly (or often) a Seven. Which means my root sin is GLUTTONY. Yikes! One pictures corpulent drunkards lolling about. Distasteful! So, I have chosen to describe my Sin as ENTHUSIASM! A charming euphemism . . . I thought.

But, several weeks after reading about my root sin, I actually realized that Gluttony sort of explained my problems of Over-packing, Over-scheduling, and — not last or least — Over-eating. Hmm.

Well, God, I am not sure if renaming is better or worse than rejecting and ignoring parts of myself. Oh? It is just On The Continuum? Sigh, I can sort of see that. And Now I am reflecting on how IF I AM UPSET BY A BEHAVIOR in someone else — it might well be a SHADOW part of myself.

Sigh. Thank You God for Richard Rohr and insights. . . especially for the Unwanted Ones.

About a moment with god

Story teller,