Cups, Saucers and Time Together: Enneagram 4 on the Camino

First of all, it is 8/8. This has always been one of my favorite days to remember, even long before I knew I was an enneagram 8... Two events of memory happened on 8/8/88. First, the Chicago Cubs played their first night game. Secondly, I remember registering for arts and worship camp at Presbyterian Church of the Master in 1988 (Omaha, NE).I remember overhearing a mom say, as she was writing out the check for camp, it won’t be three eights until 2008 - that is so far away! Now it is ten years past, and most moms haven’t written a check for VBS in some time.

Today i woke up at 630am! Quite a difference from 2am. Even more, I went to sleep last night at 8pm. I woke with several pilgrim friends who were eager to welcome me back from a long sleep. They were awake until midnight socializing and wondered if i was still alive when they went to bed. 

We left for the Camino at 8am, which is quite late for pilgrims. We stopped at a Roman bridge for a group photo, which is one of my first group shots. I usually leave alone and walk alone early in the morning, so the group experience was interesting and enjoyable.

 

I spent the morning walking with Lukas, who is a professional actor from NYC. He’s become a trusted friend; he reminds me of what beauty and life ought to be. 

This is my enneagram 4 day, so i was elated and grateful to be with an artist. He spoke of the business of acting compared to the practice of acting. I began to understand the insecurity of artists through his testimony. Getting auditions, getting the job, and then performing is a stressful business that puts one’s entire being on display AS A JOB. His story reminded me a bit of the preacher, who is doing what she does best but not without the judgment of an audience....i mean congregation.

My enneagram 4 experience was a bit much for me today. I love enneagram 4s. I share in their needs for authenticity and belonging. Even more, as an 8 who struggles to fully feel the intensity of life 4s feel everything ALL THE TIME. I know it is a painful experience for 4s, yet i find it fascinating. I do not have envy their ubiquitous sensation but simply hold compassion. My absence of feeling is so taxing, yet the opposite seems exhaustingly more so.

Richard Rohr says this of 4s:

FOURs once lived serenely as an essential part of a united and beautiful world. But one day the union and beauty were seemingly broken... Hudson describes the essence of FOUR as “the mystery of our true identity. It feels oceanic, deep, unfathomable, mysterious. . . . [FOURs live for] beauty, intimacy, and depth . . . the markers of drawing closer to our [original] union with God.” [2]

The ego believes its job is to recreate that original blessing. But nothing is as good as the original, so FOURs are left feeling bereft. As much as they strive to be aesthetically attractive, to be exceptional, to be creative, “they can’t stop feeling their grief for their disconnection from the Beloved.” [3] They once knew the eternal wholeness/nothingness of God, and how it included and incorporated the dark. Now, feeling separate from God, they often seem to revel in suffering and darkness.

The root sin of FOURs is envy. Their life is primarily shaped by longing: the longing for beauty and the wish that the world and life would fit together into a harmonic whole. 

Unredeemed FOURs may believe that for some reason they are guilty of causing the loss, rejection, or privation, so they consider themselves “bad.” This shame may trap them in a cycle of repeatedly producing situations in which they are rejected or abandoned. 

FOURs are converted when they realize, as Hudson says, “you are is a magnificent mystery, a manifestation of God, existing now. And there’s always the call of the Beloved, trying to call us home, right now to this meeting of lovers. In this meeting of lovers, we find out who we are. . . . Then we receive the FOUR’s virtue, which is equanimity . . . a spaciousness of the heart that lets me feel whatever needs to be felt without rejecting that feeling or adhering to it. 

After breakfast, I left Lukas and the other proximate pilgrims and walked alone. My energy was firmly oriented toward 4s, so I trusted I could dwell with the four in me. I did the rosary again, which included the glorious myseteries (resurrection, ascension, Pentecost, the assumption and the coronoation). After i finished praying, which included prayers of intercession for my enneagram 4 colleagues and friends, I recollected an experience from work some time ago.

A colleague was organizing follow up lunches to our earlier enneagram introduction with faculty and staff. We were located around tables with our enneagram types. There were only two enneagram 8s, so we were combined with the enneagram 4s. 

I was sitting with 8 people asking the question about our working experience at WTS.Thankfully, and in a rare moment, the two 8s remained silent. Each of the 4 energy folks articulated some level of being misunderstood. I was fascinated. People feel misunderstood. I remembered thinking for the first time at this table; I feel misunderstood. Maybe all of us feel misunderstood; have I missed this for so many years???

The revelation kept me present to the work environment, both in general and my particular work environment at WTS. I walked and pondered how much of work-life expects collaboration towards productivity but little to no need for understanding amidst that work. How inefficient are we because we demand work of each other but have no idea and share little intention to understand those around us? We are not automatons but beautiful people with stories, motivations, fears, insecurities, and wonderings. The 4 in me resonated with wanting to be understood. The 4 in me wanted to assure others that we have a shared experience of being misunderstood. What would it be if we allowed the fullness of our poetic selves come to work?

We need time and space to feel understood if we are ever to achieve common work. I work in a place that has scripted such time and space. WTS documents two breaks in its official handbook. The first follows daily worship (one of the few seminaries left to do such work daily-i am thankful for this), and the second is an afternoon break. Amidst a sea change of retirements and the addition of new faculty and staff, the break culture is less followed than in generations passed. In my early years, however, these breaks were taken religiously. Faculty and staff would gather for 20-30 minutes to simply “be” and share a cup of tea (very 4-ish). The conversations would range from task list, to homelife, to joke-sharing. I remember a sense of being seen and connected and understood. Even more, I remember this as a witness to students that stopping to be together IS part of ministry labor.

The Camino has a similar expectation. The Cafe culture of Spain invites pausing and being. Pilgrims eat a first and second breakfast, everyday. We end each day of walking with a beer. The food and drink are an invitation to stop, sit, and be together. Sometimes the breaks linger longer than they ought because the sense of being seen and understood is fulfilling.  This is the most Hobbit I have ever felt.

Bilbo began to whistle loudly and to forget about the night before. In fact he was just sitting down to a nice little second breakfast in the dining-room by the open window, when in walked Gandalf.

“My dear fellow,” said he, “whenever are you going to come? What about an early start?—and here you are having breakfast, or whatever you call it, at half past ten...” From Tolkein's, The Hobbit

There is no paper to carry your food away from a table in Spain. Cups, saucers, plates, and silverware are the tools for eating. Food is only eaten by way of sitting. This practice slows down the pilgrim and deepens connection with others. I don’t think food wrapped in paper products participates in the healing of the world. We need intentional breaks as well as cups and saucers.

4s belong in this world and remind us of the beautiful union with God and one another. My appreciation for the equanimity of 4s grew as I walked with Lukas and remembered my colleagues and my workplace. I could hear the words of David Whyte again,

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.

(I wrote another section on the loneliness and abandonment of the 4 on the Camino. As I edited this section, I deepened my understanding of the relationship between the 4 and 8). At the end of the day, we encountered this, and all was clearly well.