Introducing the Enneagram: Retreat

Introducing

the Enneagram:  A Practical System

for Self-discovery and Spiritual Growth

What makes you uniquely you?

How do you unlock the virtues of your deepest nature?

How can we relate to one another with more compassion?

The personality-typing system called the Enneagram gives us insight into these questions. 

Each of us looks at the world through one of nine different personality lenses.  When we understand the dynamics of these ways of seeing, we gain insight into why we do what we do, and how to grow.

The Enneagram provides us a way to deeper self-understanding, freeing us to expand spiritually, and leading us to more fruitful and joyful relationships.

Join us for a time of deep exploration using this elegant and powerful tool:

the Enneagram.

Saturday, February 26, 2011;  9 am – 7 pm

(coffee & pastries, lunch, and dinner provided)

At the Villa Pauline Retreat Center

352 Bernardsville Road
; Mendham, NJ 07945

Cost: $90/person, if you register by February 8; $100 thereafter.

Seminary Student discounted cost $60

                                                                 

This day-long retreat will:

•               Describe the nine personality types, including their strengths and challenges.

•               Help you identify your own type.

•               Give you some experience in working with the Enneagram, including practices for self-discovery,             stress management, and communication.

Leaders:   Susan Joseph Rack and Paul Rack have been students and practitioners of the Enneagram for several years.  They are being certified by Don Riso and Russ Hudson, of the Enneagram Institute, Stone Ridge, NY.

To register please respond to: paulrack@optonline.net.

We recommend acquiring a copy of the book, The Wisdom of the Enneagram, by Don Riso and Russ Hudson, which includes a short Enneagram personality test to prepare for this retreat.  Or you may take the RHETI personality test (for a small fee) at www.enneagraminstitute.org.  We will also have a test available at the retreat.

Spiritual Doom.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom --Martin Luther King, Jr.

He said that like 45 years ago.  At what point do we realize that we have stopped "approaching" spiritual doom and have actually arrived at it?  Is it when we invade and devastate countries "preemptively," killing many thousands?  Is it when we can't regulate weapons of mass destruction (assault rifles, etc.) even when we have regular massacres?  Is it when the richest 2% of the people have 25% of the wealth, and everyone else's income has remained stagnant since the late 70's?  Is it when a large number of our leaders don't "believe" in a scientific fact as well-attested as climate change, and refuse to do anything about it?  And so on.  And we still spend WAY more money on the military than on programs of social uplift. Spiritual doom is not approaching.  It is here.  It is the status quo.    

Was Jesus Born to Die?

            There is an old Christmas spiritual which begins: “I wonder as I wander out under the sky, why Jesus the Savior did come for to die.”  The reason we wonder about it is because it doesn’t make any sense.  So we think we have to leave it as a divine mystery and just accept it on faith.  It is after all what some preachers have been telling us for over a thousand years. 

            Well, we can stop wondering.  Jesus came to announce, embody, and bring to people the Kingdom of God.  He did not, therefore, come to die.            

            If Jesus was “born to die,” Herod’s soldiers could have taken care of it when Jesus was a baby, which they were fully prepared and indeed ordered to do (Matthew 2:16-18).  We could then worship the baby Jesus (like Ricky Bobby in the film Talladega Nights), and remember how he “died for us,” without having to be inconvenienced by anything he did or said as a grown-up.    

            There is more to Jesus than his death.  Statements like this “born to die” thing reduce Jesus’ actual ministry to meaninglessness.  AND they undermine the importance of the resurrection. 

            In truth, Jesus himself says that he came to inaugurate and establish on earth the Kingdom of God (Mark 1:15): which is the healed and reconciled relationship between God and people, and people and each other.  He was born to live and show us how to live together.  He was born to bring us eternal life. 

            In order to do this he had to give his life (John 3:16).  And the life he actually lived is an integral part of this initiative.  Otherwise we would not know what kind of life he gives us.  He gives us his life in his ministry.  His ministry culminates in his death and resolves in his resurrection.  It is all one integrated movement.

            If he did not live the kind of life he lived his death would not matter.  Indeed, his death on the cross wouldn’t have even happened, since how he lived is what offended the authorities and caused them to have him executed.  It is his life, his actions, that demonstrate and prove his Messiahship (Matthew 11:2-6).  His life is able to be a “ransom for many” (Mark 10:45b) precisely because it had value in some demonstrated content in the way he lived: “not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45a).

            Excessive concentration on Jesus’ death is always a way to avoid the challenges of his life.  We can then focus on “what he did for us” while ignoring what he calls us to do for others.  The empire always gets more mileage out of a dead Jesus than a living one.   One thing crucifixes communicate is: “Worship him… but don’t follow him or this could happen to you.”