The first 6:30 minutes of this video are where Rohr explains what I was trying to get at with the origin story. It’s much clearer to just listen, but I pasted the transcript of those 6 minutes below, and at least partially cleaned it up, though a lot of sentences run together with no punctuation, and I only cleaned up and put in some sentence and paragraph breaks to help a little. But didn’t polish it all up. If you want to skip to the more relevant parts, I bolded them. All the rest of the words below are Rohr’s (or what the AI-generated transcript caught - and I only partially cleaned).
Well, I haven’t taught this I don’t think fully for probably 12 years so I hope I can say something fresh and refreshing but I’m eager to teach it and the amazing thing to me is that as many years as i’ve known it now I learned it in the by accident or providence I don’t know already in the early 70s I ended up being one of the first people to learn it for some reason and here 30 years later my appreciation for it would actually be stronger.
I’m more convinced there’s some amazing truth at work here and of course psychologists and therapists and scientists have all been putting out books you see many of them over here trying to say how can this be true; how can it be so true because scientifically we can’t prove it it really is a classic example of a wisdom tradition an oral tradition that seems to have been lost for many years.
In the book the christian perspective I’m trying to trace some of the history again and I’m convinced it has originally christian foundations among the desert fathers and then a Franciscan connection in the in the 12th 13th century by a man called Raymond Lull who was a master evangelist made eight trips to the world that we would now think of as the Muslim world and he was trying to find a lingua franca whereby as an evangelist he could talk to the muslim world and he could talk to the christian world and would not offend either one of them all right an almost neutral language of conversion or transformation he got lost in his huge set almost as great as Thomas Aquinas’s in latin and really wasn’t known and then got rediscovered.
Those good Jesuits brought it back to the the west in the early 70s and I happen to have a Jesuit spiritual director at that time in Cincinnati who taught it to me and in those first years we were told we had to keep it an absolute secret it was only because they didn’t want it to be trivialized. It was only to be taught from spiritual director to spiritual director because they thought that once it became as it has become a parlor game its power would be lost and now the books pour out they speak of the enneagram industry but I didn’t even tape it even though my friends say I don’t have an untaped thought and yet Helen Palmer came out with her book in the early 80s or mid 80s I think it was and I said okay the secret’s out and so the next time I taught it also in the mid 80s that was put on tape and that’s the set that made me known in these circles. It’s interesting that, and I say this just to help you understand the longing of the world I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m bragging or something but I keep being invited to give the keynote address or a major address at these international enneagram conventions, and i’ve only accepted it twice but I have to give them a polite excuse every other year or so, and I said to one of them I said why do you keep inviting me because I’ve said whatever I have to say; (I do think I sort of know it intuitively at this point but it amazed me that because it has moved into the business world it’s moved into the education world it’s moved all over the world. In fact my book tends to be much bigger selling in other languages than than in english) but, I asked why do you want me to talk about it and the answer is always the same. That even these people who have taken it to rather wonderful but secular levels are recognizing that it’s lost much of its power and that their desire why they keep inviting me back is they say bring us back to the spiritual foundation. Now that’s the tack I’m going to be giving you today which I believe is the original one and I believe is the authentic approach to the enneagram. It was a spiritual tradition totally, entirely. The years of refinements seem to have been done in the world that we would now call Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran where the sufi schools of spiritual direction took what I believe was the original capital sins of the desert fathers and refined them and made them subtle and helped to understand the patterns between them. Then Raymond Lull, in my opinion (I can’t prove all of this but it’s the only links in the chain we can rediscover) seems to have brought it back from the middle east and the Sufi schools of spiritual direction to the christian west, but then it got lost in his Latin text and no one bothered with it. But anyway we’ve got it again and it’s I hope I hope will be a gift for you and you see the title that I gave at this time is I believe a return to its original understanding and even a biblical understanding the enneagram as the discernment of spirits now let me spend a little time on that that word itself might be one not totally familiar to you in the 12th chapter of first Corinthians Paul speaks of discernment as one of the charismata one of the original charisms that are absolutely essential for this mystery called church…
Your comment made me search interesting paths. The video/transcript speak about the role of Sufism in developing the use of Enneagrams. That made me search what the Sufi teach about the topic. What I found was quite heavy criticism about transferring the esoteric teachings to mundane psychology, The following link is perhaps the most detailed criticism:
It is interesting that there seems to be comparable criticism in the linked video, although the interpretation of the basic teachings is different. Rohr links the spiritual teachings of Enneagrams to original sin or capital sins and an interpretation of Pauls teaching about charismata. That is quite far from the teachings of Sufism.
Enneagram itself is an old symbol with uncertain origin. It has been claimed that it originated in Babylon or ancient Mesopotamia about 2500 BCE but the claim is questionable - it is connected to the belief that there existed a Sarman Society, an esoteric, hidden wisdom organization.
Enneagram was utilized later by Sufi teachers, in the background of Islamic esoteric spirituality. The nine points were said to represent the nine saints who are at the highest level in the Divine presence.
It is probable that the old symbol has been utilized in different contexts, in addition to Sufism. Maybe some of those users have been Christians.
Whatever the background is, the modern use of Enneagrams in classification of personalities should be evaluated based on shown merits, not the diverse history of the symbol.
Currently reading This Is Happiness a novel set in a remote town in Ireland at around the time when electricity was becoming more common. It is far from a page turner but in a way the pace of the story is kind of like the place it describes. I’m reminded that places like people are things of which one may know more or less about but can never know as a fact.
Here is a nibble:
The known world was not so circumscribed then nor more knowledge equated with facts. Story was a kind of human binding. I can’t explain it any better than that. There was telling everywhere. Because there were a fewer sources of where to find out anything there was more listening. A few did still speak of the rain, stood at gates in a drizzle, looked into the sky, made predictions inexact and individual, as if they were still versed in bird, berry or water language, and for the most part people indulged them, listened as if to a story, nodded, said Is that so? And went away believing not a word, but to pass the story like a human currency to someone else.
This isn’t an exact quote, but in reading “The Hiding Place,” we’ve come to the point where Betsy dies in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. Betsy and Corrie’s dream, prior to dying, was to build a concentration camp for those who suffered, to show love and service, rather than strength and hate. Corrie wrote that it was only after a bit that Betsy’s main focus was to build it for their German captors, primarily, besides those who suffered in the camps. Reportedly, her Christlike attitude caused the women in the barracks to stop cursing and shoving to get the best places in the lice- and flea-infested bunks, and instead to become polite, saying “Excuse me,” and “It’s of no matter,” when they accidentally bumped into each other.
I read that Eric Liddell, (from “Chariots of Fire”), who was in the internment camps in China during the Japanese occupation, was similar. Boy, I would need a lot of grace to be like that.
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
I had not even realized yet that Berry had passed! A great one indeed. I love that poem of his and don’t recall ever having encountered it till now. Thanks for sharing that!
Berry, who described himself as “a person who takes the Gospel seriously,”[67] has criticized Christian organizations for failing to challenge cultural complacency about environmental degradation,[68][69] and showed a willingness to criticize what he perceived as the arrogance of some Christians.[70] He was an advocate of Christian pacifism, as shown in his book Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ’s Teachings About Love, Compassion and Forgiveness (2005).
And this from an admirer.
Jedediah Britton-Purdy has considered many of Berry’s major themes and concerns:
Over the years, he called himself an agrarian, a pacifist, and a Christian—albeit of an eccentric kind. He wrote against all forms of violence and destruction—of land, communities, and human beings—and argued that the modern American way of life is a skein of violence. He was an anti-capitalist moralist and a writer of praise for what he admires: the quiet, mostly uncelebrated labor and affection that keep the world whole and might still redeem it. He was also an acerbic critic of what he dislikes, particularly modern individualism, and his emphasis on family and marriage and his ambivalence toward abortion mark him as an outsider to the left.[63]
That’s an astute observation, though it may go a bit far. I’d say that aggression is baked into the American psyche, which is why there is so much violence.
I can’t argue with that though Berry’s phrasing offers the hope that it is only the more recent threads woven into the cloth of our communal life which carries the blight of violence.
I forget who shared this here before but it is my favorite or Berry’s poems. My bolding over the phrases which speak loudest to me.
“The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
― Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
Here is one more by Berry I found on line which I like as it talks about how faith can be something you just take for granted like your beating heart. You don’t have to carry it around as typed out creed, much better that you notice it anew again in again as you move through life as something that is a part you.
“Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,
Suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,
I had to laugh at this one, as I see myself in it:
A Warning to My Readers
by Wendell Berry
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
I had never heard of Wendell Berry before you guys posted your memories and some of his poetry. I’ve since read some more of his work, and really appreciated it. So thanks for taking the time to contribute to this thread.
I just listened to Russell Moore (from Christianity Today), recount a visit to Wendell Berry in his kitchen. Apparently, he was quite anti-modern contraptions, including phones. While he was visiting, Mr Moore’s I phone rang. He was a bit apprehensive of Wendell Berry’s response. It came: something like “Well, we all have our sins”!
My introduction to Berry was years ago when I read The Memory of Old Jack, unaware of who Berry was. I now have a friend in his mid-80s who is in the same state of mind as Jack, living half in the past, partly in the present. I am in wonder how some like Berry can put down in words those experiences whether in prose or song.