Enneagram 1: Father Richard Rohr and I

the joy of journeying with a famous person

On several occasions, I have met Father Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. Once we had breakfast together and he asked me how I’d gotten to the CAC. I gave him the “long story short” version of my spiritual autobiography and he said, “Oh, you’re serious.” Mostly, I’ve just been in the room while he was teaching. At a CAC spiritual retreat I was on last weekend, I watched a short video of the ceremony they held when he stepped out of leadership of the organization. Wow! I realized what joy I take from being around him. And I realized that I identify with him.

Now you might say, as I did, “How could you identify with a person of such accomplishment and fame?”

Then I remembered the wonderful admonition, “Compare and despair.” So I asked myself, “In what ways do I identify with Father Richard?”

Here’s what I found.

First of all, we are both Enneagram 1. In CAC circles, people know their Enneagram number and share it freely. It offers a shorthand for dominant personal qualities. When I told people there I was a “1,” they all nodded and said, “That makes sense.” That is because the character of an Enneagram 1 has to do with power and control and you can imagine the complications that come with wanting to control other people. Hence, Father Richard and I have shared some tribulations and maybe triumphs. ’Nuf said.

Second, when we are passionate about subjects, we write books about them. In a 2019 documentary about Father Richard, he remarked that he wouldn’t live long enough to write a book about the movement of the prophets from anger to joy. But it turns out that he did live long enough to write that book – The Tears of Things – and it made The New York Times bestseller list! As for me, in COVID, I became fascinated with K-drama and started my book, The Tao of K-drama. Because so many were dying at that time, I worried that I might not live to finish it. But I did and it was just accepted for publication by Oxford University Press in its Narrative Medicine imprint.

Third, we like to make asides while talking. Father Richard, reading a poem by Mary Oliver to the people gathered at the retreat, paused now and again to say something that had occurred to him. These were sometimes funny, sometimes profound, always inclusive. I love to make asides, too, and if the audience will laugh, I am very very happy.

Here’s my point: Father Richard is a power of example and in finding ways to identify with him, I am encouraged to spiritual development. He encourages me – puts courage in me – by being who he is and allowing me to see the ways in which we walk similar paths. My heart leaps up and I am given great joy!

And this is what I learned by daring to “identify, not compare.”