Beth Beaty is a longtime member of Hamline Church, and a church communications professional. She has worn many hats at Hamline over the years, and has recently been exploring the Enneagram. This week, we asked her how her work with the Enneagram has developed her spiritual life. 

When I started studying the enneagram a few years ago, I had no idea the impact it would have on my life. It was something I was literally just studying. It seemed a dense, convoluted theory wrapped in enigmatic spiritual-psychobabble. No one could even tell me what it was. A personality typing system? Not really. A model for personal growth? Well, no. A spiritual practice? Not exactly.

Despite my frustration – or maybe because of it – I kept picking away at it. Something told me there was something there for me. Then one day, I was sitting in the narthex (I don’t remember why now) reading Richard Rohr’s The Enneagram a Christian Perspective. I was reading a chapter about the enneagram type I thought I might be (because it is in part a personality typing session). I read a sentence that made me laugh out loud with recognition. The next sentence made me slam the book shut with shame and fear. It was an automatic reaction, like the slamming of a door. I remember feeling this kindly smiling priest was somehow looking from the pages of his book right into the darkest part of my soul. The words “How did he know?” appeared fully formed in my mind. Who knows, I may have said them out loud. I was pretty rattled.

I gave the book the side eye for a couple of days, but I eventually picked it up and I read those two sentences again. They still amused and stung, but not as much as the first time. What shocked me now was what followed them. No recrimination or scolding. Not a solution or improvement plan. Not even forgiveness for what felt like the sin of being a failed human. I found love and acceptance.

That experience – of being so fully and deeply seen and then so thoroughly accepted – is the core of the enneagram for me. It’s where it meets the Gospel. We are all broken because the world is broken. But we are all loved and supported as we are, breaks and all. And – breaks and all – we are called to love deeply, live bravely, shine brightly and move compassionately through the world.

I am now nearly at the end of my formal training as an enneagram teacher (or at least this phase). I’d like to think I am no longer just studying the enneagram but am living it at well. I have been blessed to have many amazing teachers on this journey, from internationally known trainers to people I was supposedly teaching. I love the way every new encounter brings me a new insight.

The enneagram has brought an expansiveness it to my life. I use the tools it gave me and the practices it taught me multiple times a day. But most importantly, it made the Gospel real to me like nothing else before. I feel deeply seen, completely accepted and compassionately called.