The Shadow’s Wilderness
by Susan Andrews
Nine years ago – when I was 49 – I experienced the gift of a three month sabbatical. After 25 years of ministry and 25 years of marriage and 22 years of parenting, I was ready for a break. And so I put together 10 weeks of exploration – some into areas of uncomfortable discovery ( yoga and massage!), and some into retooling for a fresh commitment to ministry.
At one of the seminars I attended, we spent five days studying the Enneagram – an ancient spiritual practice that invites us to explore the shadow side of our souls. If you are not familiar with this frightening but life changing way of owning your own darkness, I strongly encourage you to investigate it. Coming face to face with my enneagram style/was the single most helpful discovery during my mid-life years. Which is saying a lot, because owning your enneagram is a way of acknowledging failure. An enneagram type is defined by the weakness, the sin which is central to our lives – the single flaw that stands in the way of spiritual wholeness and radical dependence upon the grace of God. And the challenge of an enneagram discipline is to transform weakness into strength.
For those of you familiar with enneagram language, I am a Type One – sometimes called the Perfectionist or the Truth Teller. (Other well known Ones are the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther, Ralph Nader and Hillary Clinton. You get the picture!). We Ones are emphatic about truth, fairness, moral rectitude and social righteousness. At our best we can build transparency, accountability, order and justice into the fabric of personal and social community. But at our worst, we are insufferable - legalistic, judgmental, self-righteous, and unforgiving. And it is only when we see the pitch blackness of our ugly rigidity, that we can begin to let go – and realize that only God is perfect, only God is Truth, only God is Just. And if we invite God to be God, then our moral sensibilities can be subject to God’s grace, instead of our own stubborn certainty.
But enough of me. It has occurred to me, as I once again prepare for the journey of Lent, that exploring our shadow sides is the spiritual task of this season – perhaps the most creative time of the year for our souls. When Jesus wrestled with Satan during those 40 days of temptation, he was offered the opportunity to take virtues and turn them into self-serving vices. Feed the hungry – but do it miraculously with Super Bowl half-time tactics.( an excess of Enneagram Type Two!). Perform a miracle – but for your own aggrandizement instead of pointing to the power of God (an excess of Enneagram Type 4). Grab the authority over all the kingdoms – not for service but for power (an excess of Enneagram Type 
. Thank God that Jesus resisted – but it took 40 days of struggle and deprivation and brutal self examination before he survived the rigors of his shadow struggle.
My shadow side is just as strong at 58 as it was when I was 20 – but at least now I have the wisdom to recognize it.. And the temptations just keep coming – to judge others, to claim superior truth, to rail at the unfairness of life, to out do every one else’s righteousness – including God’s. And anger – the satanic force in the soul of a Type One – continues to gnaw at my soul. I KNOW ALL OF THIS! But I still fall prey to the seduction of the shadowy world. And so I must be brutally honest with my continuing failures. I must courageously explore this endless shadow. And I must earnestly cast my self upon the grace and mercy of God – who loves me – and needs me – failure and all. If my truth can somehow be filtered through God’s Truth, then maybe we can be partners in the ever continuing work of creation.
What is your shadow? Where is your failure? How do you separate yourself from God and pretend to BE God – in ways that distort the world, instead of love the world? And how can your flaw become a tiny flame of holiness in God’s ongoing work of redemption?
Exploring the wilderness of shadow is our Lenten Call.
May it be so!
(A good book to begin an Enneagram journey is called Parables and the Enneagram, by Clarence Thomson. 144 pages.)