2020 Update -As it turns out, I was busted by someone’s type that day, but evidently not mine; I now identify as a definite Enneagram Type 4! It just goes to show ya, I contain multitudes.

So, because I’m such a consumer and glutton and grabber (Type 7 if you’re wondering), I was really getting into Enneagram a couple of months ago until something else shiny caught my eye. Before I was distracted away, I signed up for this EnneaThought for the Day, and I do still read these and occasionally even pay attention to them. Here’s what I received in an email today:

What would it be like to let go of your acquisitiveness and express your higher qualities of gratitude and joy today? 

 Just as I read to the end of the sentence, an answer came right out – like literally, I think I spoke it aloud. It was: I would write a blog post. And with that, here comes the gratitude and joy:

I am grateful for my opportunities to teach and do and make art, to think about how we are created to create, to be meeting new people and making new friends who are living into this creative exchange with Creator/Source/Something Bigger than Ourselves /Love/God.

I am grateful for the sources of income that are allowing me to move in this space, my work and my husband’s work and the little windfalls and opportunities that come our way that keep the bills paid and the refrigerator stocked.

I am grateful for the wise ones, the old friends, the friends of longest standing, the family and forebears who have been in my life from before I knew anything, and who have loved me and love me still through my step forward/step back journey through this one wild and precious life.

I am grateful for my children, my two beautiful sons, who have taught me over and over how to love fiercely and let go fearlessly, and are surely, truly, teaching me that lesson even now.

This morning I attended Park Avenue Baptist Church, where Brandon Maxwell preached, on this first Sunday of Black History Month, about orthodoxy and heresy and white supremacy and strange fruit and above all the power of justice and mercy and love to be bigger than the barriers we as humankind face to living in God’s way. The joy was deep and abiding in his words and in that place, deeper even than the pain and the hurt and the anger and the injustice that is a part of the shared American history that has brought us to this day. The joy was bedrock, it was eternal, it was everlasting and everlasting, and its glints and flashes shine every day in my life when I only have eyes to see.

Letting go of my acquisitiveness? Just now, that meant not picking up a book, not slipping into the kitchen for a snack, not clicking over to social media, not casting about for something else to take on. It meant stopping to acknowledge and appreciate the rich and full present reality of my life. Blessed Be, Thank you Jesus, So be it, and Amen!