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The enneagram of the Lord’s Prayer

At the very conclusion of the main text, the Lord’s Prayer stood as an intriguing single example of a cyclical enneagram – complete with a sense of clockwise motion and a line-by-line correlation with the nine types of the strategy board.

Having now examined the full theory of the cyclical enneagram, it is time to revisit the Lord’s Prayer.

Let us begin not with the prayer but with the more general teaching of Jesus. There are three truly radical aspects of Jesus’ teaching, identified in these three words: Father, kingdom, and forgiveness.

Jesus taught that God is ‘Abba, Father’ – a radically new perspective on the nature of God and the relationship between fallen humankind and its creator. It is the tenderness and intimacy of that name – ‘Abba’ – which makes this teaching unique.

Jesus proclaimed the kingdom: the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, growing like a mustard seed, leavening the dough, already among us and yet still to come. It presents a unique and radical vision for the future of redeemed humankind – a future already begun.

And the action that makes this kingdom possible is the third radical theme in the teaching of Jesus: forgiveness. Jesus teaches that God forgives us – again and again – and that we must forgive one another – again and again.

We can now arrange these three themes according to the cycle of reflection and action.

The radical new discovery about our context is this: that God is ‘Abba, Father.’ Of the three ‘radical teachings,’ this is the teaching at point NINE.

In this new context, humankind is invited to participate in the kingdom of God. This teaching becomes the first energy point of the cycle: we are invited to choose for the kingdom, to grasp the vision of what could be.

The third teaching – forgiveness – naturally becomes the energy point in the action phase of the cycle. It is the action that God takes to make all of this possible. It is the action that we are invited to take, to make the beginnings of the kingdom possible on earth for ourselves and for those around us.

And the three teachings form a cycle, because it is the action of forgiveness which reconciles us with God, and allows us to approach God in the first place with those intimate words, ‘Our Father.’

These three key points form the basis of our prayer: beginning and ending in God with ‘Our Father’ and ‘Amen’; praying for the coming of the kingdom with ‘thy kingdom come’; and acknowledging the central role of forgiveness, from God to us and from us to those around us – ‘forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ These three lines and the ‘Amen’ form the central framework of the prayer.

And now we add the intermediate stages: from the understanding of the context at NINE, we extract the ideals at ONE, with images of God’s heaven. The beginning of the decision phase is the practical application of ourselves to those ideals by entering into relationship with God who is our Father: the acknowledgment that is also worship, ‘hallowed be thy name.’

After deciding for the kingdom, we turn the principle into a more detailed plan: ‘thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven,’ intending to ‘paint the beauty of heaven onto the rough canvas of this world.’

The point of no return is passed and we contemplate the practicalities of bringing heaven to earth – beginning with supplies: daily bread at FIVE. The main practical matter is forgiveness at SIX. Some of the other items – picked up at SEVEN – are ‘deliverance from’ temptation and evil and pain. And as the kingdom begins to emerge on earth as promised, God is acknowledged as the one who makes it possible and who energizes every part of the cycle: ‘for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and for ever.’

‘Amen.’

The cycle of this prayer takes us through the whole process of recognizing ‘in our guts’ the nature of God, choosing ‘in our hearts’ for God and God’s kingdom, committing ‘with our heads’ to the practical action required, and then recognizing ‘in our guts’ once again that the whole process belongs to God.

To repeat the cycle is to deepen its impact upon us and within us. It is no accident that the prayer delivers us at the end back to ‘our guts’ where it began. It is no coincidence that for centuries the prayer has been used repetitively – repeated over and over – as cycle upon cycle it offers up all that we are to God again and again, and binds us into Jesus’ radical project: ‘Father, kingdom, forgiveness, Father, kingdom, forgiveness...’

We recognized in the main text the importance of each line of the prayer to the people of that ‘home base’ in particular: their need for that line, and their offering of that line. The lines of the prayer connected by arrows are also going to be naturally important to the people of each type. And the lines opposite the home base may present a particular challenge: it is all within the essential logic of the strategy board and the enneagram.

We are called to play our part in the community that offers this prayer. We are also called to pray the whole of this prayer with the whole of who we are: head and heart and gut; one whole humanity, one whole prayer.

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