Remembering and Pondering—Then and Now

The discovery of the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator was significant for my teaching career. It provided a typology for distinguishing diverse personalities based on the polarities of introversion/extroversion, intuition/sensing, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. People learn differently, experience differently—are different. For example, introverts and extroverts gain energy in opposite ways. After a day’s work, the introvert needs solitary quietness, while the extrovert suggests calling friends and “going out.”

Such diversity of personalities runs throughout scripture. Esau is “a man of the field,” but Jacob is a “quiet man” (Gen. 25:27). The reflective Mary listens at Jesus’ feet while the frenetic Martha seeks to serve from the kitchen. Peter is a doer; John a contemplative. Thus their theologies and spiritualities differ. Moses perceives God in historical events, while Elijah hears God as the whisper of “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12, kjv).

In today’s reading, Paul declares that “fullness of life” necessitates freedom from requirements (“law”) that we cannot meet. Often these are spiritual disciplines that are incompatible with who we are. When they do not work for us, we feel like a failure and we give up. The spiritual writings of John of the Cross are vastly different from those of Brother Lawrence.

Yet after finding the spirituality that fits, there comes a point when ongoing spiritual growth entails walking into one’s shadow—the undeveloped side of one’s personality. Thus, as an extrovert, I came to need the “forced feeding” of an introvert monastery.