Ian Cron Quotes

A boy needs a father to show him how to be in the world. He needs to be given swagger, taught how to read a map so that he can recognize the roads that lead to life and the paths that lead to death, how to know what love requires, and where to find steel in the heart when life makes demands on us that are greater than we think we can endure.

The Enneagram is a tool that awakens our compassion for people just as they are, not the people we wish they would become so our lives would become easier.

The Enneagram doesn’t put you in a box. It shows you the box you’re already in and how to get out of it.

Once you know the dark side of your personality, simply give God consent to do for you what you’ve never been able to do for yourself, namely, bring meaningful and lasting change to your life.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Risking vulnerability and love is what takes courage.

your number is not determined by what you do so much as by why you do it.

How, as John Calvin put it, “without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.” “For

Either way, always maintain a compassionate stance toward yourself as God does. Self-contempt will never produce lasting, healing change in our lives, only love.

Ironically, the term personality is derived from the Greek word for mask ( persona), reflecting our tendency to confuse the masks we wear with our true selves, even long after the threats of early childhood have passed.

..."love always stoops.

the source of most of your problems is you.

Francis taught me that if we spent less time worrying about how to share our faith with someone on an airplane and more time thinking about how to live radically generous lives, more people would start taking our message seriously.

Beauty can break a heart and make it think about something more spiritual than the mindless routine we go through day after day to get by. Francis was a singer, a poet, an actor. He knew that the imagination was a stealth way into people's souls, a way to get all of us to think about God. For him, beauty was its own apologetic. That's why a church should care about the arts. They inspire all of us to think about the eternal.

Anyone who says they’re “trying” to be a good Christian right away reveals they have no idea what a Christian is. Christianity is not something you do as much as something that gets done to you. Once you know the dark side of your personality, simply give God consent to do for you what you’ve never been able to do for yourself, namely, bring meaningful and lasting change to your life.

Sooner or later we must distinguish between what we are not and what we are. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment that it is

I love a lot of people, understand none of them.” Flannery O’Connor

Atticus tells her, “Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

Beauty can break a heart and make it think about something more spiritual than the mindless routine we go through day after day to get by.

Life always comes down to who's driving

His will to live was waning, and it made him almost transparent, as though rather than dying, he might just disappear one day, leaving behind only a vague scent of regret.

First, if Francis were around today, he'd say our church community relies too much on words to tell others about our faith. For Francis, the gathered community was as potent a form of witness as words. He was convinced that how we live together is what attracts people to faith.

What if, now and then, we put the drums and guitars away, turned off the projectors, shut down the sound system, and waited quietly for God to emerge from the woods? Do we have enough faith to believe he’d appear to us as a community?

I struggled to find words to explain why I’d lost my composure, but as I was about to speak, Thomas squeezed my hand. “Not to worry; sometimes prayers are wet,” he said.

More often than not, Jesus comes to us incognito.

There is a big difference in life between a jump and a fall. A jump is about courage and faith, something the world is in short supply of these days. A fall is, well, a fall.

Don't try to change people. Love them. Only in acceptance can people embrace healthy transformation.

Information is not transformation.

Sadly, the unlived lives of parents sometimes push their children toward destinies not of their own choosing.

Father Alexander Schmemann is an Orthodox scholar who wrote a book called For the Life of the World. He says the liturgy is a journey that proceeds from the kingdom of this world into a brief encounter with the kingdom of God, and then back out again to bear witness to it.

There is a law in physics that applies to the soul. No two objects can occupy the same space at the same time; one thing must displace another. If your heart’s crammed tight with material things and a thirst for wealth, there’s no space left for God. Francis wanted a void in his life that could only be filled with Jesus. Poverty wasn’t a burden for him — it was a pathway to spiritual freedom.

...she taught me how to ride the Dragon Coaster and what to do when you're flung into the mouth of whatever it is you think will kill you. Throw up your arms and laugh until you come out the other side.

A peace lover is someone who enjoys the absence of conflict, but a peacemaker is someone who is proactively engaged in works of reconciliation in every sphere of life, from the personal to the global. That

It’s like what Gandhi said: “The world is so hungry for God that God could only come as a piece of bread. We so long for joy that God even risked coming into the world in the form of intoxication, that risky thing called wine.

All of us are meaning-seekers. We approach every painting, novel, film, symphony, or ballet unconsciously hoping it will move us one step further on the journey toward answering the question ‘Why am I here?’ People living in the postmodern world, however, are faced with an excruciating dilemma. Their hearts long to find ultimate meaning, while at the same time their critical minds do not believe it exists. We are homesick, but have no home. So we turn to the arts and aesthetics to satisfy our thirst for the Absolute. But if we want to find our true meaning in life, our search cannot end there. Art or beauty is not the destination; it is a signpost pointing toward our desired destination.

I'm beginning to see that there's a difference between art that trusts beauty's simple power to point people to God and Christian art that's consciously propagandistic. My Uncle Kenny, with whom I spent most of my time in Italy, said something profound--that you can make art about the Light, or you can make art that shows what the Light reveals about the world.

Human beings are wired for survival. As little kids we instinctually place a mask called personality over parts of our authentic self to protect us from harm and make our way in the world. Made up of innate qualities, coping strategies, conditioned reflexes and defense mechanisms, among lots of other things, our personality helps us know and do what we sense is required to please our parents, to fit in and relate well to our friends, to satisfy the expectations of our culture and to get our basic needs met.

Loyal to a fault, Sixes mean it when they say, “Until death do us part.

Ones’ passion to improve the world goes bad when they start to believe that in order to be loved they have to be perfect and not make mistakes.

...if you want someone who is efficient, ethical, meticulous, reliable, and does the work of two people, then hire a One!

Sixes make terrific friends or partners when they’re spiritually healthy and growing in self-knowledge. Loyal to a fault, Sixes mean it when they say, “Until death do us part.

But there is an old Rwandan proverb: ‘He who seeks vengeance is like a man who drinks poison, hoping that it will kill his enemy,’ ” Emmanuel said, a fleeting smile appearing

All ministry begins at the ragged edges of our own pain,

To be the altar boy at the first Mass of the day was a sacred initiation rite. It was like being hazed at a fraternity, only more Catholic.

I was drunk with belonging.

We don’t know ourselves by what we get right; we know ourselves by what we get wrong.

Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Life hands us a challenging syllabus. We need all the help we can get.

Whenever possible, perform acts of anonymous service.

To know oneself is, above all, to know

what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility,” he said.

Sixes are sharp, analytically minded troubleshooters. They love being on the underdog team trying to resurrect a company or failing program, particularly when others say it can’t be done.

Buried in the deepest precincts of being I sense there’s a truer, more luminous expression of myself, and that as long as I remain estranged from it I will never feel fully alive or whole.

Miss Annie, is it wrong for me to believe it was Jesus who asked my forgiveness?" I asked her. She frowned and shook her head, "Lord, what do they teach you at that school?" she said. Then she faced me head-on. "Did God humble himself by becoming a man?" she asked, every word spoken more loudly than the one before. "Yes, ma'am," I said. I'd never used the word ma'am before, but it seemed an excellent time to start. "Did he humble himself by dying on the cross to show us how much he loved us? she asked, waving her spatula at me. My eyes widened and I nodded, yes. Miss Annie's body relaxed, and she put her hand on her hip. "So why wouldn't Jesus humble himself and tell a boy he was sorry for letting him down if he knew it would heal his heart?" she asked. "But if Jesus is perfect--" Miss Annie ambled the five or six feet that separated us and took my hand. "Son," she said, rubbing my knuckles with her thumb, "love always stoops.

Thomas Merton wrote, “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

Unlike animals, we’re endowed with reason. That gift comes with a God-given responsibility to care for creation. It’s pretty obvious that Christians have dropped this ball in a really big way.

May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul. May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe. May you have respect for your individuality and difference. May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the façade of your life there is something beautiful and eternal happening. May you learn to see your self with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.

the object of all great art is beauty, and it makes us nostalgic for God. Whether we consider ourselves people of faith or not, art arouses in us what the pope calls a ‘universal desire for redemption.

The good news is we have a God who would know our scrawny butt anywhere. He remembers who we are, the person he knit together in our mother’s womb, and he wants to help restore us to our authentic selves.

The artist’s job is to reveal the real nature of things through picture or story or song, to show the rest of us what is really there when we are content with the misleading surface of things. As Pope John Paul II has written, “Artists are constantly in search of the hidden meaning of things, and their torment is to succeed in expressing the world of the ineffable.” Through their work, in the words of the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, “the knowledge of God can be better revealed and the preaching of the Gospel can become clearer to the human mind.” DAVID MILLS, “Imaginative Orthodoxy: The Art of Telling the Christian Story,” Touchstone

Sooner or later we must distinguish between what we are not and what we are. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment that it is . . .

Stop fantasizing about the ideal relationship, career or community and getting stuck in longing for it. Instead, work hard for what’s possible and see it through to completion. Don’t look for beauty and meaning only in the extraordinary or unusual but in the ordinary and simple as well. When the past calls, let it go to voicemail. It has nothing new to say to you. Don’t embellish and get swept up in your feelings. In the words of Jack Kornfield, “No emotion is final.

Most people don’t ever anticipate that a sudden change in cabin pressure might occur in their home, triggering the hope that an oxygen mask would fall from somewhere overhead to replace the air that shock has just sucked out of their lungs.

Because Sixes are conscientious, they tend to take on too much work, which leaves them feeling stressed out, resentful and pessimistic. When it all becomes too overwhelming they can overreact, which can ripple out and freak out other people.

Every business needs a loyal skeptic who isn’t afraid to ask hard questions or point out the flaws in a plan. A room full of overcaffeinated, risk-tolerant entrepreneurs may not like it when a Six asks a question that pops the balloon on their big idea, but someone has to be the voice of anxiety!

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them. Thomas Merton

When the church first began, it was a pacifistic movement known for its outspoken criticism of any form of bloodshed or violence. After Constantine legalized Christianity, ‘just war’ theory emerged, which meant that Christians could participate in wars if certain criteria were satisfied. By the year 1100, Christians were launching Crusades and telling the faithful that killing Muslims would secure them a spot in heaven! What happened? Somewhere along the way we forgot that Jesus intended the Sermon on the Mount to be an actual, concrete program for living. He wanted us to actually live it, not just admire it as a nice but unrealistic ideal. I mean, what would happen if Christians dedicated themselves to peacemaking with the same discipline and focus that armies do for war? What difference could it make? We have to revisit the early church’s teachings about reconciliation, peacemaking, and the Sermon on the Mount and ask ourselves if we’re living them out or tiptoeing around them.

Neuroscientists have determined the brain’s dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is associated with decision making and cost-benefit assessments. If MRI brain scans had been performed on my friends and me one summer’s night when we were fifteen, they would have revealed a dark spot indicating a complete absence of activity in this region of our brains.

I carry an invisible box of jerseys with me that say "Team Ian" on the front. My goal is to convince everyone I meet to become my fan and prove it by putting on my "Team Ian" jersey. If they do, then for at least ten minutes I feel like I've won their approval and love. If I have a run of people who don't put it on, I can fall into a rut I have visited so often I should have it decorated and furnished. For me, life is like one long job interview in which I'm trying to impress everyone I meet enough to hire me. The routine is exhausting, mostly for everyone else. I confessed this nutty practice to my spiritual director. He smiled, put his arm around my shoulder, and said, "I never trust a man without a limp.

Think of it this way,” he continued. “A pilgrimage is a way of praying with your feet. You go on a pilgrimage because you know there’s something missing inside your soul, and the only way you can find it is to go to sacred places, places where God made himself known to others. In sacred places, something gets done to you that you’ve been unable to do for yourself.

When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change,” he says. “But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.

Unlike most preachers in the medieval era, Francis was conflicted and sometimes even hostile toward academics and theologians. He believed that book knowledge was like material possessions — too much of it occasioned pride and got in the way of simple devotion to Jesus. (In The Last Christian, Adolf Holl imagined Francis meeting Augustine, Barth, Aquinas, and Bultmann in heaven for the first time and asking them what they would be without their books. When they can’t come up with an answer, Francis says, “Without your books perhaps you might have become Christians” [p. 63].) When Francis preached, he avoided theological arguments and polemics like the plague. Rather, his preaching was more autobiographical than intellectual, more performative than argumentative, more spontaneous than scripted, more genuine than contrived, more about transformation than about information. The endgame was to help his listeners find peace, reconciliation, and shalom with God, themselves, others, and creation. As Francis said, “We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.

What It’s Like to Be a Nine I’ll do almost anything to avoid conflict. I’m not a self-starter. Sometimes I get lost in doing trivial tasks, while things that really need to get done get put off. I’m happy to go along with what others want to do. I tend to procrastinate. People seem to want me to be more decisive. When I get distracted and go off task I give my attention to whatever is happening right in front of me. I often choose the path of least resistance. I find routines at work and home comforting, and I feel unsettled when something throws them off. Others see me as more peaceful than I really am. I have a hard time getting started, but once I do I really get things done. I’m a “what you see is what you get” person. I don’t think of myself as being very important. People think I’m a good listener even though I find it hard to pay attention in a long conversation. I don’t like to take work home with me. Sometimes I tune out and think about the past. I don’t enjoy big social gatherings as much as a quiet evening at home with the ones I love. Being outdoors is very soothing for me. I am often quietly stubborn when people put demands on me. It would feel selfish to spend a whole day doing whatever I want to do.

What It’s Like to Be a Six I’m always imagining and planning for the worst. I often don’t trust people who are in authority. People say I am loyal, understanding, funny and compassionate. Most of my friends don’t have as much anxiety as I do. I act quickly in a crisis, but when things settle down I fall apart. When my partner and I are doing really well in our relationship I find myself wondering what will happen to spoil it. Being sure I’ve made the right decision is almost impossible. I’m aware that fear has dictated many of my choices in life. I don’t like to find myself in unpredictable situations. I find it hard to stop thinking about the things I’m worried about. I’m generally not comfortable with extremes. I usually have so much to do it’s hard for me to finish tasks. I’m most comfortable when I’m around people who are pretty much like me. People tell me I can be overly pessimistic. I am slow to start, and once I do get started I find myself continuing to think about what could go wrong. I don’t trust people who give me too many compliments. It helps me to have things in some kind of order. I like to be told I am good at my job, but I get very nervous when my boss wants to add to my responsibilities. I have to know people for a long time before I can really trust them. I am skeptical of things that are new and unknown.

Nines’ desire to avoid conflict at all costs means that they are all too willing to accept peace at any price.

Martha gets angry because as usual she is doing all the heavy lifting and says to Jesus, “Are you just going to let her sit here while I do all the work? Tell her to help me.” I’m not sure, but I think this is the only place in the Bible where someone actually orders God to do something. Like I said, hell hath no fury like an overworked Two who is feeling unappreciated.

If you’re a One, you believe the only way you’ll know peace on the inside is if you perfect everything on the outside. It’s not true. That tranquility only comes when you surrender your compulsive need for perfection and stop stifling your emotions, particularly your anger. Don’t hide your true self behind that veneer of perceived perfection

The pleasure is in the waiting, not the sating.

What we don’t know about ourselves can and will hurt us, not to mention others,” he said, pointing his finger at me and then at himself. “As long as we stay in the dark about how we see the world and the wounds and beliefs that have shaped who we are, we’re prisoners of our history. We’ll continue going through life on autopilot doing things that hurt and confuse ourselves and everyone around us. Eventually we become so accustomed to making the same mistakes over and over in our lives that they lull us to sleep. We need to wake up.” Waking up. There

Think of eleven-year-old Hermione Granger getting on the train to Hogwarts and immediately comparing notes about what spells the other kids could do and whether they had read Hogwarts: A History.

Take a vacation and do not bring work with you.

(Like Nines, Fives are able to see both sides to things, but because they’re not worried about causing conflict they’ll shoot straight up with you.)

Healthy Nines are natural mediators. They see and value the perspective of other people and can harmonize what seem to be irreconcilable points of view. They are unselfish, flexible and inclusive. These Nines are seldom attached to their own way of seeing and doing things. They’ve learned to make decisions based on the right priorities. They are inspiring, self-actualized people. Average Nines, while they come off as sweet and easygoing, are stubborn and out of touch with their anger. These Nines overlook themselves. Though they generally feel unimportant, they occasionally wake up and realize they have to work on investing in themselves. They are willing to stand up for justice on behalf of others but would not likely risk doing much to stand up for themselves. They don’t ask for much though they appreciate what others do for them.

Unhealthy Nines have trouble making decisions and become overly dependent. To dull feelings of sadness and anger they engage in numbing behaviors. Struggling to maintain the illusion that all is well, they can vacillate between acquiescence and open hostility.

The least controlling number on the Enneagram, Nines allow life to unfold naturally, and they offer others the freedom and space to grow in their own time and way. They are quick to love, slow to judge and rarely ask to be recognized for the effort they put into caring for other people. They’re free and easy, down-to-earth, practical people who are eminently likable. Honestly, I can’t say enough good about Nines who are doing or have done their work. But Nines are also no strangers to the principle of inertia.

their gut and underexpress their anger. Nines are out of touch with the good side of anger, the part that inspires, drives change, moves things along and gives them courage to stand up for themselves. When you’re unplugged from this side of anger, you become lethargic and dreamy. This failure to risk fully engaging with life stems in part from the Nines’ need to avoid conflict at all costs.

the Nines’ need to avoid conflict at all costs. Nines fear that expressing their preferences or asserting their agenda will put important relationships at risk and upset the calm surface of their inner sea. What if their priorities and wants compete with the agenda of someone they care about and this difference leads to conflict and relational disconnection? What if asserting their own opinions, needs and desires creates disharmony between them and the people they love? Nines so value feeling comfortable and tranquil, maintaining the status quo, and preserving connections with others that they set aside their own viewpoints and aspirations to merge with those of others. This doesn’t seem like a big deal for Peacemakers, who often grew up feeling like neither their presence nor priorities matter much to others.

To cope with having countless things to do and not knowing where to start, to avoid the backlog of unanswered questions and postponed decisions crying out for their attention, to keep their anger out of view, and to buoy a low self-esteem, Nines have unhealthy coping strategies. They will often turn to food, sex, drinking, exercise, shopping, the reassuring comfort of habits and routines, performing mindless busywork, or vegging out on the couch and watching TV to numb out and ignore their feelings, wants and desires. What Nines fail to realize is that numbing out is a bogus form of relaxation, a cheap imitation of the genuine peace for which they long. But Nines should take heart: they are more courageous and resourceful than they know. Remember, on the Enneagram any number’s blight is merely a distortion of that number’s blessing. All of us have work to do. So, as Aslan the lion cries at the end of the Narnia Chronicles, “Further up and further in!

The Nine’s Deadly Sin The deadly sin of Nines is sloth, a word we usually associate with physical laziness. The sloth of Nines, however, is spiritual in nature. Average Nines are disconnected from the passion and motivational drive necessary to rise up and live their “one wild and precious life.” Immature Nines don’t fully connect to the fire in the belly they need to chase after their God-given life and, as a result, fail to become their own person. But tapping into those fiery passions and instinctual drives would upset the inner peace and equilibrium the Nine treasures above almost everything else. And now we’re closer to the truth. For Nines, sloth has to do with their desire to not be overly bothered by life. They literally don’t want life to get to them. Remember, Nines are in the Anger or Gut Triad. You can’t lay claim to your life unless you have guts, unless you have access to your animating instinctual fire. But Nines are slothful when it comes to fully paying attention to their own lives, figuring out what they want in life, chasing their dreams, addressing their own needs, developing their own gifts and pursuing their calling. They cling to and protect their “Hakuna Matata” inner harmony. They ask little of life and hope life returns the favor. If Eights are too in touch with their gut instincts and overexpress their anger, Nines are out of touch with

la moderación es una virtud, y no una orden de restricción.

Asumir nuestras debilidades es arriesgado, pero no tan peligroso como renunciar al amor, la sensación de pertenencia y la dicha, experiencias todas ellas que nos hacen sentir vulnerables. Solo cuando tengamos la valentía suficiente para explorar nuestros lados oscuros descubriremos el poder infinito de nuestra luz”.

Part of the problem is Sixes see both sides to everything.

What we don’t know about ourselves can and will hurt us, not to mention others,” he said, pointing his finger at me and then at himself. “As long as we stay in the dark about how we see the world and the wounds and beliefs that have shaped who we are, we’re prisoners of our history. We’ll continue going through life on autopilot doing things that hurt and confuse ourselves and everyone around us. Eventually we become so accustomed to making the same mistakes over and over in our lives that they lull us to sleep. We need to wake up.

Sooner or later we must distinguish between what we are not and what we are. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment that it is .

To borrow a quote from the British mathematician George Box, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” That’s how I see the Enneagram. It is not infallible or inerrant. It is not the be-all and end-all of Christian spirituality. At best, it is an imprecise model of personality . . . but it’s very useful.

When overwhelmed with too many things to do, too many decisions to make or the upsetting prospect of change, Nines can slow to a crawl. If they come to a full stop they know it might take a lot of energy to get themselves going again.

Sixes even experience elevated anxiety when life is going smoothly because they wonder what might come along and ruin it.

Celebrate it every day if a Five has chosen to undertake this journey with you. Chances are you are more special than you know.

May we have love. May we have joy. May we have peace. May we have healing. May we have rest.

It’s too bad your professor discouraged you from learning the Enneagram,” Br. Dave told me. “It’s full of wisdom for people who want to get out of their own way and become who they were created to be.