Loneliness is at the core of the Enneagram Type FOUR personality.

"God IS this great feeling of solitude with which we are all born."

Ernesto Cardenal
Nicaraguan poet and former Trappist monk

As a Type FOUR on the Enneagram ("The Romantic," "The Individualist"), loneliness has been a frequent companion throughout my life. In a way, given the contours of my particular personality type, such loneliness is probably inevitable. After all, I naturally focus on developing a new and creative vision, which practically GUARANTEES that others will often misunderstand or fail to relate. This sense of social alienation is further intensified by the fact that my vision is bound to myth, imagination and a theology of erotic energy, elements which most people tend to ignore or avoid. Such loneliness is also a product of the fact that I generally find myself attracted only to the DEPTHS of life, which are not the realms where most people live out their years! However, loneliness also has a positive function, since it serves to PUSH me toward union and communion with the lonely Creator, whose corresponding sense of abandonment most likely originates in the fact that s/he is always at least several steps ahead of we human embodiments - that's US! - of the Divine vision. Thus, loneliness possesses a pervasive bittersweet quality. It is lonely, for sure, yet it places me smack dab in the middle of communion with a lonely God. And that place, when I really think about it, is exactly where I want to be :)

Photos: (Top) Rosy Paintbrush and cascade; (Middle) Rainbow; (Bottom) Colorado Columbines; All three photos were taken on the Bluebird Lake Trail, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, July 13, 2015