One of the things we’ve been doing here at All Nations is looking at personality types and patterns of reaction. We’ve done a Myers–Briggs session and, although I hate the idea of defining people by four letters, or even 16 letters, I’ve found it has given me a lot of insight into my personality that I hadn’t thought of before. I also met someone who has the same four letters as me, and listening to her story has helped me realise stuff about my own lif
In many ways throughout my life, I’ve felt isolated—or perhaps I’ve isolated myself from others. One part of the personality exercise is to consider how you see the world and thing about things, and I think I’ve kept myself apart because I think in a different way to many people. My reaction to this has been to view myself as a self-contained individual without any connection to other people, or just weak connections.
Isaac Asimov wrote a series called Foundation (which is great! read it!), and at one point they come to a planet where every person, animal and plant is connected psychically. A similar theme is explored in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance series (also pretty good, read this after the other one). There are a lot of weird beliefs tied up in these examples, but as a Christian I know that I have the same Holy Spirit in me as do all my brothers and sisters. I’m not me in isolation, but me in communion and community with others through one Spirit, one Lord, one baptism, one faith. I think working out what this means will be very important for me this year.