This is one in a series of posts about my recent interest in the “Enneagram of Personality,” and how Type Four is a perfect fit for me, and also offers me insight and potential growth. For more information about this series, see the first post here.

“Fours find meaning best expressed through imagery, metaphors, story and symbols that can express feelings and truths that test the limits of language.” (Ian Morgan Cron & Suzanne Stabile, The Road Back to You, 158)

“Fours find meaning best expressed through stories, symbols, liturgy, art, music, and tradition.” (Suzanne Stabile, The Path Between Us, 120)

When I was a youth director at a church in Bucks County, I worked with an organist there, Brian, who had spent part of his childhood as a student at the St. Thomas Choir School in Manhattan. This is a boarding school where the students were the members of the Boys Choir at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, a cathedral on 5^th Avenue. One Holy Week, Brian convinced me to travel with him to St. Thomas on Saturday afternoon for the Easter Vigil service to be held there that evening. I had only been to a handful of Easter Vigil services before, and never one at an Episcopal church.

Well, I got something like two or three hours of the most powerful liturgy I’d ever experienced. For the first part of the service, the cavernous room was very dim, as we listened to ancient words from many stories of the Old Testament. A few adults were then baptized in the scarce light, as the service moved along slowly, taking one deliberate step at a time. The Litany of the Saints began, a spiraling mantra of asking for prayer and guidance from dozens of the saints who came before us, of thanking God for their witness, of praising God for their faith.

This litany grew louder and louder, until at last a magnificent pipe organ broke through, bells rang out, the lights were suddenly turned on, and I could see the space for what it was – a masterpiece of gold and white, with hundreds upon hundreds of Easter flowers gilding the altar. Incense was brought in as the choir led the congregation in a mighty and joyful hymn. And when it came time for me to receive Communion, I was overwhelmed with the power and majesty and mystery all around me, and I felt as though I were receiving Christ’s body and blood straight from the Holy Spirit.

This was, without a doubt, the “highest” Christian worship I’d ever attended. “High church” and “low church” are phrases used to describe the liturgical style of some Episcopalian and other Protestant churches.  A “low church” style is more informal, focused more on words – in a low-church setting, there’s not much mystery around what you’re doing, because it’s designed with people’s intuition in mind, and is designed to be understood. High church liturgy, on the other hand, is often more majestic and symbolic. Incense is burned, the people genuflect, the music and words chosen are often more esoteric and mysterious. The emphasis is not so much on understanding as glorifying the mystery.

The evening I attended Easter Vigil in Manhattan was the moment I discovered that I am, at my core, a high-church Christian. The next morning, when I attended my own church (where Brian was playing), it felt like such a let-down. Compared to Easter Vigil at St. Thomas, the Easter morning celebration at our Bucks County church felt so mundane to me.

Since then, I have often felt that the churches where I have served are “lower” than I’d like. I would describe them as “medium” churches, and if anything a little higher than they were due to my influence. I find a great deal of meaning in leading worship there, but I’m not sure how much meaning I would find were I sitting in a pew. There’s nothing right or wrong about low or high (or medium) church – but they connect with people at different levels, and some of us deeply crave one or the other. I certainly crave the higher forms of worship. That’s why I love worship at the monastery I visit sometimes. It’s why I love “smells and bells” in my worship. It’s why I think of God as ineffably sublime, more akin to a mathematical concept than to a person. I believe that when you’re talking about God, you have to speak metaphorically, poetically. There’s a reason Jesus so often spoke of the kingdom of God in parables – parables are poetic speech, stories turned upside-down. God is so different, so holy, so incomprehensible – the more precisely we want to speak about God, the more poetic and artistic our words have to be.

Hence high church, which emphasizes the mystery and majesty of God. I’ve even wondered sometimes if I’d find the most meaning in the Eastern Orthodox Church, for whom mystery and majesty are second-nature. But I would struggle a lot with that, if for no other reason than they don’t ordain women.

Suzanne Stabile writes that Fours find meaning in “stories, symbols, liturgy, art, music, and tradition.” Yep. That’s me, through and through. Explain it to me in simple terms and I get it, but I’m a little unimpressed. Show me through something creative or poetic, artistic or musical, and I will find meaning there. After all, that’s where I see glimpses of God.

Image by ian kelsall from Pixabay