Passion

How appropriate that the word used to express intense love is also the word for intense suffering. According to enneagram personality typing, there are 9 personality types, all with characteristic strengths and weaknesses. Sevens, among which I number, are characterized as enthusiasts with the chief aim being the avoidance of suffering. Sevens are therefore all about passion in both senses, as two faces of the same coin. Buddhist teaching centers around the avoidance of suffering by gradually detaching oneself from any feeling at all. The ultimate goal being complete dispassion. Which, sounds strikingly like death. Christ, by contrast, invites us to enter into his suffering to discover all that is true life. To deny one side of passion is a denial of the whole. That being said it is not in our own sufferings that life is to be found. Somehow our sufferings only yield life when they are linked with Christ's. I can suffer for my own sake nearly constantly and yet should expect no harvest of Life. On the other hand, when my sufferings are those of Christ, passion begets treasures of an enduring nature. So if my present sufferings are nothing in comparison to the riches of Christ, how then do I overcome my aversion to suffering and rather seek to enter into Christ's suffering? How then am I to become dispassionate to that which is temporary and engage fully in eternal passions? I have no answer, but that this is the work of God in us.