I wonder if you are familiar with the Enneagram?

My previous spiritual director was well acquainted with it – used to teach it for the church in various locations – and we came to the conclusion that I was an ‘eight’ – there are nine types, signified by numbers, but with more interesting ‘descriptions’ as well.

The principal issues for an eight revolve around fear, control and trust. Eights interpret their earliest experiences in terms of being bullied, which provoke various strategies to achieve safety – in their extreme, they are strategies to pursue invulnerability. The first questions that an eight will ask are about who is in control – and should they be in control? Eights are happy under a strong authority, but if there isn’t a clear authority, then they will move forward to take control themselves.

So: fear moves towards control, but the path of spiritual growth for the eight is to move from that control to trusting. For the truth is that God is in control, and there can never be a time when we do not surrender to God, and God’s will. God is in charge, and that is the spiritual issue for the eight.

Which is why the issue of peak oil has been on my mind so much. I do have some relevant background experience on the issue, partly from understanding economics, but also from my time in the Civil Service working on the nuclear industry. Until a month or so ago, I accepted Bjorn Lomborg‘s analysis of the energy situation, viz that oil supplies have increased and are increasing, and that the rise in oil prices will of themselves enforce the gradual transition from oil to alternative energy sources.

What understanding Peak Oil has done is knock away that confidence – in other words, here is the prospect of havoc in our society, and for someone who values control, ie things being under control, that is profoundly disconcerting. It has brought into the open various assumptions that I had made about the pattern of my life and the path that it might reasonably be expected to take. I now think that my working life – ie the next thirty years – will be very different. (How do you make God laugh? – tell him your long term plans.)

In the Daily Office at the moment we use the language of ‘the darkness of this age that is passing away’. I take comfort from that; from the knowledge that the church has abided through crises similar to the one we are now facing; and that God will not leave himself without witnesses.

Yet an abiding hope for the future is not the same as a confidence that I will see it; or that my family will see it; or even that our local society (Mersea, Essex, England, the West) will see it.

For the other central concerns of an eight revolve around justice. Our society – globalised and oil dependent – is profoundly unjust. And unjust societies are unsustainable – it was part of the genius of the prophets to recognise that; think of Amos and the plumb line.

I remember reading this article a few years ago. It’s relevance increases the more time goes on. We should tremble more when we consider that God is just.

And yet.

“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him. Let him bury his face in the dust— there may yet be hope. Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace. For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.”