The first session of the year covered the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment. I am an ISFJ. Before getting into what each letter means, I would recommend the assessment to anyone else looking to understand themselves a little better, and see how their type affects prayer and temperament as well.
Borrowing from the Wikipedia article, the MBTI is a psychometric questionaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. The theory of psychological type was originally developed by Carl Jung - a name I know only because my wife was a psych student in college. :)
Beginning with the first letter - I am an "I" for Introvert. Didn't need an assessment for that one. The second letter (Sensing or iNtuition) -- I was Sensing (16 to 9). The third letter was either Thinking or Feeling and I, just barely am listed as Feeling. I think the balance I have in this section is a strength; in that I can use both in the appropriate time or situation and perhaps I don't have a dominant trait here. For the last letter (Judging or Perceiving) I scored as Judging by a difference of 18.
To quote a handout from class, from Father Raymond A. Parr -- "The true believer knows that search for self and search for God are the same search. When we find God, we find ourselves in him; when we find ourselves we find ourselves in God". This is kind of a running theme for the first year of lay formation -- as we come to truly understand ourselves, our faith formation, spirituality and how to merge that search for self with the hunger and desire to grow closer to God.
As I can always appreciate the humorous side of things, I liked the suggested prayer for my type -- "Lord, please help me to be more laid back and help me to do that EXACTLY correctly." You can find this and all of the other prayers -- here. Secondly, I constantly have Stuart Smalley in my mind whenever doing these self-assessment type of things -- and I've done a few (did I mention my 'then' future bride was a psych student? :) ) Stuart Smalley was a Saturday Night Live skit by Al Franken with the famous quote, "Denial is not 'just' a river in Egypt."
The book assignment for this session was Prayer and Temperament: Different Prayer Forms for Different Personality Types. While a bit of a heavy read, I would recommend it for those digging into matching your personality type with prayer. Co-author Monsignor Chester P. Michael has a web site - The Open Door.
As I am sure was the intention -- the determination of your prayer and temperament type is very intriguing -- to help see the methods and historical background of those with a similar type. Each had their aspects that I could relate to, and I am an Ignatian prayer type (mostly). One thing in a handout of ours was that in Ignatian prayer we need to meditate on the resurrection of Christ and not only the death of Christ. To me, this leads back to the word on my rock at the retreat - Joy. Ignatian, Augustinian, Franciscan, or Thomistic -- looking into each can only enrich your prayer life.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment