Nine Lives With Jeff King: Live Your Best One

Some of us may feel we are late comers to the spiritual journey. Others may be surprised to experience transitions and shifts in faith in our elder years.

My guest in this episode, Sr. Anna-Camille, is no stranger to ongoing and late-life spiritual transitions and milestones. Sr. Anna-Camille was a public-school teacher for 40 years and an improv actor by night. She entered the monastery, St. Placid Priory, at 62 and made final profession before turning 70.

Our conversation traces her faith journey from a cedar-scented Bible camp tabernacle to monastic vows, with no road to Damascus — just God's breadcrumbs — and reflects on being loved, resting in God, and beginning again. Adding to the mix of Sr. Anna-Camille's faith development, she leads with Type 7.

In addition to her life and duties at St. Placid, Sr. Anna-Camille leads retreats and serves as a spiritual director. Find out more at https://stplacid.org

Brian Mueller joins me in this episode of Nine Lives and together we unpack the stages of his spiritual journey. Brian had the unique opportunity of growing up in the New Jerusalem Community, founded by Richard Rohr, in Cincinnati. Brian's story includes being immersed in the life and energy of New Jerusalem in his childhood, observing the impact on the community when Rohr moved away, and finding his own journey throughout his adulthood.

Brian's story exemplifies Rohr's model of spiritual formation: order, disorder, reorder. While some use the term "deconstruction," Brian sees his journey more from the perspective of "reconstruction."

Brian is a poet, writer, and contemplative teacher. He helps lead Illumen, a spiritual community that helps men heal by connecting with themselves, others, and the needs of the world. He also serves in leadership with Choosing Presence, helping people experience transformation through practices that ground them in the present moment.

Find more about Brian and his work at: https://www.brianmueller.com , https://www.illuman.org , and https://www.choosingpresence.org

I'm honored to welcome longtime friend and mentor, Dr. Paul Fitzgerald, in a return visit to Nine Lives. Paul was the first to introduce me to toxic shame, and has helped many, many people to discern the difference between shame and guilt. Paul was also the first to introduce me to the Enneagram.

In this conversation, Paul and I explore his faith journey. Paul grew up in a fundamentalist holiness church that was rife with its own form of mysticism. Paul unpacks his pursuit of vocational ministry, a health scare that proved to be a fulcrum in his faith shift -- moving him from a "human doing" to a "human being" -- and how he's spent the last 30 years specializing in helping others heal from internalized shame.

Paul and I explore deconstruction, about why it may really be a dark night of the soul, and about what to do if you're still hurting from a church experience. His advice: don't do it alone, and stop trying to figure it out.

Dr. Paul spent 25 years leading a transformational, immersive seminar known as BreakThrough. He's uniquely trained and qualified to serve as a spiritual director and lead others in their pursuit of liberation from toxic shame. Paul also leads as an Enneagram 5.

Find out more about Paul and his work at https://www.pauldfitzgerald.com

Season 10 continues where faith transitions get hard: when the questions won't go away.

Chris Bay and I continue to explore my experience of transition and development. The conversation shifts to the questions that wouldn't leave me alone. We cover two pivotal junctures in my journey: 1) Two women who sat across my desk and asked, "Are we safe in your church?" And, 2) A critical mass moment at an Enneagram training when I found my voice.

Then the conversation turns to how I discovered the Enneagram. Chris and I explore how our type shapes our theology, what spiritual maturity looks like when you're okay not knowing, and why none of us should walk this road without a trusted guide.

This season of Nine Lives explores faith shifts through Richard Rohr's arc of Order, Disorder and Reorder, with the Enneagram as a companion map.

If you're in the middle of your own faith transition, I would be honored to be a safe, non-judgmental and confidential companion. Reach out to me at [email protected]. You can also explore Enneagram typing interviews and coaching for individuals, couples and organizations at transmuto.org.

Chris Bay hosts the Life, Success, and Legacy podcast. Find him at https://lifesuccesslegacy.com

Season 10 begins where every faith transition begins: with the faith we were handed first.

I trade the host's chair for the guest's gving the mic to my longtime friend, Chris Bay, to interview me about my own story. We cover the steady faith of my parents, early childhood illnesses, and a God who felt like a safe place to go. From there Chris and I discuss my early teenage faith awakening, my experience with a charismatic Bible study, and the loneliness of being a teenager trying to live like a forty-year-old Christian.

Then the conversation turns to what happens when the questions start coming. Chris and I explore whether deconstruction is a normal part of development, why growth moves in a spiral, what we lose when we stop, and how systems, churches included, pull us back toward the familiar.

This season of Nine Lives explores faith shifts through Richard Rohr's arc of Order, Disorder and Reorder, with the Enneagram as a companion map.

If you're in the middle of your own faith transition, I would be honored to be a safe, non-judgmental and confidential companion. Reach out to me at [email protected]. You can also explore Enneagram typing interviews and coaching for individuals, couples and organizations at transmuto.org.

Chris Bay hosts the Life, Success, and Legacy podcast. Find him at https://lifesuccesslegacy.com

In this final episode of Season 9, we journey into the Head Center, home to Types 5, 6, and 7, and the center that perhaps more than any other knows what it is to live in a mind that simply will not be still.

Panelists Gerry Gebhart (Type 5), Joy Wray (Type 6), and Marnie Thomson (Type 7) engage in an honest and sometimes disarming conversation about what it's like to think for a living — not as a choice, but as a way of being in the world. Together they explore the particular kind of restlessness that hums beneath the surface of all three types: a mind in constant motion, scanning, sorting, preparing, anticipating.

"If I don't know, I can't prepare." "My mind is constant activity." These statements reveal what goes on inside the mind of this Center of Intelligence. And what's going on, it turns out, is a deep and largely unconscious negotiation with fear. Not the dramatic fear of crisis, but the low-grade, ever-present anxiety of not knowing whether you'll have enough — enough knowledge, enough certainty, enough options — when the moment of need arrives.

Richard Rohr reminds us that the Head Center's great longing is for inner guidance: the capacity to trust what arises from within rather than perpetually scanning what lies ahead. This episode doesn't resolve that tension so much as honor it — and in honoring it, perhaps loosens its grip just a little.

It's fascinating to observe the professional lives of our panelist. Gerry is a retired pharmacist. Joy is a nurse and adjunct instructor. Marnie is a Professor of Anthropology. Seems fitting for Head Center types!

What does it mean to lead — or love, or live — from the heart? Not sentiment, not emotion management, but the deep, often aching intelligence of the Heart Center.

This episode features panelists who know this terrain from the inside: Bill Reed (Type 2), Leslie Quilico (Type 3), and George Patton (Type 4). Together, they represent the Enneagram's Heart Triad — three distinct responses to the same fundamental questions: Am I worthy of love as I am? Who am I?

Twos give to belong. Threes perform to be seen. Fours long for what feels perpetually just out of reach. And underneath all three patterns we find the same quiet ache: the fear that who they actually are might not be quite enough.

The Heart Center is also a map of extraordinary capacity. Empathy, attunement, depth of feeling, the ability to move people — these are the gifts that emerge when the Heart types inhabit their own lives rather than the stories they've been telling about themselves.

This is a rich, honest conversation about image and identity, shame and authenticity, and what it looks like to stop performing your life and start living it.

This episode is an invitation into the deeper country of the heart.

You can find Bill at https://www.enneagramchicago.com

What does it mean to know something in your gut? The Body Center — home to Enneagram Types 8, 9 and 1 — carries a wisdom that lives below the neck. These three types share a gut-level intelligence rooted in instinct, presence, and an instinctive relationship with anger. But each one navigates that anger in a strikingly different way.

This episode features a panel with Joanne Flowers (Type 8), Jack Killen (Type 9), and Trime Persinger (Type 1). Together we dive into an honest, grounded conversation about what it's like to live from the body's intelligence — the drive for right action, the ache for autonomy, and the longing for a peace that doesn't require you to disappear.

Whether your own center of intelligence is Head, Heart, or Body, this panel will invite you deeper into the embodied wisdom your soul has been carrying all along.

Jack is a featured author in Personality and Wholeness in Therapy. Trime is the author of Crossing the Bridge: Heal Your Relationships with Courageous Communication. Find out more about Trime at https://www.trimepersinger.com

What if your first move — when life gets hard, uncertain, or morally murky — is to look for what's right?

For Enneagram Types 1, 2, and 6, that's not rigidity. That's how they're wired to love.

This episode explores the Compliant Grouping of the Hornevian Triads — one of three movement patterns that shape how we seek what we most deeply need. While some types turn inward and some move against, the Compliant types characteristically move toward — toward a standard, toward another person's need, toward the safety of a trusted person or community.

This isn't weakness. It's a particular way of reaching for connection, meaning, and belonging.

This panel features Ryan Vaughn (Type 1), Chris Bay (Type 2), and Craig Hinca (Type 6). Together they explore what this outward orientation actually feels like from the inside — and why it's so often misread by the world (and sometimes by themselves) as people-pleasing, rule-following, or anxious dependency.

What others may experience as compliance is often something far more searching: a longing to be good, to be needed, and to belong somewhere safe enough to trust.

Learn more about Ryan's work at https://www.greenbush.org/center-of-community-supports/leadership-coaching For more on Chris, go to https://lifesuccesslegacy.com For more on Craig, check out his LinkedIn page or go to https://churchwell.co

What if your first move — when life gets hard, overwhelming, or just too loud — is to go inward?

For Enneagram Types 4, 5, and 9, that's not avoidance. That's home.

This episode explores the Withdrawn Grouping of the Hornevian Triads — one of three movement patterns that shape how we seek what we most deeply need. While some types move toward others and some move against, the Withdrawn types characteristically turn inward: into feeling and imagination, into the life of the mind, into stillness and inner sanctuary.

This panel features Eric Blois (Type 9), Brandon Graves (Type 4), and Katarina Bednar (Type 5). Together they explore what this inward movement actually feels like from the inside — and why it's often misread by the world (and sometimes by themselves) as disengagement, aloofness, or passivity. What others may experience as withdrawal is often a genuine search: for identity, for understanding, for peace.

To learn more about Brandon and his music, go to https://brandongravesmusic.com. Find more about Katarina at https://yellowbug.co.

This episode opens a compassionate window into one of the Enneagram's most interior landscapes.

Remember, the map is not the territory. But sometimes a good map helps you finally come home to yourself.