wizdUUm.net

I learned something new today - the Enneagram.  It's kinda like the Myers-Briggs, a personality "inventory."  A colleague shared it with us today. 

The word enneagram actually refers to a nine-pointed geometrical structure (just like a pentagram is five-pointed). But in terms of the enneagram of personality, it is the belief that all people fit into one of nine different personality types - nine archetypal ways in we view ourselves and the world and our relation to the world.

It's thought that these nine types originally come from Sufi beliefs, and that together the nine types of people make up "the face of God." (This is interesting to me because I know that in Islam, nine is the perfect number, the number closest to God.) In that context, contemplating the enneagram is more than just a way to understand psychological interactions, but is a means to enlightenment. 

The InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington is trying to transform the world towards greater mutual understanding and compassion by spreading interfaith dialogue.  To increase their reach, the plan is to train people who will facilitate such dialogues all over the greater Washington area.  In other words, they are training the trainers and I have volunteered to be one of them.

The training has gone alright.  The assembled group of volunteers is knowledgeable and enthusiastic and Mark and Nicole have shared insightful techniques and suggestions on how to have a true dialogue, as opposed to a debate or even a discussion.  But throughout there was this feeling that we wouldn't really know how to do this unless we'd experienced it for ourselves.  And so this evening that's what we did.  The facilitators broke into groups and had a dialogue.

The local paper tells me that some students on the campus of George Washington University are in trouble today because they put up fliers advertising National Islamo-facism Awareness Week. The fliers, which start off by exclaiming "Hate Muslims? So Do We!!!" goes on to list several "stereotypical features" of Muslims, such as their "lasers in eyes" and "peg-leg for smuggling children and heroin."

GW students held meetings to express their outrage over the "hate crime." The University police began investigating. And the story went out beyond the campus grounds causing a swarm of unwanted negative publicity for the university. I've heard about it in emails and on list-serves.