Ladies of Charity study Enneagram for self-understanding
?Nobody can tell you where you’re coming from and how you look at life, but the Enneagram hopes to help you discover it.
The Ladies of Charity recently sponsored a workshop on the Enneagram, a personality theory used for self-understanding and self-development, at St. Mary (Nativity) Roman Catholic Church in Uniontown.
Sister Annette Frey, a member of the order of the Sisters of Charity, served as facilitator for the workshop that was attended by members of the public and the Ladies of Charity, a lay organization based at St. Mary Parish that is open to the entire area and meets at the convent at 10?a.m. on the first Thursday of each month. Gertie DeCenzo is president.
Frey explained the Ladies of Charity provide community service by visiting the homebound and take them Communion, providing consolation and spiritual support to the bereaved and volunteering at the St. Vincent De Paul Store in Uniontown and Uniontown Hospital as well as for Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers.
The idea for the Enneagram workshop came out of the idea of community service.
Frey explained, “The more we understand ourselves, the more we can be in tune with others’ needs.”
Frey, who has also taught the Enneagram as a guest speaker in classes in the human development department at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus, said, “I think people like coming to know themselves more fully.”
She started this recent workshop by explaining, “When we think of the Enneagram, we think of the circle because the circle is wholeness and God is the only one who encompasses all. The kingdom of God lies within us. We have gifts of God to share with one another. We just don’t have the same gifts.”
Frey said the Enneagram is an oral tradition that started in the East thousands of years ago. A man named Ivanovitch Gurdjieff began spreading the word in Europe in the 1920s while Oscar Ichazo took it to South America. The Enneagram eventually came to North America.
While Frey said the Enneagram was not written down until the 1960s, there are many books about it today as well as as a website offered by The Enneagram Institute. Frey had several books for participants to examine, including “Understanding the Enneagram, The Practical Guide to Personality Types” by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson and “The Enneagram Made Easy” by Renee Baron and Elizabeth Wagele.
Frey provided a handout for workshop participants that explained the Ennegram is divided into nine points, each standing for a personality type. They include: The Perfectionist, The Helper, The Achiever, The Romantic, The Observer, The Questioner, The Adventurer, The Asserter and The Peacemaker.
The handout explained, “Ultimately, the goal is for each of us to ‘move around’ the Ennegagram, integrating what each type symbolizes and acquiring the healthy potentials of all the types. The ideal is to become a balanced, fully functioning person who can draw on the power of each as needed. Each of the types of the Enneagram symbolizes different important aspects of what we need to achieve this end. The personality type we begin life with is less important than how well (or badly) we use our type as the beginning point for our self-development and self-realization.”
Frey had the participants go through the personality test, each deciding their own results.
In addition to a dominant personality, people have parts of other personalities that complement the main one. Frey took time to explain all this, and participants had opportunities to talk together about their results.
During a break, several participants commented on the workshop.
Lydia Noche said, “This is really good because you have to go deeper inside yourself. Spirituality is really important. When you die, you can’t buy anything and God won’t ask you how much money you have in the world. He will ask what you did for your fellow man.”
Karen Ciez said, “I love it. It’s helping me so much to figure out myself.”
Agnes Yablunosky said, “It’s very enlightening. I think it helps me to understand myself.”
“Myself and other people,” Mary Smolley added.
Sister Mary Denise Diethrich, a Sister of Charity from Greensburg who has done the Enneagram before, said, “Each of us is different but God is one through nine. It’s neither right nor wrong to be any number.”
Ciez said, “We are all part of God’s plan.”
Yablunosky said, “We look at everyone and see God in them.”
The Ladies of Charity also hoped to use the workshop as a way for people to learn more about their organization, which can trace its roots back to 1617 and St. Vincent De Paul. A brochure explains, “By the middle of the 17th century and under the guidance of St. Louise de Marillac, the Ladies of Charity developed into an organized group able to respond to the work of caring for the sick, the poor and the neglected in the cities and countryside of France.”
The brochure explained the organization came to the United States in 1857 and a national organization formed in 1960. Today, more than 8,000 women in the United States belong to the Ladies of Charity, while more than 250,000 serve in 52 countries around the world.
“As a Lady of Charity, you make life more meaningful for yourself and others by sharing your gifts and talents with those who need you,” the brochure said. “In return, you share in the blessing that flows from serving Christ in the person of the poor.”
For more information on the ministry, contact Frey at 724-437-5478.