One of the greatest challenges of living in community has been navigating the intersections of seven very different personalities. Over the past two months, each of us has been been learning how the others communicate, relax, express affection, and react to stress (which is perhaps the most valuable piece of information when it comes to diffusing community conflicts!) As a group, we've been learning what "clean" means to each of us and who among us has the highest tolerance for messiness; who needs constant social interaction and who needs regular time alone.

At our last community night, we all took an informal Enneagram test to learn more about our personalities, in the hopes that doing so would help us to foster greater harmony in our community. The Enneagram groups personalities within 9 types, each assigned a number and a descriptor. Without naming any names, let me just say that we learned that our community is composed of a perfectionist (a One), a questioner (a Six), three adventurers (Sevens), a romantic (a Four), and a peacemaker (a Nine - good thing we've got at least one!)

I have to confess that I'm a huge fan of personality tests. I admit that it may be problematic to assign unique individuals to specific personality types on the basis of a few yes or no questions, but I also think it's pretty amazing how, in our community at least, most of results were pretty accurate. It was fun realizing that in just two months, we've gotten to know each other well enough to laugh at how aptly the type descriptions matched the idiosyncrasies of each of our personalities.

I've been trying to use some of the Enneagram's information about my personality to live in a healthier, happier manner. According to our amateur test, I am a romantic with strong perfectionist and peacemaker traits. One piece of advice that our Enneagram book gives to Fours is to "channel your feelings into creative activities". Working full-time in a domestic violence shelter often leaves me carrying a weight of sorrow, frustration, anger, and regret at the end of the week - a lot of feelings that could use some creative channeling. This weekend, I decided to direct my creative energies to the kitchen, and baked a (hopefully delicious) apple pie with a homemade butter-free crust. I followed a recipe I found online, but left out the cranberries, added cinnamon to the filling, and substituted the juice and zest from an orange for that of a lemon to give some added sweetness.