**Companion Resources Newsletter**
edited by Paul D. Leichty
Volume 4, No. 6 June 2002

As idealistic as I am, I like to think that institutions that are in
the business of helping people will always serve the best interests
of both the people they are serving and those that are serving them.
After all, my reasoning goes, the institution does not exist without
both groups of people.

I was jolted back to reality recently by someone who said in
effect, "Institutions will always be self-perpetuating; they will
always look after themselves. If the interest of the individual
converges with that of the institution, that is a plus. If the
interest of the institution diverges from that of the individual, it
will be the individual who suffers as the institution looks out for
its own self-preservation."

I had to admit this person was right, but it got me thinking again
about the difference between the institution and the community. It
also helped me understand the tension I feel so often between taking
care of myself and taking care of others.

It takes a community to come together and say to each other and the
world, "Here are some people in our midst who have needs that aren't
being met." Those needs may be physical needs ranging from health
care to housing to a decent job. The needs may be even more basic,
such as the care required to make sure a person with significant
disabilities has a decent quality of life. It may be the need to
celebrate a birth with all of its new challenges or to comfort the
dying.

A community is a group of people that come together and say "These
needs are _our_ needs." A true community will not desert the child
with challenges, the single mother coping with the needs of multiple
children, or the couple devastated by the diagnosis of mental illness
of a young adult child. The community will not isolate these folks
but rather rally around them, bearing their burdens and enabling them
to cope with the challenges.

Sometimes, spontaneous community supports are seemingly not enough.
The community decides that it needs to organize and structure itself
to meet the needs and the challenges. Is this an admission of
failure on the part of the community? Or is it a way to enlarge the
community of support? Whichever way you look at it, it is clear that
when organization and structure turn into the formation of an
institution, it fundamentally changes the dynamics of community.

Two things happen as the institution grows and gets stronger. First,
it takes on a life of its own. It is no longer Joe and Mary and
their circle of friends looking out for the welfare of Jim. Instead,
it Super Caring, Inc. with a plan and a budget and hired help to make
sure the needs of Jim and others like him are met.

The second thing that happens is that Joe and Mary's circle of
friends begin to assume they are no longer needed. After all, Super
Caring, Inc. has it covered. Jim is now the responsibility of the
institution. Ironically, the stronger the institution, the weaker
the sense of community. Joe and Mary go from being actively involved
in a community of support to "volunteering" on a structured plan.
Eventually, they simply give some money on a yearly basis to pay
others to keep the institution running. And if something happens
that they don't like, they won't even give money anymore.

Eventually, the institution becomes just another actor in the dog-eat-
dog world created by this fragmented sense of community. The
institution sees itself as an entity that has to market itself and
win over the community to the importance of its mission and point of
view.

For the institution, this means tightening the boundaries and
therefore inevitably excluding some individuals. Image is everything
and those that don't fit that image are let go. Defining and
refining our mission as an organization means that we exclude some
people who "don't fit." Employees who don't measure up to the higher
and more specialized standards of professionalization find themselves
without a job, no matter how caring or conscientious they are. The
institution must compete and survive.

In this kind of political and economic environment, can community be
restored? Can we move to a point where the institution at least
becomes a member of the community rather than a competitor that
further fragments the community? Can we as naturally selfish
individuals and inherently self-preserving institutions ever work
together for the good of the whole community?

I hope to ponder these questions and explore them further next month
as I continue to personally reflect on being an individual who wants
to build community but also wants to personally live a full and
meaningful life in the midst of powerful institutions.

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I'm foregoing my usual commercial this month. See the Companion
Resources website (http://www.cresources.org) for all of the latest.
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Blessings to all as you build community in the midst of institutions.

Paul D. Leichty
The Goldenrod Community
Middlebury, Indiana
PDLeichty@...
Phone/Fax: 1-877-214-9838 (toll free)

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