from The Abundant Community...
Systems can create the illusion of providing health, safety, comfort, and the like, but theirs is a counterfeit promise.
Every time we surrender to that love song, the effect in the morning is that we have been colonized. We are colonized by the belief that we are a diagnostic category; that we are a need, not a capacity; and that only a system, a product, a professional service can satisfy that need. If we argue with the producer or professional, we are call noncompliant, classified as an objection or resistance.
The reality is, human beings are fallible, and the promise of a solution or cure implies that people are solvable, even perfectable -- and in the case of health care, possible immortal. The fundamental romantic illusion is that better management and better systems can essentially eliminate fallibilitiy, that they can 'fix' the human condition. A big difference between institutional and community space is that community is built around the recognition of fallibility. Institutions are built around the elimination of fallibility -- the ultimate quality-control project.
The abundant community embraces fallibility and humanness. In the domain of our private and personal life, we are intimately familiar with people's limits. Nevertheless, we trust people and have faith in them -- not on the basis of performance or perfection, but on the basis of their humanity and our personal relationship.
[here I feel compelled to insert the notion of a graceful God imparting resources beyond even our own capacities -- because a lot of times surviving and thriving interpersonally requires even more than 'self-aware' individuals can bring to the process]
Accpeting people's fallibility is a defining dimension of community. This is realism in contrast with romanticism. It is the willingness to live with people's imperfections, which is different from a willingness to live with transgressions. We have the choice to accept it and forgive people's mistakes. We have no choice about their imperfections. If we want to be in relationship with them, we have to accept the imperfection.
The human condition includes the inevitability of suffering -- the loss, illness, aging, loneliness, finding meaning, and troubles that fall on us simply because we are human beings. The trust and time of friends, family and association are what make these conditions bearable and a source of strength.
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