Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Library and Museum Collections Description An account of the resource Please browse the more than 8000 knit- and crochet-related treasures in the CKC Collections Resource <a href="http://digital.centerforknitandcrochet.org/collections/show/1">Museum and Library Collections</a> (drawn from <a href="https://dp.la/info/developers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Digital Public Library of America</a>). CKC is seeking new partner organizations to share their collections of knitting and crochet with visitors to this resource. Contact us at <a href="mailto:collections@centerforknitandcrochet.org">collections@centerforknitandcrochet.org</a> for more information about participating. <br /><br /><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Hb_Y75HnhkCE5i4mKpcTlB8Msp_lB0XUtQr5S8XXKA/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Learn more about criteria for Share Your Treasures.</a> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1 Still Image Upload at least one image that shows the object in its entirety along with detail views as desired. • Jpeg format • At least 3 MP in size • 300 ppi • Images produced with digital camera to highest quality setting (e.g. superfine, best) are usually acceptable. • Users who want to contribute video or audio files please contact info@centerforknitandcrochet.org for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource significant. So it was for Ananias. His name is derived from the Hebrew name Hananiah, meaning "the Lord is gracious" or "the Lord shows grace." For us to hear God‚Äôs voice, the Lord must speak--which in itself is a special grace. With its limited resources, our own courage can take us only so far. Then, in order to heed the sound of God‚Äôs voice, we come to the point where our humanity needs a healthy dose of grace. God‚Äôs gra-ciousness is our access to Christian courage that is required of us if we are to be disciples. Grace is the window through which we step from hiding before God to the presence of God. Grace is the threshold which we cross from a fearful inaction to an obe-dience of reluctant courage. The irony of Christian courage is that it requires both a personal achievement and a gift from God. Living openly before God, Ananias of Damascus exposed him-self to hear whatever the Lord might say. Once he heard the voice of God, he responded in obedience. But his response was a human one of courage in its reluctance and hesitancy in its bravery. Review for Religious Realistic in his intrepidity, he both knew the risk and counted the cost of going to Saul. At the same time, he abandoned himself to the unknown consequences. Then he relied on God‚Äôs grace so that he might be obedient to his voice. To varying degrees we are all Ananiases, whom William Barclay called "one of the forgotten heroes of the Christian Church." The mystery is that we are persons of paradox--as was Ananias reluctantly courageous, calculated in our surrender, and obedient through grace--as was Ananias. Notes ~ Scripture quotations are from the Jerusalem Bible. 2 Seeds of Hope: A Henri Nouwen Reader, ed. Robert Durback, p. xxix. 3 I am indebted to Maurice Briggs MA for this insight about "all or nothing" or "either!or" thinking ove? and against "both/and" thinking. Rev. Briggs is a member of the faculty in the Department of Chaplaincy and Pastoral Education at North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Winston- Salem, North Cai‚Äôolina. Advent Cave Plato knew about the dark, how we prisoners face the wall in chains, only the fire b~hind us letting us see the m~oving shadows we call real. Far above, looms the door to light, reachable only by those who turn ~ away,from all they know. Wisdom, who lived in the cave at Nazareth where parents made a home and carried water to thefire, sitting at night in quiet, thoughts and the animals dozing near embers, the dying light, after a day of learning the real, calls us to turn and face the door. Evelyn Mattern November-Deconber 1997 MARGARET MARY KNITTEL A Quilt, a Council, and a Church working together The quilt movement should be preserved as a col-lective enterprise with an ethical concern. If taken seriously as women‚Äôs art, quilts cannot be perceived and enjoyed as isolated aesthetic objects divorced from the relationships of women to each other and to the rest of humankind. Quilts emin~ently pose the question of how one behaves in the asking and viewing of art. --Radka Donnell, Quilts as Women‚Äôs Art Twenty years ago I took several tries at developing skills "for the home," sensing at first blush of midlife that my. more productive impulses would require something for my hands to do in my old age. Firs~t, there were the needlepoint classes, ~e.~n quilting. Quiltmaking is not for the faint of heart. As a dropout from Advanced Quilting, I can attest to the shaky feeling in the knees when faced with what appears to be an infinite number of steps. This quiltmaking episode would be instructive. As I have come to understand them, both quiltmaking and organizations involve mutuality and interdependence as essential pro-cesses within their respective collective enterprises. A Collective Enterprise In quiltmaking, the mutuality and interdependence of the women are reflected in th~ final product. Design, tex- Margaret Mary Knittei RSM works as a grants consultant for nonprofit organizations. She may be addressed at P.O. Box 634 Geneva, Illinois 60134. Review for Religious ture, color, and template come together through their hands, through their spirit shaping. "Quilts are healing because they accept the uniqueness, the positive difference, and the mortal limit of each human being."1 A quilt‚Äôs design, texture, color, and template over a period of time will collect these human beings and express their individualities anew. Design, texture, color, template .become interdependent, one with the others, to bring beauty to the whole. The overall design of a quilt needs a working principle, a template, to express the color and‚Äôthe texture, to specify the difference. One shape, a tri-angle for example, can be the basic design of countless quilts~ The textures of various fabrics add to color and design, with the template giving the basic shape. Color in all its bold or modest hues as textured by the various materials gets a specific shape and then is pieced‚Äôinto a growing design. The mutuality and interdependence among the quiltmakers affirm them all. Positive differences go somewhere into a future, not wasting time with empty words of control rather, they speak of vision. Limit recognizes this is a bordered piece, this quilt, and we its .shapers affirm the grace of the moment~, knowing it could be the grace of a lifetime. .Quiltmaking is a healing image, one that includes authentic conversation, meaning-filled relationships, among the people sharing the brganizational life of a parish, a religious community, a church. "Religion here is the sensation of being one with the whole, of belonging, not of subjection.‚Äô‚Äô~ The virtues of quilt-making are the virtues of a healthy human organization. A Demo~cratic and Affirming Mission .... Radka Donnell says in her perceptive book: "To the work of piecing quilts I was silently called, and i( took me years to sort 6ut the problems it revealed and the-difficulties it created. The early groups of contemporary quiltmakers were inspired by a sense of mission. If not expressly feminist in each case, this mission certainly was democratic and affirmative of each individual quiltmaker a‚Äônd each quilt. (p. 6) The metaphor of quiltmaking can remind us of the Second Vatican Council‚Äôs challenge to the church to accept both its divine mission and the human organization called to participate in thLa$t-7-9 November-December 1997 Knittel ¬Ø A Quilt, a Council, and a Church mission. Facing problems and difficulties, it is an organization capable of error, of hurt and pain, in search of truth, in sea.rch of healing and grace. During the thirty and more years since the council‚Äôs call, at times its substantive energy seems depleted and diminished but ultimately, in the hearts of people, the message will never be muffled or suffocated. The post-Vatican church as organization, as. human organi-zation, seems destined for democratic and affirming conversa-tions. That kind of, change and growth lies in the hands of all believers, as people seated as equals around a corporate quilt. If we are quiet.like the quiltmakers, we still hear, from the heart of the council, that call, that sense of being missioned, to the inclu-sive and respectful goodness of lives lived to the full in the sight of God. Our lives continue on, and as we look desperately for mileposts we acknowledge we are still on the way. Concerns for democratically and respectfully affirming connections become earnest calls for better ways of being together, whether it be in a parish, a religious community, or the church universal. Religious organizations, as human organizations, need to face their corporate humanity. A corporate way of being human is important, whether we admit or deny the fact, whether we like it or not. The foibles of people‚Äôs human interaction can be acutely felt at an individual level. Often, however, corporate humanity recognizes the problems only after many have been hurt. Words like "low morale" or "uncooperative" become blame tags. The dilemma for leadership is that, when you blame, you do not lead. The nature of bureaucracies is to maintain power, no. matter what the cost. The church needs to ask itself just how bureau-cratic it wants to be. If it chooses to be increasingly pastoral, it will find that parishes, religious orders, dioceses, and the church uni-versal will raise new questions, demand new ways of~behaving. Within a bureaucratic church organization, the individual-- parishioner, ~priest, vowed religious, bishop, employee--will mat-ter less than the maintenance of power: posturing, identifying totally with power, seeking to dominate. To survive, members might feel they must be subservient in one way or another. Within a bureaucracy the common good is co-defined with the maintenance of the organization itself. More time and energy are given to protecting a bureaucratically bungled decision than to thinking through afresh what is happening. Things as we hard known them remain the same. In the face of an entrenched Review for Religious bureaucracy, the better educated, the more aware, may leave. Feeling tokenism and lack of care, they may go off, re,searching for their soul. For those who stay, the mission seems dissolved within the bureaucratic. Doing the task mindlessly and relating to self, oth-ers, and God make it all bearable. Fair Dealing Radka Donnell makes this observation about quiltmaking: To be interested in the theory and practice of quiltmaking means to look for fair dealing between women, as well as between men and women. It indicates a readiness to fight against all obstacles preventing us from creating a better world together. (p. 72) One systems view of organizations sees them as made up of four equal subsystems, mutually interdependent in their rela-tionships. These four separate and different subsystems are called the task, the structure, informal groups, and the individual. These four separate and different subsystems function optimally when all are equal to one another in importance and mutually interde-pendent in their relating. If one of these subsystems puffs up, the whole system is affected. The other subsystems get leaned upon, diminishing their contributions within the whole. If one of these subsystems withers, the functioning whole likewise suffers, gets skewed. Parishes religious communities, and the church universal as human organizations are distinct systems. Each could be said to consist of the four subsystems of task, structure, informal groups, and the individual. The Task as Subsystem. The task in a. religious community would be its charism, the unique mission of a community as per-ceived within the Catholic tradition in its particular context. Similarly, a parish has a particular local task to accomplish. A contemplative group of religious women varies from an active one, and0an inner-city parish from a suburban one. While each participates in a still larger system, locally they are themselves separate organizations. Over time numerous activities accrete to any organization, but its central mission remains. Confusion, dif-ferences, outright hostilities occur when an important question is not acknowledged or goes unasked: "Just who does the sending, November-December 1997 Knittel ¬Ø A Quilt, a Council, and a Church the missioning?" Is it God, a founder or foundress, this hospital, a church, the history of a town or city? The Structure as Subsystem. The second subsystem to be looked at here is structui‚Äôe or governance. Within a community or a parish, we all know the persons making up the structure. Vv‚Äôhether community government be elected or discerned, it finds itself in Whether community government be elected or discerned, it finds itself in a quandary of expectations from membership, and from itself. a quandary of expectations from mem-bership and from itself. Likewise, a new pastor looking around for the first time feels various expectations arising. Leadership needs to lead, but, when it does, its performance may not fit pre-conceived notions. Then leadership may be tempted to resist the future to lean back and maintain the present, and hence to end up reissuing the past. Leadership in the ideal sustains the vision of the common good, which in itself is a process both democratic and affirming. A structure ideally assumes lines and processes of accountability that are at .once just and active. Leapfrogging .and micromanaging from a0distant central office can bypass managers and commit-tees on the scene and violate the rights of the organization itself. Again, if local people .spontaneously blurt out their evaluation of an associate pastor at a parish council meeting, they bypass proper procedures and strip away the individual‚Äôs right to an appropriate evaluation of job performance. The structure, we need to remem-ber, is one of four equal and interdependent, subsystems contex~ tualized within an organization. Informal Groups as Subsystem, The informal groups in an orga-nization would be various clusters of individuals espousing simi-lar norms and sanctions among themselves. They appear neutral in a well-functioning organization, manifesting as they do a nat-ural affinity of persons. Sometimes, however, an informal group skews an organization, a company, a religious community, or a parish by losing sight of the larger task, the mission, the com-mon good, and seeking its own way of goverfiing the whole. The informal group may try to impose its own values on the majority in any number of ways: by inclusion, exclusion, intimidation, and oppression, by pushing to be the most holy, the most dedicated to Review for Religious the poor, the most attentive to keeping the church intact, the most pro-life. Many masks can disguise the will for power over others, and an informal group in any organization can obscure and even obliterate the vision. The Individual as Subsystem. The fourth subsystem within this model of organization is the individual. Individuals and the moti-vations they bring to the organization impact the entire system. The recognition of the variety of motivations at play within any group can be a sobering and staggering realization. From studies on the impact of opportunity in organizations, we know that the "anointed" in organizations, those high flyers who move quickly through ~the ranks, are given life through our desire to observe them as winners. We endow their ideas and words with more credibility. We entrust them with more resources and better assignments. We have already decided that they will succeed, and so we continu-ally observe them with the expectation that they will con-firm our beliefs.3 The anointed individual in this language of organization-as-system distorts the life of the organization, overshadowing struc-ture, informal groups, task or mission, and other individuals. Other members give over their .truth, their experience, and, in thus surrendering their individual dignity, they suffocate the pos-sibility of democracy or the achievement of the common good. The anointed individual becomes a god. Within a church or reli: gious organization the confusion of gods for God needs contin-ued sorting. Self-Healing Among her comments about quilting, Radka Donnell says: The.more the system gets into high gear, the more self-he~ aling is needed. (pp. 126-127) In church organizations, isolation and wrongly constructed obediences sometimes intensifies the claim of the few to be anoint-eds. A particular organization‚Äôs structure, informal groups, and task or mission could conceivably be dominated by an anointed in this mix, religious language might be used to cover ambition, to anoint the anointed. A wonderful scene from the movie Richard 111 swipes at the capacity of religious language to cover up. Richard, pretending to be secluded and hard at prayer, emerges to be "convinced." to November-Dece~nber 1997 Knittel ¬Ø A Quilt, a Council, and a Church accept the English throne he has serpentinely plotted and mur-dered to acquire, Knowing that people consider him in some way the anointed one, he now considers himself a god. He becomes increasingly foreign to those around him, and later he meets defeat in battle. Have we ever looked on when a locally anointed individual (now apparently feeling godlike as well) strongly inserted irrele-vant and impertinent opinion into a community or parish com-mittee, spilling the work of months down the drain? Numbers of those very committee members, still ~motionally inclined to attribute greater knowledge and perhaps even a cosmic wisdom to the anointed one, may find themselves recoiling in disarray. Can we recall an experience in our lifetime when an individual crashed through the lines of accountability appropriate to structure, manipulated informal groups by feeding them what they want to hear, and used language of mission or church or patriotism to keep the advantage? Is this the call of the prophetic, we. wonder, as we give over our own individual power to this other individual, the anointed? "Prophetic ministry consists of offering an alternative perception of reality and in letting people see their own history in the light of God‚Äôs freedom and his will for justice.‚Äô‚Äô4 The test suggested is whether the anointed gives space for us to reflect courageously on our ‚Äôindividual histories "in the light of God‚Äôs freedom." To con-tinually strive to see one‚Äôs own history in God‚Äôs light will be to know our own history, our own experience, anew each time. This is not a blaming game, an unhealed existence, or a quick fix with aphorisms, but a genuine opening in my life, your life, for healing, for Jesus the Christ. Self-healing is not a plastic therapy for believers, but an engagement with a living. God. The question remains: Does the message of an. anointed one leave room for all these variables, for the lights of a freeing God? Margaret Wheadey contrasts the "anointed" individual within an organization to the "dead" individual. Others in organizations go unobserved, irrevocably invisi-ble, bundles of potential that no one bothers to look at. Or they receive summary glances, are observed to be "dead," and are thereafter locked into jobs that provide them with no opportunity to display their many pote.ntials,s A post-Vatican II church unfurled to Catholics a new way of being, and we need to revisit those challenges. Dying to self, we Review for Religious have come to increasingly realize, never meant not unbundling our own gifts, our own graces, as we become acquainted with them. Our own baptismal anointing as Christians, no longer a vague memory, becomes a constant call. But, alas, we knew that struggling to be "undead"--not be to an anointed, just to be undead--would have its own price, Declaring the king to be naked in a bureaucracy brings life-mark-ing, career-reversing implications. A question, a deviation, could bring death-dealing expulsion from the informal life of the group or from the larger organization itself. Each person having and wanting to have influence, each want-ing to "see their own history in the light of God‚Äôs freedom," becomes incessantly difficult if declared or assumed to be among the "dead." The equality of persons within an organization is the paradigm for the equality of each subsystem in the model offered here. Puffing up one impinges upon all the others. Withering one depletes all. Equality equates to mutuality among members. The Incessant Pursuit The church, embracing sinners in her bosom, is at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, and inces-santly pursues the path of penance and .renewal. (Lumen gentium, ¬ß8) The processes of quiltmaking and the processes of organiza-tions call for an incessant pursuit of mutuality and interdepen-dence among women and men equal before a loving God. The Second Vatican Council invited the church of the 20th century to know both its humanity and its wonder. If parishes, orders of women and men religious, and the church universal in a post-Vatican II church accept themselves as corporate human organizations, they will steadily come to under- Stand the strengths and pitfalls that accompany such aggregate groups, The rich heritage of the church cannot afford to forget that it is an organization of human persons. Such forgetting rehearses feudal futility. There is both frailty and strength in its organizational life. At the level of shared humanity, frailties and strengths within any group will always be fa!i‚Äôly evident. To deny this shared humanity is to set up the religious organization as exempt from the foibles and frets that indeed call on God for its life principle. Novetnber-Decentber 1997 Knittel ¬Ø A Quilt, a Council, and a Church "The church, or, in other words, the kingdom of Christ now pres-ent in mystery, grows visibly in the world through the power of God" (LG ¬ß3). To deny the church‚Äôs humanness is to deny the power of God. As we continue to unpack that sublimely historic event we fondly call "the council," there is more to do, more to remind others about, more for ourselves to be .reminded about. The Roman Catholic Church as a religious organization, ceasing to gloss over its frail corporate humanity, will come to understand its corporateness at a more profound level. The church as a human organization will come to truly trust in the mystery of its shared life of faith in Jesus the Christ. This living quilt we call "church" calls to a people deeply conversant with a living God. Notes I Radka Donnell, Quilts as Women‚Äôs Art: A Quilt Poetics (North Vancouver, Canada: GaIlerie Publications, 1990), p. 425. 2 Dorothee Soelle, Theology for Skeptics (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 28. 3 Margaret J. Wheadey, Leadership and the New Science (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1994), p. 60. 4 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), p. 110. s Wheatley, pp. 60-61. Subscriptions to Review for Religious can now be ordered or renewed by I~AX and.paid for by MasterCardor ~sa. FAX the order form inside the back cov~r~ or CALL our office with, you~r.tcgedit carol numbi~r:.? o. FAX: 314-~-7-7362 ¬Ø PHONE: 314297727363 Review for Religious JOEL GIALLANZA Communitym Healthy or Dysfunctional? ~or these reflections about community living in religious .~. orders and congregations, I propose what may seem a curi-ous biblical passage, the one that concludes with "Very well, pay Caesar what belongs to Caesar--and God what belongs to God" (Mr 22:21). We are more accustomed to texts on loving one another or bearing one another‚Äôs burdens or remaining united and at peace among ourselves or reconciling with one another whenever necessary. All those principles and practices are very important for the life of a healthy community. From this text, however, two :practical norms can be drawn which also are impor-tant for life in community: appropriateness and balance. These two norms are tightly intertwined, like a fine weaving in fact, both can be drawn from those same words of Jesus: "Pay Caesar what belongs to Caesar--and God what belongs to God." First, appropriateness: We do not give to Caesar what belongs to God or to God what belongs to Caesar. In community we can bring realities into~our life together which are not really appro-priate precisely because they are misplaced: for example, unfair expectations of someone or of one another as a group unwill-ingness to share or communicate something which by our pro-fession we commit ourselves to share and communicate personal agendas, with their accompanying attitudes and perspectives, and emotions, which may really belong in ministry or to only one of our relationships or somewhere else altogether. Joel Giallanza CSC writes for us once again from: Congregation of the Holy Cross Via Framura, 85 00168 Roma Italy. November-December 1997 Giallanza ¬Ø Community--Healthy or Dysfunctional? Serious personal reflection and realistic self-knowledge bring with them the ability to answer this simple question: Where does what I am experiencing--this issue, this feeling, this concern-- belong? Where will it be most appropriately articulated and addressed? Inappropriate placement of issues, feelings, and con-cerns generates an inadequate response. Then all frustrations sur-rounding them will be intensified as they continue to be unaddressed. Second, balance: We give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God at the same time. Of the two points, balance is the more challenging, even on a daily basis. Most of our time and energy as apostolic religious are invested in ministry. This is important, given who we are as religious com-mitted to continue the mission of Jesus in the spirit of our founders and foundresses. Nevertheless, we do need to remind ourselves from time to time that each of us has only one limited pool of time and energy. Too easily we can fall out of balance by expending the maxi-mum of our quality time and energy in ministry--or on some-thing else--and simply neglect community or prayer. While that might never degenerate into complete negligence we may grad-ually adopt a very minimalist approach to community. Then, from time to time, we may feel shocked that those with whom we live every day have changed or rearranged this or that without our having been consulted. Conveniendy we might forget to ask our-selves if we were sufficiently present, available, and interested when those decisions were being formulated and then imple-mented. Community life can be joyful and it can be painful at times it can be the greatest of blessings and at times the heaviest of burdens. But never has there been a guarantee, that it would be easy. As long as we are human, working to live closely with other people, appropriateness and balance in approaching our commu-nity life will continue to be significantchallenges. "Pay Caesar what belongs to Caesar--and God what belongs to God." We may not always make that payment perfectly, but we are responsible for making the effort ‚Äôto live community with the appropriateness and balance which can facilitate the love and unity we seek. Though other things must also be included, these are principal ingredients that determine the quality of life and health within a community. Review for Religious Quality of Community: Healthy or Dysfunctional? Very little, if anything, about community is theory.It is work to live with one another. But through our commitment it is meant to be a work of the heart. The alternative is that members care lit-tle about one another and about the space in which they live. Gradually each individual b~comes the center of a personal uni-verse which has minimal contact and communication with the other personal universes in the vicinity. Then all the theories about community and loving one another constitute little more than fine words carried on hot air. , Community life, then, can be healthy or dysfunctional. These present thoughts will focus on some characteristics of a healthy community and on some earmarks of a dysfunctional community. The following sets of contrasting characteristics represent spec-trums present in all communities. They are presented here only as a stimulant for further reflection and discussion vis-h-vis the specific experiences and contexts of actual local communities. The health or dysfunction of a community is evident from its location on the spectrum. Determining that location is not a random, arbi-trary exercise it emerges from the members‚Äô individual and com-munal self-knowledge, hgnesty, self-examination, and willingness to adapt. Only then can the members decide what adjustments will facilitate living more effectively as a healthy community. Community or Computer? Communication, sharing and processing information, has a major influence on the health or dysfunction of a community. Healthy choices and decisions are based on sufficient and appro-priate, information and clear communication. This assumes gen-uine listening, not simply hearing. Attentive listening enables us to analyze and respond to. someone‚Äôs words with understanding and love. , , The alternative is not :merely a failure to listen, though that will be part of it. Much more, the alternative strips the entire interchange--the information sharing and the personal decision making--of any affective, human quality. We may react mechan-ically to what we barely hear, quickly making preliminary and sometimes permanent judgments.. As individuals and as a com-munity, we may focus,only on facts, with little regard for how all this decision or this expressed opinion will affect the people involved. Then we are no longer a community, but a computer. November-Decentber 1997 Whether the members are a "community or a computer depends upon how they share and deal with information among themselves, how they communicate with one another. A healthy community remains focused on people it puts information at the service of people. A dysfunctional community operates much like a computer, focusing on the precision and,.processing 6f infor-mation it tends to view people as servants of that information. A healthy community strives always to choose and decide wi.th understanding and love. By contrast, a dysfunctional community may be efficient, but is not likely to be person oriented. What needs to be done gets done, but with little regard for the vari-ables of human personality, for people‚Äôs preferences and per-spect. ives, for the rich nuances that the talents and experience of the individual members could provide. Efficiency may be an important value, but it is no guarantee against dysfunction only love can prevent that. The quality of communication among community members colors the atmosphere, the climate, the spirit, of their residence, marking it as either a home or a hohsing facility: In turn, that atmosphere affects the quality of relationships among ‚Äôthe mem-bers and thus the witness,they present to‚Äôthe world around them through their presence and ministry. Assessing the quality of com-munication within a community is among the mos~t effective and direct means of improving the overall health of that community. Community or Condominium? When the members actively establish and actually engage in their communal lifel the community‚Äôs health benefits d.ireetly. Several elements are involved: first, common call and mission. The healthy commianity understands its call and articulates its mission. This becomes a source ofenergy and provides meaning and direction, with far-reaching implications for every dimension of religious life, from personal and communal lifestyles, to voca-tion promotion, to decisions concerning ministries and the use of financial resources. By contrast, a dysfunctional community drifts without a clear sense of where it is going or how it wants to present itself to the world around it. As a result, irreconcilably wide gaps develop among the lifestyles and philosophies of the various members and local communities and jeopardize the very fibers holding the com-munity together. Efforts to identify and maintain any common Revie~v for Religious call and mission are not a priority among the members of a dys-functional community. A second element of community health is mutual respect. Members have a certain maturity and respect one another‚Äôs per-sons, possessions, and perspectives. This is not to imply that there will be constant and. consistent agreement that is not realistic. Respect has more to do with recogniz-ing, accepting, and even honoring the differences among the members than with arriving at some superficial level of agreement. By contrast, a dysfunctional commu-nity has replaced respect with recipe. Its members work hard to redesign one another according to some image or stan-dard‚Äô they hold which may have nothing to .do with the ideals put before them by the life and example of the founder, or the constitutions, or the experience and capabilities of the members. Redesigning one another consumes much time and energy that should be directed elsewhere., ~ Third--this expands the preceding point--a healthy community celebrates " the ‚Äômembers‚Äô giftedness. Rejoicing in one~ another‚Äôs gifts is a concrete expression of respect. This assumes that we have made the effort to know one another‚Äôs gifts further, this effort involves sharing and communicating with one another. The challenge here is to go beyond knowledge toward: affirmation and even promotion of one another‚Äôs gifts. This is possible only if we are secure and comfortable with ourselves, with our own individual gifts and goodness. By contrast, the members of a dysfunctional community tear down one anoth