Integrity
“By
choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean
perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of
who I am.” Parker J. Palmer (A Hidden Wholeness)
Most
of us, when we see the word integrity, think of honesty, moral
uprightness; but integrity also means a state of being whole,
undivided. To integrate something is to make it part of ourselves. We
do this with our roles: for instance, Mother, wife, homemaker,
teacher, and or father, husband, baseball coach, scout leader,
banker, and on down the list. The roles that we play are the
superficial components of who we are. But there is more to us than
these roles. There is an inner landscape, a tapestry of dark and
light and shades of gray, that many of us discover only when things
go wrong, or when we are called upon to do something new. We may be
fearful, insecure, judgmental, angry, generous, gracious, kind, or all of the above. In odd moments, we may catch a
glimpse the false masks we try to hide behind—superior, competent,
or the opposite of those, inferior, bumbling. In truth, we are all
those things and no one of them is more who we are than any other.
To
have integrity means to unflinchingly look at the whole of who we
are, with all our gifts and deficiencies, to incorporate new
information into our concept of self and integrate all the various
pieces into our understanding of who lives here. I like to think we
are more like a good, hardy soup than a filet mignon steak; we have
lots of ingredients incorporated into one meaty delight. To say
someone has integrity is an enormous compliment—because it means
they know who they are, and they will stand before you exposed, not
trying to hide the parts of which they are not proud. They feel solid,
grounded, and trustworthy, neither humble nor proud. There is no hint
of perfection, just a realness that is beyond compare.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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