Integral

I was thinking about the word integrity last night, and I looked it up. The first definition I found was “1. adherence to moral and eithical principles, soundness of moral character, honesty, 2.the state of being whole, entire, and undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire, 3. a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition: the integrity of a ship’s hull.” The origin is listed in the years 1400-50, from Late Middle English, integrite. Latin integritas, see integer, ity.  I like to look up words. I like words because they often mean different things than we think they mean or they have layers and levels of meaning that we didn’t know they had until we look them up. I could have looked up integrity all night, but it was getting late and I had to get up early. Integrity is a great sounding word too – that’s another thing I like about words – the way different words sound. American English is my first language, so I know it well and love it, but I love other languages too. Language is something that can have integrity.

They gave sample sentences in the definition, and one I particularly liked was, “He had the courage and integrity to openly state his beliefs and the guts to . . .” it trailed off, and when I tried to click on it, thinking there would be more, that the sentence would end somewhere, I couldn’t get rest of the sentence, just definitions of the different words in the sentence fragment. I wondered about the "he" of the sentence – what were his beliefs? What did he have the guts to do? There are things that we might state openly as beliefs that aren’t necessarily signs of integrity. I could say something obnoxious that was a belief I held and offend someone and that wouldn’t be an example of integrity, that would just be offensive and boorish. Ah, boorish, another word I love, though I think that one is more English English than American English. I hope I don’t have any obnoxious beliefs, but you never know until you’ve been boorish and have offended someone.

Sometimes people do things that they call one thing when they’re really another. The person who points a finger at someone else to blame them instead of accepting their own responsibility could say they were acting out of integrity. It all depends on what side of the finger you’re standing on. There’s always more than one side to a story – sometimes there are more than two. If we really have integrity, we try to figure out what our responsibility is, then we can try to help the other person figure out what we can do together to make it better. Jesus puts it this way, “How do you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3-5) If we have integrity, we never assume that we don’t have a plank in our eye, we assume that we do.

I teach nutrition and wellness, and part of what I do is talk about the nutrient value of whole grains. There’s a Spanish word for whole grain that a lovely woman taught me one day at a community lunch. They always have big bags of bread at that place that are donated from a really great bakery, and she would ask me if there was any “integral.” I used to speak Spanish really well – I took it for six years in junior high and high school, and I had really great teachers. They’d do things like take us out on field trips to restaurants and we could only speak Spanish, and I learned how to read and write and speak it really well. They taught us slang, too, and differences in pronunciation and countries. But then years went by and I didn’t use it, and if you don’t use it you lose it. I can still understand it pretty well, but it takes me a little time to translate things. But when that lovely lady said “integral,” I knew what she was talking about. It's in the very word itself. Whole wheat, whole grain, the complete grain in sound, unimpaired, and perfect condition.

I don’t know if we as humans can ever be that way. We can try, but there’s always that little side to us that isn’t perfect, and that doesn’t want anyone to know it. I can’t really speak for anyone else, but I know that side’s in me. It’s when that imperfectness is in danger of being seen that integrity can go out the window. Something goes wrong, there’s a question of who’s to blame, and the fingers start pointing anywhere, as long as they’re away from you. I used to be the director of an after school program, and I taught some of the students and youth leaders I worked with the expression “The buck stops here.” I’d like to believe I was always the type of person who doesn’t pass the buck, but am I really?

One of the reassuring messages of the Good News of Jesus Christ is that He doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He’s perfect, but He doesn’t expect us to be. All He asks for is that we listen, that we pay attention to what we know is right or wrong. But ah, that’s the challenge, how do we know? What if our moral compass is so off kilter that we can’t tell the difference? That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in, thank God, though sometimes we get so off track we can’t even hear Him either. But eventually, over time, as God first knocks softly on the door, then a bit harder, then a bit harder, we get it. In my experience He had to knock the whole door down and nearly collapsed the house I was living in too, but that’s another story for another time. I’m still standing, by His grace, with His grace and because of His grace. I’m not perfect, but He doesn’t ask me to be. He just asks me to keep listening and learning and trusting until one day I’ll see Him face to face.

It's such a relief to know that I don't have to be perfect, that as long as I try my best, He'll help me get the rest of the way. It's part of the process of His saving grace, the Holy Spirit living within you and that powerful help all around you. Sometimes the changes are easier to make than others, taking the step of faith to do something a new way can be really hard sometimes. But when we take that step, He meets us more than halfway, and brings us all the way home, whole, entire and undiminished.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan