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On the morning of election day last week my eight-year-old was lying on the sofa with a blanket over his head.<\/p>\nOn the morning of election day last week my eight-year-old was lying on the sofa with a blanket over his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s integrity<\/i>?\u201d we heard him say, in a muffled sort of way.<\/p>\n
I took a deep breath and said, \u201cWow.\u201d\u00a0 Then breathed some more. \u201cIntegrity,\u201d I said, \u201cis when a person is making choices about how to be in the world\u2014how to act, how to speak, the kind of work they do\u2014and they try to do those things so that they match what they really care about, what they value, what they really believe.\u201d<\/p>\n
My husband was in the kitchen doing dishes, and at that moment chimed in: \u201cOr it just means not broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, right. That, too,\u201d I said. \u201cStructural integrity. Solidly built. Not broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then I asked my son, \u201cWhy are you asking that? Where did you hear that word?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s on my National Park Junior Ranger badge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
So he did mean human integrity, behavioral integrity, not structural integrity. But perhaps they\u2019re the same thing. Still, why is the question of human integrity even a thing<\/i>? How did we get this way\u2014able to fracture our own sense of care, of value, of alignment with the world?<\/p>\n
At a retreat once, John Tarrant Roshi<\/a> said that the closest definition of integrity he\u2019s found is a koan that is actually a small poem: Step by step in the dark, if my foot\u2019s not wet, I\u2019ve found the stone.<\/i> He said this during a time that felt dark and confusing to me, in the wake of the huge October fires that devastated my county. I was gripped then by what I can now see was the flight<\/i> mode of fight-or-flight. I wanted to leave everything\u2014my husband, my children, my life choices, my community in the hills that gets bone dry by July of every summer, and hotter and drier by the year. I wanted something different in a visceral, at-the-time inexplicable way.\u00a0 I felt wild, unloosed, kind of crazy. But how could I even acknowledge this wanting, let alone get what I wanted, with integrity<\/i>?<\/p>\n Step by step in the dark, if my foot\u2019s not wet, I\u2019ve found the stone.<\/i><\/p>\n All I wanted during this retreat was to be in the dark\u2014sitting in the early morning or late evening meditation hall, or on my back in the duff under coastal cypress and stars. I avoided the bright swath of Bolinas beach. I regretted the sunrise. I sent rash, unthinking texts to an old lover. I cried. And cried. And then I went home.<\/p>\n Step by step in the dark, if my foot\u2019s not wet, I\u2019ve found the stone.<\/i><\/p>\n A few weeks later, I was clearing brush with my community so that if (when?) our rural property is hit by wildfire it will not spread so rapidly. My father-in-law and husband had chainsawed lower limbs off of manzanita and small oaks, and we dragged the branches by their stubs to the side of the gravel road, where they bristled limply, awaiting the arrival of a chipping machine. The remaining manzanitas did just that\u2014remain<\/i>. They still shimmered in their shockingly smooth maroon bark, peeling profligately in places. Their loops and curves still astounded us. \u201cManzanitas are sexy<\/i>!\u201d someone said. And my neighbors and I laughed. \u201cManzanitas don\u2019t care nothin\u2019 about your morality,\u201d I said. And the manzanitas nearly pulsed with the pleasure of recognition.<\/p>\n