Integrity

Definition: the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished

This word means the world to me. I want to know it for myself and for the world. I want to know how we can live as humans as wholes, entire and undiminished.  Diminishment has become the meaning of sin for me, a movement towards nothing. Anything that makes less of life in us. So to be undiminished is to live towards being, towards life, towards the Good the True the Beautiful; towards God. 

Since Integrity is about wholeness, it seems to reach toward the infinite, towards the outward edges, it encompasses, it rejects little; but that doesn’t mean it is diffuse. No, to be whole you have to be something, someone and this means being specific, particular. It means that there are limits of your being because a human cannot be whole without a limit.  Integrity it to be enfolded in a fullness of life in such a way that you can breathe, expand thrive. 

I have a life, and that life is the gift I have been given to steward. It has parts and I want to find a way to weave with those parts so that they nourish and foster wholeness in me and in others. I want to live is a way that recognizes my part in the wholeness of all things, the unity of all… 

Oh my… I had meant to write a blog post. My first writer’s blog post in the first days of the publication of the book. I am still perplexed as to what a writer’s blog might look like, but I wanted to start my communication with you.  I meant it to start:

 I woke up this morning sipped my coffee and watched the dawning light make the edges of things sharpen and then illumine and then soften into day…

But, I had more than one cup of coffee before the sun came over the horizon and then when I began to try to do this I started with a word that I love and then I grew rather intense rather quickly.  This always happens, I try to chasten it, slow down and often laugh, but still the intensity comes out this way. So welcome here.

In these next days, my first book, Anchorhold: Corresponding with Revelations of Divine Love emerges into the world. Writing Anchorhold gave form to the enclosure of my being. I learned to live from within one place in order to search for integrity.  Prayer and writing have become the way I search for God and learn to know God and the world. Love is what I learn, love must flow outwards and for me it flows outwards into an earthy domestic life, the work of counselling and the work of preaching.  I go out of myself and then I gather up the pieces, the beauty of the day, the many mistakes I make, and the gifts that all of the encounters with other people and the world have brought to me and take them back into prayer and writing to search again.  This is the life, the enclosure. I hope it can offer life beyond itself.   

 In the next while I will tell you more about the book, what the word Anchorhold means and why I spent three years writing to a 14th century mystic theologian.  I will let you know about any book launch and readings here too. Then perhaps my pace will slacken, and I will find time get intense about other words and describe the sky to you.  Thank-you for coming.