REsources for Living
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What does it look like to live a life of integrity? It seems to me that this question is at the heart of Unitarian Universalism. We don’t have a creed, a set of beliefs that everyone must agree to. But we are also not just a convenient social club that offers a low-cost, low-risk way to get together. We are a religious body, and our faith calls us to engage with what is highest and deepest and most meaningful. William Ellery Channing had the audacity to claim that the point of our religion—of our living—is to cultivate “likeness to God.”
That’s a pretty tall order, to try to make yourself as much like God—however you imagine God to be—as possible. But I think it comes down to a matter of integrity. Integrity means wholeness; you can see the meaning in the word integer, a whole number. If God is somehow the whole of everything that is larger than the sum of the parts, cultivating likeness to God means learning to find our own wholeness, our own deep connectedness.
When we live with integrity, our insides match our outsides. I have a term for people whose integrity shines through—I call them “solid chocolate rabbits.” If you think about the chocolate bunnies that you get at Easter, there are two main kinds. There are hollow chocolate rabbits that are generally big and showy and impressive. But they are just a chocolate shell, with nothing inside. And frankly, the chocolate usually isn’t that great. But a solid chocolate rabbit, while it might be less impressive to look at, is chocolate all the way through. What you see is what you get. The insides match the outsides.
To be fair, one could have a solid chocolate bunny that was made of nasty, waxy, tasteless chocolate. It could happen. There are people in the world who are self-centered and greedy through and through, and I suppose that is a kind of integrity. But, you know, that’s mostly not my experience. Mostly the solid chocolate bunnies are tasty front to back and ears to tail. And most of the people I’ve met who have that quality of integrity give me the sense of likeness to God, of demonstrated love and compassion and curiosity.
I think it happens because the way to become a solid chocolate rabbit, to become a person of integrity, is to have principles. Principles are guides, measures that we judge our choices by. When we hold to our principles then we choose our actions based on what we feel is true and good and right, rather than what society expects of us or what happens to be the most convenient at the moment.
A friend tags the bottom of all her emails with “Be kinder than necessary.” That’s a principle you can live by. When I asked friends what principles they lived by, some of the responses I got were: “Make each day count. Life is not a dress rehearsal.” “You only get to keep what you give away.” “Be mindful and caring in what you do today, for tomorrow it will be embedded in history.” “Love people for who they are, not who you wish they would be.” “Be curious.” “The only way to fail is to never try.” “Use your powers for good.”
A few years ago I wrote a poem that I never intended to become a personal statement of principles, but it did. The poem, entitled “Choice,” ends with the words: “Watch where you are going. Lean in toward what you love. When in doubt, tell the truth.” I don’t know if living by these principles makes me good, or the best person I could be by someone else’s standards. But when I exercise curiosity and love and honesty then I feel the most me, the most solid in my sense of self.
Living by principles allows us to live with integrity. And, of course, what Unitarian Universalism has to offer in place of a creed is principles. Honor the worth and dignity of every person. Pursue justice, equity and compassion. Meet people where they are and create spaces for growth. Actively search for truth and meaning. Hold to the teachings of your conscience. Remember that in spite all borders we are one world—and remember that the one world we belong to is so much more than the human part of the picture.
These are the principles that we, through our congregations, commit to affirming and promoting. Not just thinking or believing. Because integrity doesn’t come from what we think, or from what we say that other people need to do. It comes from choosing, day after day and hour after hour, to make our actions line up with our ideals.
It is a harsh fact of life in these times that we see all too many public figures behaving with a lack of integrity that is nothing less than stunning, dropping principles like democracy and honesty for the sake of power or avoiding risk. But living in the wash of lies that surrounds us these days makes it all the more important that we find grounding in our own principles, and in our own ongoing commitment to shape our lives in the image of what is holy and true and good.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
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