Ethics, Integrity, and Holding the World... Our ethical standards inhabit a place where morality, law, expedience, values, and a shared group code of conduct come together. My colleagues this week will be meeting in that place to be educated, challenged, and enlightened. Were Social Workers. People helpers. Change agents with a noble calling. As I anticipate the meeting, I picture a group gathered round a table. Its not an easy conversation. Each voice speaks loudly of its own convictions. Who can argue that morality is a key to helping others? Or that a nation of laws provides an escape from the insufferable morality which is fueled by self-righteousness? Or that Do SOMETHING, even if its wrong can provides welcome (if counterfeit) relief from the numbing drone of debate? The talk is unrelentless, but its also a key to our awakening. Because somewhere after we tire of the noise, we realize that deep within us lies a gift. Its the gift of listening. And its where our integrity lives. Integrity is the quiet welcoming place where the cacophony of voices can be stilled. Its the place where our self-contradictions, conflicting values, and ambivalent loyalties can be known. Its the place where anxiety and judgment can be relinquished in favor of relaxed curiosity. And relaxed curiosity may be the embodiment of ethics, in thought, action, and speech. When were curious, we cant be anxious or defensive. Were open to new information. Were not fettered by delusions that our being good means that somebody else must be bad. Ethical questions call us to live in the presence of our own integrity. Our conflicting selves are transformed (integrated) into a robust, life-giving whole. We listen. We learn. And we come to know that ethical living means consciously knowing that-- together-- we hold the very world in our hands.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 04:20:44 +0000
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