This is the unresolved question: Where do I belong? And what price do I pay for where I choose to stand? –Diana Trilling
Acting On what I/We have discerned; to act even if there is a personal/collective cost involved. This second criterion embraces the ‘ideal’ of an integral person as reliable/steadfast. Among other things this requires one to make and keep commitments. For me, Diana Trilling’s quotation contains two of the essential questions that I must hold and respond to.
For me, and I believe for many others, this step is also a challenging one (at times it is a daunting challenge for me). My life experience continuously reinforces that it is far easier to come to know what one believes (think: what is morally right from what is morally wrong) than it is to claim it (‘Where do I belong?’) and act on it and be clear as to the price I will pay for choosing to stand here/there.
I believe, for example, that the homeless require (or is it deserve) charity. How often I actually dispense it belies my belief. Nor, do I go to an extreme and believe that ‘those bums’ don’t deserve a dime. I have given to individuals and to organizations that serve the homeless; I am, however, at best, inconsistent.
We, in our culture, have developed a remarkable capacity to say one thing and do another. We are not, for the most part, hypocrites. We are living paradoxes – at our healthiest we are BOTH virtue and vice; good and evil; light and darkness.
Pause. Think a moment. How could an antislavery judge in the early nineteenth century hand down pro-slavery decisions? Today, why is it so difficult for political activists to recruit support from folks who espouse their causes with these words: ‘I don’t want to get involved!’
In order to live ‘integrity’ it is, at times, necessary for those of us who espouse to live an integral life to take that most difficult of steps – to get involved. To champion openly what one believes to be morally true, morally right, and morally good. To take the risk to pay the price for choosing to stand ‘here.’
I am concerned – about myself and about ‘us’. I worry about the number of ‘us’ who seem to be too happy drifting along the river, avoiding the rapids of our beliefs; the rapids that might – perhaps that will – put us at risk (at risk for being judged, shunned, categorized, mis-understood,’ or physically harmed).
Rather than ending with a quotation, I have decided to end with a story.
During the first century the Roman general Petronius was ordered to erect a statue of the Emperor Caligula in the Temple in Jerusalem. Thousands of unarmed Jews protested. They stood at the entrance of the Temple, barred their throats and said they would die rather than allow Petronius to proceed. Petronius was deeply moved by their commitment to their faith. He wrote Caligula that ‘honor’ would not allow him to proceed. Petronius was recalled to Rome and records indicated that he was beheaded (for this stance or for another is not clear). Caligula’s statue was never erected in the Temple.
This leads us to the third step, the third criterion.