Who Am I? A Path of Integrity
ONE OF MY HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEACHERS WAS FED UP with my entire grade level. Her speech at our graduation ceremony was a bit of a rant. Except, she said, she held out hope because of the integrity of people like Christine Betz (my family name). …What?! Me? I don’t share this to brag. Her words hit me like a lightning bolt, and I was sure I didn’t deserve the praise.
I knew the basics of the term, but in my teens, integrity meant little more than honesty and following through on what I said I’d do. My teacher was impressed that I’d had a friend record special evening study sessions when I had a competing commitment (cassette recorders were high tech, it’s true.). But I didn’t have time to listen to all of them!
An Inside Job
Fast forward a couple decades to ministry studies, where I discovered a more foundational kind of integrity in Parker Palmer’s classic, “Hidden Wholeness: The Journey to an Undivided Life.”(1) He explored integrity as “the state or quality of being entire, complete, and unbroken, as in integer or integral.” He invited readers on a “demanding journey” toward “wholeness,” far beyond adhering to even the best moral codes of behavior (2). Integrity is an inside job that changes everything.
Palmer used the image of “life on a mobius strip” to describe a seamless interplay of our inner and outer experience. Imagine a ribbon of paper whose ends are twisted and connected into a circle, so that if you trace your finger on the “outside” of the strip you end up “inside” then “outside” again. That piece of paper is paradoxically, infinitely, one-sided. Integrated.
For better or worse, Palmer claims, “whatever is inside us continually flows outward to help form or deform the world—and whatever is outside us continually flows inward to help form, or deform, our lives”(3). In 1943, as WWII destroyed people, lands, and nations, Quaker Howard Brinton wrote of the best-case scenario:
For Friends [Quakers] the most important consideration is not the right action in itself but a right inward state out of which right action will arise. Given the right inward state right action is inevitable. Inward state and outward action are component parts of a single whole (4).
Brinton’s “single whole,” is integrity in the lived faith of an individual that changes lives in relationships and societies for good, what he calls “right action.” He points the way toward how to respond in the Spirit to today’s maelstrom of destructive influences, more than eighty years later.
Practicing Integrity as a Virtue
So I’m throwing my weight behind a working concept: Spiritual integrity in the inner life is an honest, thorough knowing of self and self-in-God that allows us to relate to forces outside us in ways that bring about wholeness and Life. Yes, it’s personally genuine and committed, but this integrity encompasses more than an individual. In relationships, spiritual integrity looks like humble authenticity and loving responsiveness to what’s happening in the moment.
Spiritual integrity can be a “virtue” that we practice on behalf of our relationships and communities. Like patience, generosity, equanimity, and kindness, integrity is an ideal shared by many of the world’s religions. Earlier this year I reflected on equanimity, now I’m rediscovering integrity as a model for my own spiritual life and faithful action.
Quakers, including Parker Palmer, count integrity as a core value, an expression or “Testimony” of their experience of God. We aim for an inner life and ideals that consistently shape outward action with as little hypocrisy as possible. Still, Quakers have had our own blind spots, as our mixed history with Indian boarding schools and the abolition of slavery reveal.
I’m not here to point fingers. Others’ integrity or lack of it, past or present, is not my job most days. I am saying that without self-awareness and inner alignment with the Source of Love, we will consciously or unconsciously transmit our own unhealthy patterns and contribute to further fragmentation and destruction around us. I’m clear that spiritual integrity does not mean honest hate or intention to harm. Spiritual integrity is not authentic sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, or exclusion of those who are different from us. Our inner condition will be revealed in our actions. My plea is that we all get very intentional about our inner lives of faith.
Praying Our “Who Am I?”
Spiritual integrity begins with self-examination. In our secular lives, we get to know ourselves through personality tests, journaling, conversations with family and friends, therapy, spiritual direction, or Enneagram work, among other things. A Spirit-centered approach adds prayer and reflection: Who does God say I am?
Wise teachers through the ages suggest that our usual sense of identity can be quite limited, not to mention highly defended and resistant to change. We really do need a Transforming Power to break us out of self-imposed ruts. We could try the prayer of Francis of Assisi (d.1226) who spent long nights with two basic questions: “Who are you, O God, and who am I?” (5)
Spiritual integrity means having regular inner conversation with our conscience and the Spirit shining through it as we allow. Quakers tend to do that with queries like these:
- What do I value? How do I want to fit into relationships, communities, and social systems?
- How am I pretending to be more than I am?
- How am I acting in ways that are less than I am or wish to be?
- Where does the Holy invite me to act more like Jesus, or Ghandi, or Dorothy Day [or another faithful example you admire]? … with more compassion, generosity, mercy, or justice?
Solid Ground
Integrity has pinged on my inner radar several times in recent weeks. In March, a plenary speaker at an international Quaker conference said almost in passing: “There will always be a path of integrity.” Debbie Humphries spoke in context of her sense of trust in God for risky next steps (6). Her hopeful wisdom rang true to my soul and set me pondering.
There’s much I don’t know about the future, or how the Spirit may guide me in coming months, but it is reassuring to remember how God has companioned me through challenging situations before. I give thanks for how I’ve grown toward fullness of Life, wholeness—in my identity, relationships to the Divine and other people, and in capacity to recognize and act on the Spirit’s inward promptings.
- How do I trust the Spirit to guide me in integrity through fraught circumstances?
I’m finding wisdom in the complement of faith and science on integrity: Science often highlights the more ethical outcomes, while spirituality weaves in the inward life with God.
When we’re stressed, threatened, or when the stakes for action are high, psychologists have studied how integrity can bring us back to solid ground. In a recent interview on the podcast Hidden Brain, “Marching to Your Own Drummer,” psychologist Sunita Sah describes powerful research about speaking up and acting with integrity in morally tangled situations. Her stories are eye-opening! When you are feeling pressured into something you’re not comfortable with, she suggests you ask yourself these questions (7):
- Who am I?
- What type of situation is this?
- And what does a person like me do in a situation like this?
Remembering Francis of Assisi’s all-night prayer, Franciscan friar, teacher, author, and contemplative, Richard Rohr, is as pointed as Howard Brinton: “When you get your, ‘Who am I?’, question right, all of your, ‘What should I do?’ questions tend to take care of themselves” (8).
A Prayer for Integrity
No whitewashed tombs,
No unbending codes or check lists
for the Right way,
camouflaging hardened hearts
—our griefs, angers, and fears.
No finger pointing,
squinting past the logs in our own eyes.
You know us, Lover of Souls.
You know me.
You know me better,
softer, whole.
I say “Yes!” to your presence within
companioning,
mending,
recreating
the who I am.
Yes, shape me
into the fullness of who I could be
when I finally begin to be
the who you dream for me.
Yes, heal my hidden inconsistencies
Where I try to get by without You.
and count myself strong.
Yes, turn all my gifts and strengths
toward your Way of Love
So when You say, “Jump!”
I don’t doubt or dither.
I’m ready.
We move,
we leap and spin,
laughing down the road,
You and I.
Yes, may all of me
radiate You,
Your Brilliance
for the dimmest reaches
of uncertain paths ahead.
Yes, let’s make Your good Way
by dancing each step
together.
—Christine Betz Hall, April 2025
Notes:
