Integrity

A friend of mine just got fired from his job. "For lack of integrity" he said. "What does integrity mean anyway?" This is the ultimate question for me at the moment. What does integrity mean? What does it mean to have integrity, in my job, in my vocation, in my family, and in my friendships?

A quick browse of the ol' Websters gives integrity the following meanings:

1.	adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.

2.	the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.

3.	a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition: the integrity of a ship's hull.

But my questions remain unanswered by these three explanations. What a person of integrity looks like is still beyond me and I am unsure that I would fit into any of these definitions, simply because I see most of my flaws before I see my strengths.

The thing is, I have this irking feeling in my heart that if I was a person of integrity; moreover an integrated person of integrity (meaning all parts of my life were lived with equal integrity), I would have a peace about who and what I am in every situation. I think about transition a lot. Mostly because the way my brain works, I can figure out a system anywhere. I like figuring out systems, observing patterns, and recording the functional systematics as a dutiful anthropologists--a scholar of humans, a scholar of culture. I observe my friends as if they are a foreign tribe in a remote island. Their behaviors are exotic to me. Yet, when I have figured them out, I can maneuver in that system of ethics and behaviors. However, I've noticed my own pattern. Until I have the system mastered, I feel awful about myself--I feel foreign--I am the outsider. I don't fit in. I get down on myself, thinking I did the wrong thing/said the wrong thing/I am the wrong thing.

But if I was a person of integrity, my actions, my thoughts, my words, would all stem from the same source--a strong moral compass and a strong connection to the God who created morals and systems. If my words came from that source (and I knew it), then I feel like I could allow myself more grace-- grace to make mistakes in a new context, grace to not know everything. I would focus less on mastering a system and being functional in it, and I would focus more on being myself in the midst of a new system. But I'm struggling with it. How does a white woman speak to a African-American foster youth? How does she offer him functionality in this system, even while her own functionality seems fragile? Integrity speaks.

Pasadena News

Man critically hurt in shooting

Article Launched: 05/08/2007 09:14:42 PM PDT

PASADENA - A young man was shot Monday night and remains in critical condition at an area hospital, said Pasadena police.

Police found the 16-year-old lying in the driveway of an apartment complex at 431 N. Holliston Ave. with a gunshot wound to the head at 11:20 p.m., said Pasadena police Lt. Keith Jones.

Police earlier received calls about gunshots fired in the vicinity of Holliston and Villa Street, Jones said. Witnesses told police they saw several male Latinos running from the area.

Police don't have any suspects in custody, Jones said, and don't see a connection with a shooting earlier Monday that left one man dead and another seriously wounded on Washington Boulevard.

Man shot to death is identified

PASADENA - Police have identified a man who was killed Monday in a shooting on Washington Boulevard near Summit Avenue.

Tony Anthony Walker, 37, of Pasadena, was the man who died at the scene, said Janet Pope Givens, a Pasadena police spokeswoman.

Another man also was shot and hospitalized; Givens identified him only as a 20-year-old Pasadena man.

Givens said Walker had a criminal record and prior contacts with law enforcement.

Police continue to investigate the shooting and are seeking more witnesses, she said, "but we have got a lot of good information to work with and we can always use more." The shooting took place at 1:53 p.m. on Washington.

Shooting leaves 1 dead, 1 wounded

From staff reports

Article Launched: 05/07/2007 09:48:54 PM PDT

PASADENA - One man was killed and another seriously injured Monday in what authorities called a bold daylight shooting on busy Washington Boulevard near Summit Avenue.

Pasadena police Cmdr. John Perez said the department received several calls around 1:53 p.m. about shots fired in the 100 block of East Washington Boulevard.

"When the officers arrived they found one individual who was shot several times and was deceased, and another young man who was shot several times but still alive. \ was transported to Huntington Hospital, where he underwent surgery," Perez said.

Police haven't confirmed the names of the victims, he added.

The body of the dead man leaned out of the driver's-side door of a gray, older model Mustang on the south side of the street. The car was surrounded by yellow evidence cones marking the location of spent bullet casings.

Washington was closed from Raymond Avenue to Summit.

Perez said police aren't sure if the shooting is gang-related or related to another shooting Sunday on Orange Grove Boulevard.

"It seems to have all the ingredients of a gang-related incident," he said. "But at this point we have not been able to confirm that yet."

---

Advertisement

---

Police don't have any information about suspects and Perez asked anyone with information to call the police department.

Drive-by shooting leaves man hurt

05/03/2007 09:07:38 PM PDT

PASADENA - An 18-year-old man was shot Wednesday in what police believe was a gang-related drive-by shooting.

The crime was reported about 8:30 p.m. at a house known to be a gang hangout in the 700 block of Cypress Avenue, said Pasadena police Lt. Alex Uribe.

A white four-door sedan and a green van drove past the residence, where 15 to 20 people were congregated, when at least one of them opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon, said Uribe.

One victim was hit and received a "through-and- through" wound to his elbow, Uribe said.

He was taken to a local hospital for treatment and is doing fine, Uribe added.

Officials believe at least one member of the victim's group may have returned fire.

Continuity

"All too often, men and women are like battered wives or abused children. We hold on to the continuity we have, however profoundly it is flawed. If change were less frightening, if the risk did not seem so great, far more could be lived. One of the most striking facts of most lives is the recurrence of threads of continuity, the re-echoing of earlier themes, even across deep rifts of change, but when you watch people damaged by their dependence on continuity, you wonder about the nature of commitment, about the need for a new and more fluid way to imagine the future" Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life

Transition has always been rough for me. Memories seem to haunt me wherever I go (re-echoing earlier themes), old sins, old patterns, old friends. Things that once were secure, now gone, and when I see a twitch there, a glance here, a smell there; I am reminded with a feeling deep feeling in my throat of the loss of these things. Of course, some things, say self-abusive behaviors, are okay to say goodbye to. But they still seem like old friends at times of retrospection. A wise friend once told me that my self-abuse served me well at some points in my life. It protected me, it kept me from feeling-- sorrow, pain and even happiness could be turned into a numb feeling. If anything, it kept me from feeling lonely, I would always have this voice telling me how much to hate myself.

But what happens when you decide to hate the voice that hates you? What happens when you decide to forget these old things, forget the things that drag you down? Many people in the faith call this "pruning" where you commit to cutting off a behavior, pattern, or even a person that takes life away from you. I did the same thing to the roses this morning- whacking off the long stems which will bear no flowers so that the main bush can bear many flowers throughout the year. I wonder if the roses feel the same way I do when I am "pruning". It's like when you're a kid and you loose a tooth-- you keep feeling the raw spot in your gum to see if it's really gone. Yup, it's really gone-- only the slight tinny taste of blood as evidence to it's previous existence. Yet you can't shake the feeling that something is missing. Vines, teeth, behaviors, removed, making room for better and healthier things. And somehow I know that; I know that when I let these things go there will be more room for peace, joy, and love. But the change is risky, and frightening, and so I am tempted to live less, cling more, instead, choosing the comfortable continuity. Old patterns need no new training.

I need a new and more fluid way to imagine the future--one that allows for change in myself, in my heart and my mind. One that positively visions for choices which bring life, instead of death; feelings instead of numbness; hope instead of darkness. Pray for me friends, that I would be empowered to make these choices and engage in the daily battle of being renewed by the transforming of my heart and mind.