Faith Development through Practice

Soulful Home

What does it mean to be a family of Integrity?

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If you ask any parent what they most want for their child, they will probably say something like, “for them to be a good person.” What does this mean? We have at least a general idea of what this looks like even when our children are very young–we want them to have a sense of right and wrong, we want them to speak and act for justice, we want them to respect themselves and others. And in soulful homes, there is often also a hope that a child will develop an integration of body-mind-spirit, an integrity of self that will hold them through challenges and difficult times.

This month, we’ll be playing with different manifestations of that sense of soulful integrity.

In Around the Neighborhood, we acknowledge that we are made whole not in a vacuum, but in particular places with characteristics that influence the way we act and move in the world. Our mantra for integrity goes to the deep, difficult place of recovering our self-respect after doing something that causes harm. Two Extra Mile projects offer ways to take integrity a bit further–building strong bridges out of fragile pieces and using breath to witness our connection to all of creation.

Parenting challenges our integrity. Our children “push our buttons,” bringing up parts of our past that we have yet to integrate; the physical demands of caring for another can make us weary and worn down, difficult states from which to act as our best selves; we discover we are wholly unprepared for some contingencies, in situations we never thought we’d be in, saying and doing things we never imagined.

It is not an understatement to say that the future of our movement, our communities, our nations, our planet depend on our ability to live as a people of integrity, a people who value doing the right thing and do the hard work to figure out what that is. Of course, this effort begins in our families. We are with you this month as we turn over a new decade, as we face old and new challenges together.