The Global Open Table’s 21st anniversary of CAUTION ON INTEGRITY

At the end of 2024 we’ll reach the 21st anniversary of the Global OpenTable’s CAUTION ON INTEGRITY. You may or may not have been at the particular gathering after which it was complied, but I hope it might be worth revisiting in 2024.
May it remind us all of the challenging journey still ahead in which we must seek to collaborate and become the critical mass capable of profound changes in human behaviour and stewardship of planet Earth. If using the blank verse with others, no attribution is required. 
— 

CAUTION ON INTEGRITY

Those who claim integrity touch anxiety in me
about the comprehension of our faith.
Though I seek it, I’m nervous of integrity.
Though I need it I can never reach perfection.
Life in one body teaches us
none can be fully human until all are human.
We use subordinate words too easily,
without regard to the ordinate,
the fundamental integrity of the globe.
The awesome universal sustained creativity,
that is the context for the lesser search
to deal with just a part of wholeness
in each minute particular of our fiduciary task.

There is an ordinate covenant with everything under the rainbow
that holds subordinate corporate completeness
as a distinct passage in the greater text;
and, equally subordinate,
the intimate sense of inter-dependence,
my first faltering steps to aspirations
that tackle local earthly matters
and yet touch the spheres.

There is an urgency to find appropriate language
for reaching to and through complexity,
not excluding externalities hidden and overt,
seeking genuine inclusiveness,
placing conceit in achievement at a lower place.
Take everyone’s interests seriously;
evoke response-ability; build just enterprise,
tackle your ‘business ethic’,
but fail not to feel its tension with the
greater call of ‘ethics in business’.
Form dynamic living systems, not rigid machinations;
making inclusive and sustainable both community and company,
leaving integrity to the conceits of fools
or to the one God of Shalom,
of Torah,  Nirvana, Tawhid,
of common land, wealth and governance,
of Covenant and Jubilee.
In witnessing to the Universal life ‘In Christ’,
the manifestation of inclusive justice,
shall all be made alive.’

Dec. 2003