Impeccable Integrity

Cocaine, Poison, Jaguars

Dearest Jabraham (and Barnabus who I’m sure will peek at this letter before it reaches Jabraham’s hands),

I hope this letter finds you in good health and high spirits. Please accept my sincerest apologies for the delay in responding to your last letter. May the Almighty strike me down if I repeat this offense.

I have spent many nights huddled together with my comrades, enduring both the chill of the night and the weight of our burdens during the long battle of Johannesburgtonville in South America. 

Alas, I am presently blessed with an abundance of time and energy enough to write you. 

In this letter I wish to convey to you a story in which I accidentally drank a magical poison in the jungle of South America. From this I learned a new spiritual path that seems to have healed me of my affliction. I have not used cocaine in 3 weeks’ time, which we both know is the longest stretch in over 20 years.

First, I wish to respond to your last letter to me:

It pains me to hear of the meager harvest this year. I will remind you of things you will likely have already considered yourself. Next season, rotate the crops so that the wheat grows where the potatoes grew this season and the potatoes grow where the wheat grew this year. If you have yet another failed year, you will have to let a field or two go fallow for a season.

Now, to the heart of the matter.

It is by the strangest fortune that I came upon a woman who may have permanently altered the course of my life. 

Her name was Chonon, and our meeting was a most extraordinary one. 

It was evening, and my comrades and I were getting hungry. We were somewhere near the equator on one of the biggest rivers in the world. Jabraham this river would whip the Mississippi’s behind like Pa whipped you that time you told him you were feeding the cows when you were really sneaking into Miss Bridget’s yard to catch sight of her bosom. I still say Pa was more jealous than he let on. Miss Bridget always had an abundant bosom. I fault thee not for seeking contact, even if just visually, with said bosom. Volumes could be written about that bosom.

I digress. 

One evening as we rowed down this most mighty river they call the Amazon, I was able to take some cocaine in secret. Standing tall and eyes wide, I was telling the men about how I would wrestle an Anaconda if it made the mistake of disturbing our canoe, when we saw a small round hut. We heard singing. 

We decided to pull over and request a bit of food and a spot of hard ground to make our rest for the night. Hungry as we were, we entered the hut without the grace with which we may have done earlier in the day. 

Our eyes met a most unusual little concert. Chonon, whose name we only learned the next day, was singing to the small audience of 14, who were either sleeping and having bad dreams, it seemed, or vomiting in small buckets. 

She rose and strode over to us, making many gestures and whispering.

We didn’t speak Spanish. But I told William, “William, I do believe she is motioning for us to leave.” 

William thought otherwise. So we stayed.

The lady stood motionless for a while before making her way back to her seat at the front-center of the room. She resumed her singing.

Not wanting to be rude any longer, we took seats on the floor and watched this most strange concert.

She was serving some kind of dark, thick ale to the audience in shot glasses. 

I leaned over and nudged one of the vomiters and said, “That’s some pretty strong stuff eh!? You like moonshine?”

He then tried to give me a hug, which I obviously promptly refused. How he could have misjudged me for such a man as that, I do not know. Needless to say, I changed positions in the hut immediately. 

After 20 minutes of the concert, the men were becoming restless. 

Theodore was the first to walk up to Chonon saying, “How much for two of the little glasses of ale?”

She stared blankly back at him. Methinks she was not pleased with his interrupting her singing. 

He motioned to the bottle of ale. 

Realization dawning on her, she shook her head vigorously. 

“No!” she whispered. 

“No it’s okay,” replied Theo, wrestling the bottle out of her hand, “we are much accustomed to drinking strong ale and moonshine.” 

Emphasizing the last word, he grabbed two of the shot glasses and poured himself two full shots. 

Chonon was mortified.

Theo tossed back the ale and gagged. 

“What is this!?” he demanded quietly. 

She smiled and put her soft hand on his cheek. 

Not wanting to appear a pansy, he tossed back the other one. 

And with that, we all filed in and took two shots of the ale that felt and tasted more like an earthy sludge. It was atrocious. I thought to myself that I’d quicker remain sober than take another sip.

The lot of us resolved to continue listening to the strange concert, drinking no more ale, so that we might remain in their good graces and be given a place to make rest for the night.

Full days it would take to describe to you the next hours I experienced in that hut. Forgive me for only sharing the most salient moments, none of which you will believe, I suspect.

Shortly after drinking the ale and taking my seat on the floor, I started to suspect that this was no ale like I had ever tasted.

It did not sit still with my stomach, and I started to see and think funny things.

I turned into a snake slithering across the jungle floor. Talked to a jaguar. Sang with macaws.

I saw our mother rocking me as a child and felt a longing that could smother me. 

I saw a vision of the time me, you and Pa were stuck in that storm down Ol’ River and were stranded on that Island all morning. I wept as I reimagined Pa unleashing his words of wrath on you.

Two of my comrades joined in the vomiting, and another must have left for the bathroom a dozen times.

As I left the hut to piss, I looked at a tree, and it looked back at me. Alive and expectant. I felt a connection with it, like tendrils from heart to roots.

After what felt like many years in that hut, I became distraught. I saw all of the shortcomings of my life in rapid succession. A knot developed in the center of my belly and grew outward with each new vision. Hour after hour, shame enveloped me. I thought I would explode. 

I considered sprinting out of the hut into the jungle. I even considered killing myself. Anything to end this torture.

Finally, I thought to pray. 

“Please God,” I started. “I need you now more than ever. Please take this pain away from me?” 

A voice emerged that said, “Have faith that it will work, and it will.” 

As the pain reached a crescendo, a peace like I have never known suddenly penetrated from the inside out, banishing completely my self-induced torment for the rest of the night.

---

The next day we all awoke in the middle of the hut.

When we walked outside we were greeted by a man called Gee-yer-mo.

“Brothers, Chonon is not pleased with your entry last night,” he said without greeting us.

We looked sideways at each other in anticipation.

“But she thanks the great spirit for bringing you to her nonetheless. She would like to speak to each of you individually, and she will offer you counsel.”

Before long, I was sitting on the ground across from them—both Chonon and her translator Gee-yer-mo.

She sat there in silence.

“Chonon, I am addicted to cocaine,” I started, making a snorting gesture. “I’ve frequently considered ending my life. Is there anything you can tell me that might relieve me of my affliction? Shall I bring back bottles of the sludge to drink at home with wife and children? Should I pray again? Should I attend mass again? Should I focus on converting other men to the faith?”

Gee-yer-mo spoke to her in Spanish. She chuckled at me and then looked away, gazing softly at the river. She responded in Spanish to Gee-yer-mo, while looking at me.

Gee-yer-mo said: “Chonon says that when you don’t tend the garden, weeds will grow. So you remove the weeds and then rest. But since you still haven’t tended the garden, the weeds grow back.

“Removing your cocaine without sufficient replacement is like removing the thumb from a helpless child without teaching her to soothe herself.

“Worry not of prayer for the sake of prayer. Or worship for the sake of tradition. They may provide some shade for your garden, but they are not essential ingredients.

“If you should have an aim, let it be to live with integrity. This will satiate the starving part of yourself.”

“But what is integrity?” I asked.

He spoke with Chonon in Spanish.

“Integrity is the root system of the garden of your soul.

“It is the foundation of a thing. A thing has integrity if it does what it says it will do. If it can do that thing while experiencing adversity, we might say it has high integrity.

“The beaver makes his dam, and the dam says to him, ‘I will hold the water back for you to build your home. I will protect you from the coyote.’ If the dam is then blown down during the first storm, it had poor integrity. If it holds through the floods, and the winds, and the rushing of stones upon its path, it has high integrity indeed.

“As a Shaman, Chonon’s promise is that she will protect you in ceremony. She will help you stay safe physically. She will not give you more medicine than you are ready for, unless you force it out of her hands. She will help you have a positive, healing experience. 

“What is it, she asks, that you say that you are? What virtues do you believe you hold? And are your actions in line with those?”

“Oh Chonon, I am a bad person. I have no integrity. I never have.”

Chonon closed her eyes and then gazed at me for a while.

I’ll never forget the next part of that woman’s counsel:

“Many people think that integrity must be built,” Gee-yer-mo translated, “as if it were something that we had to find and create. But they are wrong. Each of us is born with perfect integrity. Observe the children. There is no separation between what they think, what they say, and what they do. 

“So think not that you must build integrity. Instead, you must repair it. It’s your native state.

“Over the course of our lives we all make many mistakes. We behave in ways that dishonor our innermost values, and we create cracks in our integrity.

“And through these cracks the weeds grow.

“Repair your integrity first by shining a light on the ways in which you have broken it.

“Who have you harmed? What promises have you broken? Who have you lied to, cheated and stolen from? To whom do you wield resentment as a weapon? 

“Admit these things to yourself, to a trusted friend, and to the moon above. Then go out and make it right with all of the people you’ve harmed.

“And hear me now, for I speak not just of the removing of weeds, but of the growing of a beautiful flower garden.

“There are some who walk this earth that appear to be walking amidst the clouds. These few whose resting state is one of peace, love and gratitude.

“If you desire to be like one of these, then you must not stop at the obvious. For these flowers to bloom you must strive for impeccable integrity. 

“In the hidden recesses of your mind, are you doing things for the reasons you say (to yourself and others) that you’re doing them? Perhaps you give to the needy—but if you only give when your friends can see you, is it honest?

“Do you speak and act towards people in a way that authentically represents how you feel about them on the inside? Perhaps there is a person in your life to whom you are kind to his face—but if you gossip about him and mock his character behind his back, are you actually kind?

“How far are you willing to go to uphold the values you claim to hold? 

“When every thought, word and action are aligned, we call that impeccable integrity.

“If you can hold yourself with playful compassion while pursuing this path, you will begin to feel a sense of wholeness. Of being exactly where you’re supposed to be. And in time you will come to crave this feeling more than the drugs you use to escape being with yourself.”

I buried my bag of cocaine in the ground that night.

---

Jabraham, these words have seeped into my soul, healing me from the inside. I am free of my affliction. My life has a great purpose now. To live with integrity. 

Seeing myself on the path of repairing my integrity gives me strength.

And strength I hope this gives you as well, my dear brother Jabraham. Until I see you in the flesh, be well and God speed.

Yours, most affectionately, 

Benjamin Hyatt Woodrow IV