Integrity at work: Many Americans seek fulfillment by working for material wealth, but only those who find a work worth doing -- and do it well -- gain integrity and true happiness. (First Principles).

There comes a time when only the audacity of a parable and a symbol can make the fact live as a truth. Therefore, to realize the integrity of man in relation to his work, let me dare to fashion a parable to be my symbol.

There was once a man who sought perfection in his work. He had no high-falutin ambition - for him perfection even in something minor was enough, if it enlisted his highest artistry. So he sought to fashion a ring of pure silver in which should be set a stone of pure turquoise, both so selected and blended and fashioned that the eyes that saw it or the finger that wore it should know in that one small ring the blessing of perfected beauty. He knew that the happiness of man does not come when he "kills time" but only when he makes time live. He knew the serene zest of the spirit that is willing to devote a lifetime to a single work, finding in such artistry the goal and the reward, beyond all payment or praise. So he sought over the world for the purest silver and the richest turquoise, forgetting the years and the decades and finding even the centuries brief, until around him the generations had passed and the fashions of the world had grown old and were gone. And when he had found the silver that pleased him , he melted the silver, and purified it, and hammered it, and shaped it, till it seemed like a ring made out of the stuff of the moon. Then he set delicately and yet firmly in it a stone that was blue as a mountain lake amid mountain snows.

And as he worked, he ignored death and transcended life, and so age looked over his shoulder, breathless with delight, and neglected to touch the artist in its absorption with the art. The decades and the centuries, in the mood of Eternity, became a part of the ring. Men who did not seek perfection, but merely pay or praise, completed their little works, and such works and workers faded. Only equal artists and arts - the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, the cathedrals of Chartres and Rouen, the marbles of Michelangelo, the canvases of Rembrandt, the plays of Shakespeare ... and the humble housewife baking bread with love and joy, or the farmer eighty years old planting new orchards over his hills - remained as his co-eternalists. The error of man's follies dissolved like shadows around him, for only beauty is truth, and only truth is beauty. And still the artist of the ring worked on, ageless, timeless, beyond pain or pleasure, failure or success, in the bliss of creation.

And at last he said, "All that I can do is done; the ring is at last a ring!" It was only then that he wondered if there were any finger to wear that to which he has given his love and labor. And he heard a Voice beyond all voices, and he saw a Finger beyond all fingers; and the Voice said, "Set it upon My finger, and I will wear it forever and forever."

That ring is now a new galaxy of suns and planets, shining in beauty upon the Hand of God.

Make a Life - Not a "Living"

This parable suggests, humbly and far off, the integrity of man in relation to his work.