The Practice of Holiness

God is not an absence, so God is not worshipped through abstinence. God is worshipped through active embrace of everything that is alive, everything that is honest and true and life-affirming. Life as Love, as pure goodness, is a reliable power – if embraced in honesty, it always leads to itself. Temptations of the senses have nothing on Life – they are not to be feared, and they don’t need to be fled from. They don’t have the power to enslave or to hide the all-encompassing delight of Life.

God is not a feeble voice. We don’t have to be afraid we won’t hear it. Really we only fail to hear it when we embrace fear instead – fear that we won’t have enough if we don’t fight others for it, or that we won’t be enough if we’re not better than others; fear that false voices will overpower us so that we can’t be reached by God.

People who embrace Life may be found to abstain from certain things, such as obsessing about physical appearances or engaging in perpetual sensual gratification. But it is not their abstinence that makes them holy – it is their commitment to Life, their surrender to Love, which catches up their lives and guides them in the perfect unfolding of grace.

Just as it is much harder to balance a still bicycle than a moving one, it is harder to hear God’s direction when not actively engaging in Life. There is no precedent anywhere for people who hem their lives in with constraints ending up holier than those who don’t. People who go overboard with sensuality may find it unsatisfying sooner than those who restrain themselves. There’s no place in God’s world for “holier than thou.”