Holiness Occurs in the Lived Life
Leon Bloy once said, "There is only one sadness. The sadness of not being a saint."

You might think that you don't have what it takes to become a saint, that you don't know how to become holy.

You might think you don't have enough time to add yet one more thing to your plethora of obligations.

You might think that holiness would require what you are not prepared to give.

There is a cost to holiness. There is a cost to anything that is of any worth, any value. But the cost is not what you think.

Holiness is not something you tack on to the other responsibilities of life.

You don't make a habit of holiness like you make a habit of brushing your teeth. You don't read about how to do it, and then practice it routinely every day.

Holiness occurs in the lived life. Daily living is the arena, the environment, where holiness takes root and flowers.

from Practicing Holiness on Ordinary Days
"The Meaning of Pentecost"

A review of Barbara Brown Taylor's new book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.

Leaving Church is far too limiting a title for Barbara Brown Taylor's new memoir, given the chance it may dampen the interest of those in the pews, or even those who left the church long ago.

Instead, the William Faulkner quote that opens Part One serves as a better foretaste of the book?s essence:

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. ...

Taylor's leaving the church and the priesthood put her in a place inhabited by many searching for direction, but relished by few:

By leaving church, I was about to leave everything I knew how to do and be. ...

But the climax to her story comes on page 120, just past the midway point in the book and after she has given notice at the church. ...

by Jon M. Sweeney
A review of Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

The popular wisdom is that the words "[holiness]" and "realism" don't go together. Holy people, like poets, are dreamy and sentimental. Never get places on time. ...

Holy people are not of this world. [They are not real about life]. Their mind is always on higher things, including perhaps the old pie in the sky. ...

My goal today is to overturn [these] false notions of holiness, for I believe that it surfaces in human beings precisely when we are being most realistic, most grounded, most down to earth.

Holiness is never fussy or sentimental. ... it's ultimate realism.

... holiness endures, persistent as a weed through the depredations of all the ages, throughout all the terrors that we human beings can inflict on each other and have inflicted over our history on this earth.

Holy realism asserts that life does matter, how we live it matters. It's not willing to accept ... that the endless daily drudgery is all there is to life. Holy realism takes a stand for awe and wonder and beauty even in the midst of ordinary daily activities.

by Kathleen Norris
from "Being Real About Life"