Holy Hangovers

It’s holy week. Here are some of the holy hangovers many of us used to live with:

That God is not concerned with our happiness…only desires our holiness. But how is a desire for joy and happiness opposed to holiness? Maybe…God wants our happiness more than our holiness. Somehow I’d sooner want my kids to be happy than holy. Maybe happiness is holiness. Maybe the dichotomy is false.

That holiness has a certain face.  But I know some ordinary and some rather ribald people who have an inner light I’d call holy. I’ve met them and they are all generous. Some live on the street, some work in office towers. Some publish heavy equipment magazines. Many of them are mothers. Yes, some preach but you couldn’t call it that.

holiness preacherThat holiness is being set apart for God’s purpose. Or as one Christian apologist has said, “Holiness is itself a drawing of a boundary around that which is uniquely associated with God.”  Oh, now here’s a dangerous one! A kind of hyper-sacred-profane-dualism with the inference that God’s purposes are obvious. The unholy thing here is the idea that some created things are holy, uniquely having to do with God, and the rest is refuse…outside of God’s sphere. How many people-divisions has this spawned?

It’s holy eon, please enjoy everything, but pick up after yourself. 

3 Comments

  1. …ribald sorts, publishers of heavy equipment magazines, holy?? ! How on earth can ribald coexist with flawless quiet submissive purity?

  2. Holy human ribald can coexist with anything…it’s flawless, submissive purity that can’t coexist and goes off to form it’s own group based on the expulsion of the ribald. That’s the Easter story.

  3. A Easter bawdy song for Steve-O:

    Mighty Tammuz
    Deity of vegetation
    Pierced by a mad wild boar

    40 sad days
    Virgins wept their irrigation
    They’re trusting eyes most sore

    O Happy fields
    Drunk in joyous mutilation
    Spring brings him back once more

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