Editorial May 23, 1994 Issue

Holiness—the beauty and flavor of life

William E. Moody

When novelist and environmentalist Peter Matthiessen was profiled last year in Time magazine, he warned, "The world is losing its grit and taste. ... The flavor of life is going" (January 11). That doesn't seem to be an uncommon concern today. And it isn't just a product of environmental degradation or the threat to so much of the world's natural beauty. There are many people whose daily lives are pressed to the pavement, so to speak, who have little room to consider their own meaning and purpose. Some don't even see a purpose in the rush and apparent triviality of their work and have lost the anticipation of the joys waiting to be discovered around any corner of their lives. These are people who would readily relate to Matthiessen's plaint that life is losing its flavor, perhaps even its color and form, its substance.

Yet then we see or meet someone who has so clearly cut through this tangle and expresses such a spontaneous curiosity and pleasure in living, and in other people and the world, that we know life can truly be filled with wonder.

For our own daily lives to become something we look forward to, something we graciously take joy in, something we expect will be good and fulfilled, our experience actually requires something radical—it requires holiness. That may not be the thing most people think they need in order to be happy and satisfied, but when we discover it, everything changes. It's as if one were walking at the edge of the woods just before daybreak. There are dark shadows, indistinct forms, things that deceive the eye and appear to be what they are not. Then the morning sunlight strikes. It all becomes vibrant, clear, genuine, even beautiful. It all becomes new.

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