Kavanah and Custodial Holiness

A couple moons ago I sat with a wonderful group of people talking about this whole “holy” thing and what it looks like and whether its subjective or objective and all this other deep stuff my co-worker had been gnawing on and shared with us. I have a thought or two on this fine word, but really I don’t know anything about “holiness”. I just know I’m supposed to head that direction learning as I go.

When I was sitting there talking with people who are wiser than I, a man who has been around the block a time or two (or 50-something times if “a time”=a year) spoke up when asked to. He’s one of those that sits back and listens a bunch, whose heart seems very tender, and whose humility is something I envy (is that holy? who knows). And he teared up a little bit, talkin’ about what he thought pursuing holiness looked like by expressing the finiteness of this life. He talked about how quickly the world turns around, how in 50 years we will probably be forgotten and how in 100 we’re no distant memory; we’re just another dead person. He was sad about how he gets so caught up in the details and those details, in their pointless selves, just aren’t Kingdom. For a second, I have to admit I got lost… that’s no rare occurrence for me. J I was kinda confused about how getting caught up in the details of his job on our facilities team fit with pursuing holiness. But, I knew it had to have significance because he felt the need to share it and I don’t think I ever saw him talk before.

I have learned to really listen to the folks who don’t say much. Especially because I know myself pretty well. I am the one who can’t keep my trap shut, and what I say runs similar to what I always say because I am young and don’t know a lot. But, because I’m an English major I can put it in a hundred different ways and make it sound different perhaps even with an inkling of profundity, but really it’s the same thing said differently (a skill I learned from many modern Christian authors). And for some reason I feel the compulsion to still talk. I am not one of these tender, humble souls who doesn’t feel the need to dress up their thoughts, someone who really hates talking in groups because they don’t feel this or that, even though often their all the 'thises" and thats". Nope, I’m a ersatz thinker, a wannabe observer, a faux intellectual. So, because I am well aware of my tendencies, I always try to listen when someone like that is asked what’s stewin’ up there. I think they have bottomless unfound wisdom because they watch and listen so dang much.

So when this kind gray-headed Reebok man started speaking and I got lost, I felt the need to simmer upon what he said a little. And I was just a little dumb because what he was saying was deep and profound. Holiness is living in a bigger picture. Holiness is not getting caught up in the rights and wrongs and custodial Christian work of cleaning up our appearances, hoping that a squeaky clean exterior will ‘attract people’ or whatever pish-posh we justify our looking good with. I believe that holiness is living in our little-ness, in our dust-in-the-wind-ness, in our withering grass-ness and owning it. I believe that holiness is keeping in mind with who is the head hancho is, who is controlling things, who is crazy about us, who allowed this weird murder-suicide thing so that we could live a life through the Spirit this guy would bring. And there’s this Jewish word I just learned about called kavanah and it means “intention or direction”. It basically means that when we forget who we’re talkin’ to, who is Emmanuel-ing it, our prayers and life get too caught up in the details, in custodial Christianity. When my boss showed me it, it got my head a little zappy with thoughts and I thought 'man, I think this man got Kavanah'. He saw that holiness is really a matter of understanding our teeny-tivity and his ultimate-ivity. (I like to make up words). The pointlessness of custodial Christianity and point-fullness of a life that's full of kavanah. And when we get that, we’re great lovers of people and not of stuff , and giving grace becomes less of a big deal because we see how much stuff we’ve done to people and God, and we wanna live a life how we were originally made to in full relationship w/ God, not getting tripped up by all this stuff that screws with us. AKA Holiness.

So, I learned from this quiet, non-big-mouth man that custodial Christianity is often what we equate holiness with, but really that's not it at all. Holiness is living in a state of Kavanah.