Repairing the Definition of Holiness
A Feature Review of
Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life
Karen Stiller
Paperback: NavPress, 2024
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Reviewed by Julie Lane-Gay
“Holiness has a public relations problem” writes Karen Stiller, “even within the church. Being holy is deeply associated in our culture with being a pain in the butt rather than a balm to the soul. Attach the word holy to a person, and even in our very best moments we are more likely to imagine them as insufferable” (8).
Despite her apprehension, and mine, the author has not given up. In her new book Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life, Canadian writer and Faith Today editor, Karen Stiller, offers the church– those who are new to holiness and those who have preached countless sermons on it– a vista of how holiness can appear in our daily lives—in our friendships, in our finances, when people we love die suddenly. She excels at showing us holiness, and how there are opportunities for holiness in a vast array of circumstances—in our office, in our kitchens, in church. Turns out that our first step is to learn to watch for them.
With chapters on the “Search for Holiness,” “Body,” “Money,” “Hospitality,” “Beauty,” “Church,” “Sorrow” and more, Stiller vivifies holiness in the ordinary, in the everyday. She pulls it into our reach so we too can grasp it, and hopefully begin to offer it.
Reflecting on hospitality, she reminds us of the importance, the awkwardness, and the practicality of inviting in the stranger or the difficult person, the one who was rude at work or cut you off in the parking lot, rather than the friends we enjoy the most. She urges us to lower our standards, “We believe that hospitality is for others who are already good at it, who are saintlier in all the obvious ways, and have tidier, tasteful places. Very few pots of spaghetti sauce would ever be made (or opened and poured into a pot to heat and spit all over the stove) if this were the case” (69).
Stiller reflects on hosting afternoon open houses for her neighborhood, sticking invitations in mailboxes and under doormats, wondering if anyone would come. Stiller excels at girding us to take risks.
In writing about church, she’s insightful on the deterrents to holiness, her own intensified by being the wife of the minister, observing “…we are prone to believe that everyone is better at the Christian life than we are” (158). Remembering a Maundy Thursday service with foot washing, she writes,
“I pulled off my shoes and socks, thankful they matched, and I worried about the state of my toenails…. It feels good to have them washed and cared for by someone else, maybe especially by a priest. It is humbling to be loved like that, to have our bodies cared for by someone who is saying to us, through the softness of the white cloth dipped in water, that we are important, that every little bit of us matters, and that we can serve one another in so many ways, including this one” (37).
To undergird all she describes, Stiller weaves together Scripture, theology and ordinariness to expand her points. Of the Apostle Peter she writes, “Consider Peter, the disciple who let Jesus down in a huge, shattering way, and was then rebuilt and relaunched. His story reminds us that holiness is being repaired and then putting ourselves out there again with real, annoying people and frustrating circumstances” (13).
Defining holiness, she draws from pastor John Stott, theologian J.I. Packer and Anglican Bishop J.C. Ryle. While Scriptural and theological sources provide the foundation for her thinking, Stiller is unfailingly humane. She’s fun. She’s honest. She asks of herself, “Where, O God, has my heart wandered off to now? On what deck of the cruise ship will I find it this time? It is a wandering old dog of a heart. I will go and retrieve it and carry it back to its rightful place—in your arms” (60).
One of the great strengths of Holiness Here is the pitch-perfect symbiosis between Stiller’s content and writing. Her choice of words and anecdotes echoes the holiness she writes about. She uses herself and experiences of her life and shared ministry, but she never spotlights herself; she puts herself in the service of holiness. Another strength is Stiller’s pace. She walks her reader into an understanding of holiness slowly but substantively; she calmly builds on each chapter, all while leading us into those more challenging times of seeing holiness —sickness, loss, death. She gives us tools we didn’t realize we were acquiring.
Lastly, these chapters are full of one and two sentence spiritual treasures, so unobtrusive but so wise, “Our ordinariness does not mean we are not holy. It means we are eligible” (27). “And so our job then is not to find our resentment delicious, but to be aware of it and how ridiculous we can be, and repent” (84). “We are reminded also that the church itself is holy, and that it really is quite something to be told we are holy too, no matter how we feel about it on that very morning” (114). “We can do the work God has called us to do because of the work that God is already doing inside us and in the world” (136).
I was sitting in church last Sunday and a young girl with Downs Syndrome ran into the sanctuary to find her mother mid-sermon. Her eyes were teary and shoulders shaking. Her mother is a beautiful woman—elegantly dressed and coiffured—and she received her daughter as if she was the luckiest person in the sanctuary, gently wiping the tears, not worrying they were making a bit of noise, cuddling her daughter’s face, cozying her in for a snuggle on the pew. That’s holiness, I thought to myself. The sermon was excellent but that mother’s cherishing said infinitely more to all of us.
Julie Lane-Gay
Julie Lane-Gay is a writer and editor in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is an avid gardener and trained horticulturist who writes for garden magazines in the US and Canada. She is also the Senior Editor of CRUX, Regent College's journal of thought and opinion and a Catechist at her Anglican church. She is the author of The Riches of Your Grace:Living in the Book of Common Prayer,(IVP,2024).
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