“Everything That Is, Is Holy.”
Existence Matters
“Everything that is, is holy.”1
Growing up Evangelical Christian, the idea that something could be intrinsically good, in itself, was beyond me.
Wasn’t humanity imperfect? Didn’t God have to make a blood sacrifice to make me and the rest of existence, whole?
How does this even work?
It’s only through a new story do you begin to see the assumptions of your old story. That mindset is functionally Manichean, a dualistic view that perceives matter as bad.
Most of this theology is unintentional, but the view is unmistakable — We’re bad until made good.
Our egos love binaries: this or that, black or white. And when religion becomes egoic…
The sparkle of mystery starts to fade. Things fall into easy, tidy categories. And so it was with me.
Until I read Thomas Merton’s words: “Everything that is, is holy.”
Holy? Everything? What about the bad stuff? Like rattlesnakes. Or how people hurt others?
History is littered with the badness crowding out the good. How can everything somehow be good…or even holy?
“From non-existence into being.” So reads the orthodox liturgy, that something brought us into being. And this being-ness, in itself, is good.
Merton wrote that the “deepest ground of being is love.” Love animates our existence. Literally, if you ceased to be loved, you’d disappear from your chair (as James Finley says in Season 1 of Turning to the Mystics).
Love somehow animates our very being into existence. That’s profound…
It doesn’t just cause us to be, but it also sustains us. In this very moment, something keeps me going.
We are made by love, and in that love, given freedom. There can be no honest reciprocation of that love without agency, and to respond to this love, we are given the freedom to even say no. We are more supported, even than we realize.
Why do we even exist? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Why are we even here?
Some of these questions can only be answered by you, in your quietest moment, over the course of your life. Your road is your own, not mine; nor is mine yours.
But existence itself, to exist instead of not…is good. From non-being, we entered existence. Love animates us.
We may abuse our freedom and hurt others, but to even exist at all is good. Our being is seeped in goodness, even if we misuse that gift.
I can’t explain to you how even a rattlesnake is good, but even it’s existence belongs to Love’s creation. I don’t know why it exists; I only know that love animates it, just as it animates you and me.
There’s no reason that you or I should exist, yet we do. And there’s no reason we should be sustained, even in the hardness this life, but we are.
Your existence matters. And it is not just good, it is holy.
Holy has weird connotations in a post religious era, but we can at least say something about us is special (“holy”).
Your existence matters.
In an age that seems to treat the human as irrelevant, imperfect, and unneeded, the facts are something made us from nothing. You are supposed to be here. Don’t speak to me of our irrelevance when the very reality of your beingness says otherwise.
We matter, even if we know not why.
Your existence is special. It is holy. And it is good.
New Seeds of Contemplation, Chapter 4