“HOLINESS” DEFINED BY A COLLECTION OF SACRED SNIPPETS

I was not cut out for theology.

I must have been absent on the day they taught us in yeshiva about how to define "holy." Three decades have passed, and it has not gotten any easier. I have hundreds of books and articles on the subject. They have all been nice, philosophically subtle, linguistically rich, but frankly, they have bored me to tears. Worse, they have confused me more than the legalese on the back of a Visa statement.

In my childish simplicity, I always figure that if God wanted everyone to be holy -- and "everyone" included cleaning crews, short-order cooks and truck drivers, along with theologians and philosophers -- S/He would not, just out of spite, have created a definition for holiness that was so confusing, abstract and unattainable that us simple folks would never “get it.”

Yes, it is easier to define holiness by its negation. Certain images of life instinctively set off an internal alarm that shouts "Not Holy!" Madonna and Britney open-mouthed smooching – not holy. Bin Laden, despite numerous pilgrimages to Mecca -- not holy. Marc Wilson, when he is arrogant or nasty or spiteful or cruel – not holy.

An entire catalogue of snippets and vignettes of disreputable people and events comes to mind the moment we hear "not holy." Could the converse also be true? Could it be, with deference to Justice Potter Stewart, that holiness is one of those things that we might never be able to define, but that we recognize by instinct?

Perhaps holiness is nothing more mystical than doing what is right because it is right, because it affirms the creative and moral forces of the universe, not because someone is looking.

Snippets of "holy" are all around us in the most unsuspecting places, if we would just move our hands away from our eyes. Take as an example a recollection of my mom and dad, intensified by their deaths, that feels as if it happened just yesterday. And, especially so when I repeat it over (yes, and over) to my kids:

My mother has just been wheeled back from cataract surgery to a cubicle in the recovery room. The IV is still dripping in her arm. She is propped up on the gurney in that ridiculous wisp of a hospital gown, no one else in the cubicle but my father and me. Her breakfast is sitting in front of her. She seems perfectly alert, she has been NPO since midnight, she usually has a fine appetite . . . but she is not eating.

We want to know what is wrong, but it is not until I draw very close that I hear in a barely audible whisper, "Baruch she-amar vi-hayah ha-olam . . . Praised is God whose command created the world. Praised is He, Author of all Creation . . . “

Only then do I realize that nothing is wrong, but that my mother is praying, as she prays every morning, before embarking on this long delayed and much-deserved repast of cereal and a banana. She is simply uttering the same litany that she recites every morning of her life.

I still cannot tell you precisely why, but that moment will forever be etched in my mind as a snippet of holiness. Perhaps it was simply the sight of a sincere and pious woman engaged in simple, understated communion with God, for no other reason but that it was right to be in such simple, understated communion.

A moment later, I leave the cubicle to make a phone call. When I return, I recognize instantly that I am intruding on another bit of holiness that I will carry with me forever:

My elderly dad, once a man of empirical science and technology, now drifting into the early stages of Alzheimer’s, is tenderly stroking the forehead of his wife of decades, the two of them cooing at each other like a couple of love-goopy newlyweds. Another sacred snippet.

I am through with convoluted textbook definitions of holiness. What is relevant is that we go through life with a series of radiant images that, by Pavlovian instinct, should flash into our minds whenever we think or hear "holy," and whenever we hear within ourselves the yearning to live our years as more than couch potatoes or party animals.

And sometimes, even when we are not thinking about holiness, it would really not hurt to run through that lexicon of snippets to reassure ourselves that holiness is not in some far-off heaven.

Amazing. Even in this goofy world, little snippets of holy are all around. Catch them while you can, before the camera breaks away for another look at what's happening with Ben and J Lo.