How shall we live well and in peace? I want to propose that the answer to this question lies in the nature of what I want to call an “ordinary and everyday holiness”.

I realise that to use the word “holy” is either an act of bravery or foolishness, for there will be many that will say that such a word is “out of time”. But, in truth, the word is timeless and in many ways also ordinary, a part of our common remembrance. For, as William Blake put it “…everything that lives is Holy” and to be holy is to be whole and at one with the Divine in thought, word and deed.

Fortunately, in this quest for “holiness”, there is much to guide us in the teachings of those wise men and women of all times and all traditions – especially the mystics and sages. Their voice is clear and they tell us that the holy life springs from Divine Love and is found in peacefulness, discipline and generosity. These three qualities are seen to be in contrast to hatred, disorder and greed; and they are qualities that arise from a concern for others in contrast to an obsession with one’s self. They are, therefore, uncommon in a Western (and, perhaps, increasingly an Eastern) world that is shaped by consumerism and the reification of the individual; a world that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, shows the vital interconnectedness of our lives; a world that has lost its sense of community, its sense of belonging.

And where should we start? That, too, is easy, since all the great spiritual traditions make it clear that outward peace and well-being cannot be achieved without inner peace and well-being. We start with ourselves.
We look first at our own lives to see where the seeds of peacefulness, discipline and generosity might lie and whether they are part of what we Quakers call our “testimony” – the way in which, individually and corporately, we express our faith.

We must start with those day to day things that mostly make up our lives and try to do them in a holy way – every day and all the time. We must start with the people that are closest to, our families, our neighbours and those that we work with. If we must attend to these small things we will be able to reach out to others who are further away without feeling powerless.

This is a beginning.

David Cadman, writer
Quaker sustainability consultant