On Holiness

I recently picked up Eugene Peterson's The Message to see how he rendered a text from the book of Isaiah. I've shared this before, but in Peterson's intro to Isaiah he has some really delightful things to say on the topic of holiness. Holiness isn't something I think many people are attracted to. It smacks of a puritanical piety and not a lot of fun. But here's Peterson's take on holiness:

The more hours we spend pondering the words of Isaiah, the more the word "holy" changes in our understanding. If "holy" was ever a pious, pastel-tinted word in our vocabularies, the Isaiah-preaching quickly turns it into something blazing. Holiness is the most attractive quality, the most intense experience we ever get of sheer life--authentic, firsthand living, not life looked at and enjoyed from a distance. We find ourselves in on the operation of God himself, not talking about them or reading about them. Holiness is a furnace that transforms the men and women who enter it. "Holy, Holy, Holy" is not needlepoint. It is the banner of a revolution, the revolution.

Peterson's descriptions of holiness put me in mind of Katherine Sonderegger's description of God's holiness as this very life and power: 

God's very Being is alive, vital. It is not inert, nor static, not material nor stable. God is not thinglike in that sense, not an object, or, better, never a mere object. Holy Scripture sets aside a term for this living Vitality: the Lord God is Dunamis, forceful, powerful Life. We can never exhaust our praise for this holy Dynamism. To stand in its Presence is to be swept over and swept away by its mighty wind, its Spirit that broods and blows where it will, lashed by tongues of fire, quickened by its relentless life, superabundantly pouring forth from its infinite caverns, calling forth life out of death, reality out of nothing. In prayer, in times of testing and trial, in the haunting melancholy and passion of this life, we simply know this Vitality; more we encounter its mighty Power that crushes death and sin, an encounter registered in our whole being, organic and total, body and soul, that is the claim of this Life upon ours...

It is the most fundamental metaphysical claim of all that Dynamic Life exists, the primal fire burns...The Force that is God's very Being radiates outward, expands and explodes, never ceases or wearies, does not stand in reserve but is always, everywhere, Alive...

Holiness is stepping into this Life, this Fire. A famous story from the desert fathers: 

Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and said, "Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and, according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts. What more should I do?"

The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. 

He said, "Why not become fire?"