I am a holy invention...

The Wren from Carolina
Just now the wren from Carolina buzzed
through the neighbor’s hedge
a line of grace notes I couldn’t even write down
much less sing.
Now he lifts his chestnut colored throat
and delivers such a cantering praise–
for what?
For the early morning, the taste of the spider,
for his small cup of life
that he drinks from every day, knowing it will refill.
All things are inventions of holiness.
Some more rascally than others.
I’m on that list too,
though I don’t know exactly where.
But, every morning, there’s my own cup of gladness,
and there’s that wren in the hedge, above me, with his
blazing song. Mary Oliver

A sermon I heard awhile ago defined holiness as something you do, actions taken on behalf of those who cannot help themselves. It was the only definition of holiness offered that Sunday. I have been struggling with what has felt to me like a very narrow gate to holiness. This poem made my heart, like the wren, sing. Mary Oliver, the poet, has put in words what my heart knew but could not express.
All things are inventions of holiness and I am on that list just because I am, because I exist, because God made me. Holiness is not something you can acquire only by saintly acts although that is a part of becoming more holy, perhaps. Holiness is given to us as our birthright if we will but claim it. God speaks to Israel through Moses in Deuteronomy and says "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God." And in Romans we read we are "to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God as our spiritual worship." We are holy because we are created in the image of the Holy One who called us into being. Our bodies, flesh and blood bodies, are seen as holy offerings to God. Some of us, as Mary Oliver pointed out, are more rascally than others but we are all still holy.
It may be that I need the assurance of my holy being because of my own insecurities. Maybe I am still struggling with "such a worm as I" theology. Maybe I really do believe we are saved through grace and not works... saved from becoming little gods in our own minds, out to save the world like the Lone Ranger and Tonto, saved from having to measure up to a standard of being holy that requires works as the only proof of true holiness.
Like the wren, I celebrate my own cup of gladness. I sing with joy for the holy within and without...my grace notes of thanksgiving for the grand and glorious gift of being and being holy. Lent reminds me that all of my life, all of who I am and who I am not, can be a sacrifice offered in holy hilarious humility. I am because God is. Because God is holy, I am holy. And I offer laughter and joy and my own rascally nature up to the One who brought us all into being. Perhaps God will break into cantering praise along with the wrens and me.