For me, holiness is more than humanity. Sanctity consists of being myself and for you, perhaps, sanctity consists of being yourself. For the trees and animals, there is little choice.  They are made without consultation, they are given no choice in the direction of their lives, they live without conscience, ambition or regret.

We are given the gift – perhaps the curse – of being free to choose, to be whatever we would like to be.  We can be ourselves, or we can be the person others wish us to be. A mystic once wrote:

“The seeds that are planted in my liberty at every moment, are the seeds of my own identity, my own reality, my own happiness, m own sanctity.”

To deny or refuse them is to refuse everything, life itself. It is the refusal of my very existence and being, of my identity, of my very self. If I have a fear, it this: If I never become what I am meant to be, but always remain what I am not, or what others mean for me to be, I will live in conflict and contradiction, spending all eternity in an unwinnable argument with myself, contradicting myself by being at the same time something and nothing. A life that wishes to be, but is hollow, empty, waiting.

For me, to be holy means to be myself.