MIDDLE GROUND

Gregory Fruehwirth writes, “It would be pleasant to think that the spiritual life consisted of only two dimensions: the first being concern with outward behavior and the second being a concern with our inner, or spiritual, lives. But anyone who has ever tried to live in contemplative presence or unceasing prayer knows that, between outward behavior and contemplative experience, there is a vast middle region of ourselves to be negotiated and purified. The middle region is partly interior and partly exterior. It is the region of our emotions, imaginations, and judgments.”

Though this middle ground of ourselves is to be tamed and brought into some kind of order, it is not the intention of a spiritual life to be exterior or interior… but both. The tragic mistake of being religious is that it makes us people who are dualistic in thinking that our exterior and interior lives in the Lord are separated and disconnected. They are one… and all training in prayer, discipline, habits and practices, is done on the middle ground of our souls.

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Jesus