“Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”—Stealers Wheel
That lyric speaks to me on so many levels.
For today, I’m thinking of the middle. Our middle. The place where the heart and lungs reside. Our core (not in the Pilates sense).
My meditation teacher has us exploring the middle.
We had been exploring breath by focusing on the sensation at the upper lip. The rhythmic cooling caused by the breath.
Now it is the lungs with the rhythmic rise and fall, and the rhythm of the heart.
My exploration of the core led to realization of Jesus’s concern for the status of the heart. Not at an intellectual level, which tends to divide mind and body, but at the core of our being. It is from that core that our following lives. And from that following come the action verbs we learned from Isaiah yesterday:
- Cease to do evil,
- Learn to do good,
- Seek justice,
- Correct oppression,
- Bring justice to the fatherless,
- Plead the widow’s cause.
These are things pleasing to his sight. Just as Paul wrote in the concluding chapters of the Letter to the Romans. Life doesn’t stop with realization of grace—it begins. That is new life. And then we live according to the new heart.
Faith Venture 
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