The Triumph of Principles

"Spiritual principles are abstractions until they are professed in the details of daily living.

The person who fails to enter the arena, dispels of those details, rendering their moral pronouncements un-true⸺not false, but not yet made real. It is in the details that ideals are tested, tempered, and proven. It is in the run of life that principles become tried-and-true. Relationship is the arena. It is where spirituality unfolds.

She who lives in quiet isolation, though her hours may be spent in prayer and meditation, never submits to the challenges of patience and tolerance that relationship has in store for her. She knows much of spiritual latitude, but nothing of longitude. He who passes the days cloistered may emerge from his hermitage on occasion to distribute insights and wisdom gleaned from solitude and countless pages read, but he never dares to test that insight and wisdom in the trials of relationship, so it is disembodied⸺brilliant, no doubt, but lacking the common sense and mettle forged by the fire of mutual responsibility."

~ excerpted from The Triumph of Principles (my upcoming book)