Celebration of Discipline: Meditation

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline by Richard Fos­ter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which is an email I send to the par­tic­i­pants). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online if you’d like to read along.

The first of the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines we’re going to look at is med­i­ta­tion. Fos­ter help­ful­ly dis­tin­guish­es what he is talk­ing about from East­ern med­i­ta­tion: “East­ern med­i­ta­tion is an attempt to emp­ty the mind; Chris­t­ian med­i­ta­tion is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite dif­fer­ent” (page 20).

In East­ern med­i­ta­tion (or mind­ful­ness as we tend to call it today) very often peo­ple seem to be try­ing to gain self-aware­ness — to dis­cov­er what they think and feel. In Chris­t­ian med­i­ta­tion, on the oth­er hand, we are try­ing to gain God-aware­ness — to dis­cov­er what He thinks and feels. As Fos­ter puts it, “Chris­t­ian med­i­ta­tion, very sim­ply, is the abil­i­ty to hear God’s voice and obey his word” (page 17).

Live Without Hurry

I sus­pect this chap­ter’s biggest chal­lenge for most Stan­ford stu­dents is the sug­ges­tion to live through­out the day in such a way that you are pre­pared for med­i­ta­tion:

If we are con­stant­ly being swept off our feet with fran­tic activ­i­ty, we will be unable to be atten­tive at the moment of inward silence. A mind that is harassed and frag­ment­ed by exter­nal affairs is hard­ly pre­pared for med­i­ta­tion. The church Fathers often spoke of Otium Sanc­tum: “holy leisure.” It refers to a sense of bal­ance in life, an abil­i­ty to be at peace through the activ­i­ties of the day, an abil­i­ty to rest and take time to enjoy beau­ty, an abil­i­ty to pace our­selves. With our ten­den­cy to define peo­ple in terms of what they pro­duce, we would do well to cul­ti­vate “holy leisure.” And if we expect to suc­ceed in the con­tem­pla­tive arts, we must pur­sue, “holy leisure” with a deter­mi­na­tion that is ruth­less to our date­books.

Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 27

I often think about a con­ver­sa­tion between John Ort­berg (the pas­tor of near­by Men­lo Church) and Dal­las Willard (men­tioned in Fos­ter’s book on page xxi). At the time, Ort­berg was work­ing at a very fast-paced megachurch in Chica­go, so he called Willard to ask what he need­ed to do to be spir­i­tu­al­ly healthy. Willard paused for a long time, and then said, “You must ruth­less­ly elim­i­nate hur­ry from your life.”

Ruth­less­ly. Elim­i­nate. Hur­ry.

In oth­er words, treat hur­ry as the ene­my of your soul. This is not a call to be unpro­duc­tive. It is a call to refuse to be dri­ven by arti­fi­cial urgency.

So my first chal­lenge to you is twofold:

1. Live with­out hur­ry this sum­mer. Be pro­duc­tive with­out allow­ing feel­ing fran­tic to take root in your soul.
2. Pre­pare to live with­out hur­ry in the fall. Prac­ti­cal­ly, this prob­a­bly means sign­ing up for one few­er class than you think you’re sup­posed to.

Meditate Upon Scripture

Fos­ter dis­cuss­es sev­er­al types of med­i­ta­tion, but empha­sizes med­i­ta­tion upon Scrip­ture as the foun­da­tion. I agree com­plete­ly. Make med­i­ta­tion upon Scrip­ture a main­stay in your life.

And so my sec­ond chal­lenge to you is three­fold:

1. Pick a sto­ry from the Bible and med­i­tate upon it one day this week. Try to envi­sion the sto­ry from the point of view of all the par­tic­i­pants (David, Goliath, Saul, the Israelite army, David’s broth­ers, etc). Imag­ine how dif­fer­ent tones of voice would affect your inter­pre­ta­tion of the sto­ry (try to think of sev­er­al ways the woman could have told Jesus, “Sir, I per­ceive you are a prophet” and say them aloud). Inhab­it the sto­ry.
2. Pick a com­mand­ment from the Bible and med­i­tate upon it one day this week. Be spe­cif­ic — don’t just think of a rule, actu­al­ly find a verse that gives the com­mand. Now run through the verse empha­siz­ing and then reflect­ing upon each word or phrase in turn. For exam­ple, Philip­pi­ans 4:8 — “Final­ly, broth­ers and sis­ters, what­ev­er is true, what­ev­er is noble, what­ev­er is right, what­ev­er is pure, what­ev­er is love­ly, what­ev­er is admirable—if any­thing is excel­lent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
   1. Start with the first key phrase — “WHATEVER IS TRUE… think about such things. Lord, why does truth mat­ter so much? And you say ‘what­ev­er is true.’ What­ev­er? Does that mean there is spir­i­tu­al bless­ing in 2+2=4? Help me under­stand.”
   2. And then move on to the next phrase. “WHATEVER IS NOBLE…. think about such things. God, what does it mean for some­thing to be noble? What’s a noble thing I can think about?” etc.
   3. Run through all eight types of things we are to fill our mind with.
   4. Even­tu­al­ly get to “THINK ABOUT SUCH THINGS. Lord — what fills my mind? Is it pos­i­tive and encour­ag­ing stuff like this? What’s a bet­ter way for me to think about _____? What is the true, noble, right, pure, love­ly, admirable, excel­lent or praise­wor­thy thing I can see in this sit­u­a­tion?”
3. Pick a promise from the Bible and med­i­tate upon it one day this week. Take time to dwell upon its impli­ca­tions. Exam­ple, Luke 6:38 says , “Give, and it will be giv­en to you. A good mea­sure, pressed down, shak­en togeth­er and run­ning over, will be poured into your lap. For with the mea­sure you use, it will be mea­sured to you.” Med­i­ta­tion upon this promise might look like this: begin by envi­sion­ing your­self receiv­ing a bag full of good things, tight­ly packed to the point of over­flow­ing. And then ask, “God, what would I have done dif­fer­ent­ly this week if I real­ly believed this promise?” And then, “How have I seen this in my life or the lives of those I know?” Keep reflect­ing on the promise and its impli­ca­tions.

That’s my chal­lenge — med­i­tate upon Scrip­ture this week in each of these ways. Pick your own sto­ry, com­mand, and promise. If you don’t know what to choose, just flip through the gospels until you find one of each. Grab­bing them from the gospels is a great way to “fix your eyes upon Jesus” as Heb 12:2 tells us to.

If you’re will­ing, email me back and let me know what pas­sages you intend to med­i­tate upon. And then after­wards let me know how it went!