Celebration of Discipline: Solitude & Preface

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 will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged summer‐reading‐project‐2019. The sched­ule is online.

In this chap­ter, Fos­ter invites us to the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline of soli­tude: peri­ods of phys­i­cal iso­la­tion which make us into peo­ple who are con­tent regard­less of the judg­ments of oth­ers. It is close­ly relat­ed to remain­ing silent.

“One rea­son we can hard­ly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so help­less. We are so accus­tomed to rely­ing upon words to man­age and con­trol oth­ers. If we are silent, who will take con­trol? God will take con­trol, but we will nev­er let him take con­trol until we trust him. Silence is inti­mate­ly relat­ed to trust. The tongue is our most pow­er­ful weapon of manip­u­la­tion. A fran­tic stream of words flows from us because we are in a con­stant process of adjust­ing our pub­lic image. We fear so deeply what we think oth­er peo­ple see in us that we talk in order to straight­en out their under­stand­ing.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, pages 100–101

There are relat­ed com­ments in the chap­ter on study:

“If we will observe the rela­tion­ships that go on between human beings, we will receive a grad­u­ate-lev­el edu­ca­tion. Watch, for exam­ple, how much of our speech is aimed at jus­ti­fy­ing our actions. We find it almost impos­si­ble to act and allow the act to speak for itself. No, we must explain it, jus­ti­fy it, demon­strate the right­ness of it. Why do we feel this com­pul­sion to set the record straight? Because of pride and fear, because our rep­u­ta­tions are at stake!”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 74

When I was in col­lege some­one asked what per­cent­age of my words were devot­ed to influ­enc­ing how oth­ers thought about me. The ques­tion gripped me, and so I tried to keep track for a few days. Every time I said some­thing I asked myself whether or not I had said it most­ly to make oth­er peo­ple think bet­ter of me. The results were shock­ing — it was a HUGE per­cent­age of my con­ver­sa­tions. I resolved to strike any­thing from my speech whose pri­ma­ry pur­pose was either to impress oth­ers or to cor­rect a pos­si­ble mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of my motives.

In ret­ro­spect, I often went too far and made things awk­ward for every­one else. Pur­su­ing soli­tude and silence is not an excuse for being rude. We are com­mand­ed to love God and peo­ple, so if your spir­i­tu­al prac­tices make you act in less lov­ing ways then you’re doing them wrong. You will like­ly make mis­takes as you exper­i­ment in this area. Don’t beat your­self up over them, just apol­o­gize and recal­i­brate as nec­es­sary. If you resolve not to speak for a day and some­one asks you for direc­tions, give them any­way. If you decide to spend the next Sat­ur­day in soli­tude and an elder­ly neigh­bor asks you to help them move some stuff, resched­ule your soli­tude. If you want to avoid jus­ti­fy­ing your­self but some­one asks you a point-blank ques­tion about your motives, answer hon­est­ly and sim­ply.

Also, don’t make your plans in this area vows to the Lord. Vows to God are potent things and should be made rarely, yet I often speak with stu­dents who have made a promise to God to do (or not do) some­thing. In almost all cas­es the vow was an unnec­es­sary add-on meant to give their plan more oomph, and now they are in dan­ger of break­ing a vow to God. If you are con­sid­er­ing mak­ing a vow, first med­i­tate on Eccle­si­astes 5:4–6, Deuteron­o­my 23:21–23, Matthew 5:33–37, and James 5:12.

My per­son­al prac­tice of soli­tude cur­rent­ly looks like this. When I wake in the morn­ing I come down­stairs and put my phone where I can­not eas­i­ly get to it. I pre­pare my break­fast and begin read­ing a spir­i­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial book. After a bit (usu­al­ly a few chap­ters), I boot up my lap­top, open a word proces­sor, and write some­thing that will be help­ful to oth­ers. I don’t check my email or any social media while I’m doing this. Once I’ve writ­ten enough, I retrieve my phone to check for any text mes­sages that may have come in overnight and also open my brows­er to check my email.

My habit is sim­i­lar to the thir­ty-minute absten­tion from tech­nol­o­gy Fos­ter describes in the pref­ace. His pre­scrip­tion reminds me of an old-school say­ing: “No Bible, no break­fast.” In oth­er words, we must remem­ber to nour­ish our spir­i­tu­al life before we nour­ish our phys­i­cal life. Per­haps a mod­ern par­al­lel is “No Spir­it, no screens.” Don’t check your email until you’ve checked in with God. Leave your text mes­sages unread until you’ve read the Word. This is not an absolute rule, for there are sea­sons of life when it might be unwise or even wicked to cut your­self off from com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Are you a sur­geon on call? Turn your ringer up to max vol­ume!

If you do engage in a dai­ly prac­tice of soli­tude you will even­tu­al­ly find your­self want­i­ng some­thing more. Remem­ber that you can always dri­ve over to Fast­ing Prayer Moun­tain of the World for a per­son­al day-long (or even overnight) retreat. More info at https://www.fpmw-sv.com/about-us