Celebration of Discipline: Celebration

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through an anno­tat­ed trans­la­tion of Pascal’s Pensees called Chris­tian­i­ty For Mod­ern Pagans, I’ll post the thoughts I’m email­ing the stu­dents here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2020. The read­ing sched­ule is online.

I hope this sum­mer has been a bless­ing to you! Today we come to the final dis­ci­pline — the dis­ci­pline of cel­e­bra­tion (which is an inver­sion of the book’s title, and this does not seem to be acci­den­tal).

Cel­e­bra­tion as Fos­ter describes it is a joy-filled approach to dai­ly liv­ing that we share with oth­ers. He is not pri­mar­i­ly refer­ring to events like wor­ship ser­vices or par­ties. He has in mind things like laugh­ing with your friends in the cafe­te­ria or turn­ing chores into games. When we con­sis­tent­ly and authen­ti­cal­ly live with joy, every­thing (includ­ing wor­ship ser­vices and par­ties) get bet­ter. But when we do not live this way, even the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines we have been study­ing can become hor­ri­ble things:

Cel­e­bra­tion is cen­tral to all the Spir­i­tu­al Dis­ci­plines. With­out a joy­ful spir­it of fes­tiv­i­ty the Dis­ci­plines become dull, death-breath­ing tools in the hands of mod­ern Phar­isees. Every Dis­ci­pline should be char­ac­ter­ized by care­free gai­ety and a sense of thanks­giv­ing.

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 191

This is, no doubt, why Fos­ter enti­tled his book Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline. The spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines must them­selves be both sources of joy and expres­sions of joy. This does not mean turn from fast­ing to feast­ing the moment we get hun­gry, or that when gen­eros­i­ty is a chal­lenge that we instead turn to greed. Of course the dis­ci­plines will be hard at times — that is why we call them dis­ci­plines!

But if our prac­tice of the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines is noth­ing but duty with­out delight, we have bad­ly missed the mark. In this regard the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines are no dif­fer­ent than the phys­i­cal dis­ci­plines — exer­cis­ing is hard at times but peo­ple endure it because they enjoy what comes on the oth­er side of the pain (and exer­cise itself is some­times fun). And so our spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines must be a cel­e­bra­tion. But since the spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines are woven into our every­day lives, they can only be marked by cel­e­bra­tion if our every­day lives are marked by cel­e­bra­tion.

Some peo­ple strug­gle to believe that God wants them to live this way. They have a hard time expe­ri­enc­ing joy with­out guilt. Some plea­sures, of course, are sin­ful. But there are peo­ple who are sus­pi­cious of even whole­some plea­sures. If that’s you, I urge you to remem­ber that enjoy­ing life is not only pleas­ant but wise. Eccle­si­astes makes this point repeat­ed­ly: “a per­son can do noth­ing bet­ter than to eat and drink and find sat­is­fac­tion in their own toil” (Ecc 2:24–25), “there is noth­ing bet­ter for peo­ple than to be hap­py and to do good while they live” (Ecc 3:12–13), “there is noth­ing bet­ter for a per­son than to enjoy their work” (Ecc 3:22), “when God gives some­one wealth and pos­ses­sions, and the abil­i­ty to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be hap­py in their toil — this is a gift of God” (Ecc 5:18–20), “go, eat your food with glad­ness, and drink your wine with a joy­ful heart, for God has already approved of what you do” (Ecc 9:7–10), “you who are young be hap­py while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth… ban­ish anx­i­ety from your heart” (Ecc 11:9–10).

Per­haps, on the oth­er hand, you do believe this but have a hard time putting it into prac­tice. Maybe you even feel guilty that you don’t enjoy life more. Fos­ter has good advice:

God has estab­lished a cre­at­ed order full of excel­lent and good things, and it fol­lows nat­u­ral­ly that as we give our atten­tion to those things we will be hap­py. That is God’s appoint­ed way to joy. If we think we will have joy only by pray­ing and singing psalms, we will be dis­il­lu­sioned. But if we fill our lives with sim­ple good things and con­stant­ly thank God for them, we will be joy­ful, that is, full of joy. And what about our prob­lems? When we deter­mine to dwell on the good and excel­lent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swal­low our prob­lems. The deci­sion to set the mind on the high­er things of life an act of the will. That is why cel­e­bra­tion is a Dis­ci­pline. It is not some­thing that falls on our heads. It is the result of a con­scious­ly cho­sen way of think­ing and liv­ing.

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 195

If you strug­gle to live with joy, choose to fill your life with “sim­ple good things” and thank God for them. Are you broke? Take walks in beau­ti­ful places. Watch fun­ny videos online. Invite friends to come hang out at your place. Do you have some spare cash? Buy foods that you real­ly enjoy eat­ing. Buy the pre­mi­um ver­sion of an app that you already like using. Pur­chase tick­ets to an event.

And always remem­ber that the goal is to cul­ti­vate a tru­ly joy­ful spir­it. We’re not try­ing to live by hype; joy that lasts has a foun­da­tion. I appre­ci­at­ed Fos­ter’s warn­ing in this regard:

Often we try to pump up peo­ple with joy when in real­i­ty noth­ing has hap­pened in their lives. God has not bro­ken into the rou­tine expe­ri­ences of their dai­ly exis­tence. Cel­e­bra­tion comes with the com­mon ven­tures of life are redeemed. It is impor­tant to avoid the kind of cel­e­bra­tions that real­ly cel­e­brate noth­ing. Worse yet is to pre­tend to cel­e­brate when the spir­it of cel­e­bra­tion is not in us.

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 193

And with that, I close. We’re offi­cial­ly done with the book, but I’ll send one more sum­ma­ry email next week. Thanks for read­ing along!

In the mean­while, I have a ques­tion for you: which chap­ter did you find most help­ful? Reply and let me know — I’ll share the results anony­mous­ly with every­one!