Category: 2023 – Foster’s Celebration of Discipline

As we continue with the study of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, he points out that every discipline has its corresponding freedom.  In fact, the purpose of the Disciplines is freedom. Our aim is the freedom, not the Discipline. The moment we make the Discipline our central focus, we turn it into law and lose the corresponding freedom.

The liberation is the end; the Disciplines are merely the means.

What freedom corresponds to submission? It is the ability to lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way. The obsession to demand that things go the way we want them to go is one of the greatest bondages in human society today.

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T. S. Eliot analyzes our culture well when he writes, “Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.”

Loneliness or clatter are not our only two alternatives. We can cultivate an inner solitude and silence that sets us free from loneliness and fear.

Loneliness is inner emptiness.

Solitude is inner fulfillment. Solitude is more a state of mind and heart than it is a place.

In fact, crowds—or the lack of them—have little to do with cultivating this state of mind. It is quite possible to be a desert hermit and never experience solitude. But if we possess inward solitude we do not fear being alone, for we know that we are not alone. Neither do we fear being with others, for they do not control us.

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