Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard J. Foster
I read Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth and Worth Celebrating: A Biography of Richard J. Foster’s Celebration of Discipline when I joined the Renovare Book Club at the beginning of this year. Renovare describes the online book club as “an intentional journey through four carefully selected books to help you create space in your mind and heart for God to work.” I love the Spiritual Disciplines and had heard of the Foster book (first published in 1980). Besides reading the book together, there were opportunities to form and join book discussion groups, interviews and reflections in their podcast, and forums to further discuss and “meet” others in the group.
Celebration of Discipline was a good book, and I greatly admire Richard Foster for breaking ground as a Protestant who discusses a longtime Catholic tradition in a way that encourages people to embark on the journey I have taken to find joy and a deepening relationship with God through the Spiritual Exercises.
Having taken three years to study the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and then two more years learning about Spiritual practices to guide Spiritual Direction, I found some of Foster’s takes to be a little basic. I sometimes felt he was too tentative, even sometimes defensive, about some aspects of the tradition that, in my interpretation, he felt were too “un-Protestant” (my words). For example, when he writes about meditation, he says some people think of it as Eastern religious meditation. “In reality, the two ideas stand worlds apart. Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different.” I remember saying this to my Hindu friend who encouraged me to “empty my mind” with meditation. I was afraid of that concept—an empty mind. What if bad things came into that emptiness? I told him I wanted to fill my mind with the Holy Spirit, not empty it.
But now, after studying, learning, practicing and living many of the Spiritual practices, I am not scared of emptying my mind, of stopping all the thoughts, the “monkey brain,” of sitting in the silence of an “empty” brain. I welcome many aspects of Eastern or other religions’ practices. One of my favorite books is Holy Envy by Barbara Brown Taylor, where she writes about many different religious practices and beliefs that evoke envy in us because they bring a richness to our relationship with the Divine that we do not have or emphasize in our tradition.
But Foster’s book was written in the ‘70s when all this Spiritual stuff was new and pooh-poohed by those of us steeped in Solo Scriptura and Salvation by Grace Not Works. I love that he has a section called “Sanctifying the Imagination,” which begins with the following: “We can descend with the mind into the heart most easily through the imagination.” After an early Jesuit retreat on Contemplative Prayer, I said, “I feel like a path has been made from my head to my heart.”
I also love his section on Study as a Spiritual Practice. Awesome—blending “head knowledge” with “heart knowledge.” That’s my favorite thing about my new contemplative life, which I dearly wish I could encourage others like me to embark on.
I like the organization of “Inward Disciplines,” “Outward Disciplines,” and “Corporate Disciplines.” This is a useful way to think of the disciplines. I have come to the conclusion that pretty much anything can become a Spiritual practice, and this organizational model is a good way to broaden the practices beyond the personal and internal ones that tend to come to mind when we think of them.
I would encourage anyone, especially anyone just starting to explore the Spiritual Disciplines, to read Celebration of Discipline AND learn more about practices that can deepen your relationship with Jesus from other sources. The Ignatian Adventure: Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius in Daily Life by Kevin O’Brien, SJ, is the book I use as a guide when giving the Exercises to someone. IgnatianSpirituality.com has a wealth of information and resources from which to learn. I have more resources; contact me if you are interested.