Discipline. A Celebration? Really?

As I grabbed books from boxes and speed sorted them like a librarian onto the rummage sale table, I paused when my hand held the book Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.  I was working at a fundraising rummage sale sorting hundreds of donated books last Friday, chuckling at prizes like Wisdom for the 1987 Graduate, which was in a box with a half-opened package of male Depends (which promptly sold, by the way!) and not seeing much to capture my attention... until this moment.  

Richard Foster, the modern Quaker theologian contemplative, is a voice in the desert for me.  I've read his words just about every morning for months as I've worked my way through Classic Devotions and Spiritual Classics, books in which he has selected and commented on numerous classic writings.  Do you know when a voice is like a cold drink of water on a sweltering day?  That's how his voice is to me.  I drink it up as he introduces me to the writings of the classic saints and mystics and deep spiritual thinkers.  Sometimes I scratch my head and wonder what I just read from some 12th century monk, and then Foster sweeps in to illuminate the timeless heart of the message, and I say, "ohhhhhhh, I get it."

I've been wanting to read Celebration of Discipline for a long time, but frankly, the title scares me.  I am SO not disciplined.  I am creative, spontaneous, artistic (words I like) along with being a weak finisher of my grand ideas, a leaper from this to that, and an expert of nothing (words I dislike.)  But here was the book in my hand for a mere $1, and I thought...it's now or never.

So I'm going to take you along on this journey and interpret what I read through the lens of a 21st century wife, mother, homeschooler, songwriter, comfort lover, sinner, quitter.  Here is your "I might quit half way through" warning.  If that's the case, I will make it through the #6 discipline of solitude and then just quietly disappear by some lake in Northern Minnesota, and you'll understand.  You can go get your own book at that point.

Will this really be a celebration?  Time will tell.