A delightful young woman I used to work with left a very caring comment for me on my last post that got me thinking further about this whole idea of discipline.  The reflection grew beyond the scope of simply replying to her comment, so I decided to post my thoughts instead, in part because I think the answer is an important distinction to make, and to make evident to others.

The comment this young woman made was that I was being really hard on myself, asking me to question “is hammering ‘discipline’ into your cranium working?”

I understand where she’s coming from, and her point is well taken.  We ought to have a certain amount of grace and tenderness toward ourselves and our bodies, and I admit I can often lack that.  Significantly, at times.

But I’m not talking here about discipline here in terms of beating myself up and punishing myself.  I’m not thinking even entirely in terms of restraint, because the ability to restrain truly is present in my life about 80% of the time.

What I’m really talking about, so as to clarify not only for you but for myself, is a discipline of a spiritual nature.  A “spiritual discipline,” if you will.  The ability—no, the willingness—to first listen to the spirit (rather than drown him out with a chorus of “I want what I want’s”) and then to obey him (rather than give in to my fleshly desires).

The type of discipline I’m talking about is the yielding of my eating—all of my eating and the thoughts and actions  and attitudes surrounding it—to God for him to use in my sanctification.  If fasting is a tool used to shape us in the image of Christ, surely eating is, as well.

Lauren Winner, on of my favorite authors, agrees.  This morning, as I was contemplating this issue, I discovered the next chapter in Mudhouse Sabbath, which I was reading as I waited for a friend, was about the observance of Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws.  Lauren describes how keeping kosher, in her orthodox days, not only cultivated a physical awareness of what she ate and why, but a spiritual one, as well.  She writes,

Only after I stopped keeping kosher did I fully appreciate that kashrut had shaped more than my grocery lists.  It also shaped my spiritual life. Keeping kosher transforms eating from a mere nutritional necessity into an act of faithfulness. If you keep kosher, the protagonist of your meal is not you; it is God. (p. 15)

It is this God-piece that is important.  And it is this God-piece that I most often (as in almost always) am missing.  Lauren reminds the reader that we are equally as attentive to what we eat if we are merely following the Atkins Diet.  The difference is God.  We limit ourselves to kosher food—return to the etymology, appropriate or fitting food prepared appropriately—because God cares about what we eat.  (p. 21)

Because God cares about what we eat.

I don’t know how I feel about that.  Nor do I know what he cares about, or why.  I know he desires that my spirit be free—to not be bound by the “law.”  Yet I also know he desires I life a holy life—a life that requires a discipline “of biblical proportions.”  I don’t know where the line between the two lies.  I must completely rely on the Holy Spirit to show me.  Given, of course, that I remember to ask the Holy Spirit in the first place…

Lauren concludes,

On Sunday morning as I watch my priest lay the communion table for the gathered believers, I remember why eating attentively is worth all the effort: The table is not only a place where we can be present to God.  The table is also a place where He becomes present to us.  (p. 26)

Becoming present to God.

God becoming present to me.

I don’t eat this way.

I want to.

It’s not an attempt to beat myself up.  It’s an attempt to lift myself up.  To that which is higher.

To that which is holy.

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