Lenten Discipline

Almost 40 days ago, a friend asked me what I was giving up for Lent, and I replied "Plastic". She never asked me what I meant by that. Perhaps she understood that I meant credit cards.

I have used my credit card once since Ash Wednesday - to buy gas. Since then, I have observed the discipline of paying for gas with cash. Since gas is closing in on $3 a gallon, this has sometimes been a challenging discipline. Somehow it hurts more to pay that much with cash.

Which explains why I needed to set the credit card aside. I seem to forget - in the moment of consumer infatuation - that I will have to pay for it one day.

This no credit card discipline has also led me to avoid places where I might be tempted to use one. Such as book stores, music outlets, and Target. It has also greatly reduced my on-line shopping.

The disciplines we adopt for Lent are not necessarily always this utilitarian. For example, the past few years, my Lenten discipline has been to reduce (or totally curtail) my time watching commercial TV.

The point is not whether our disciplines are utilitarian, or whether we "suffer" as we observe the discipline. I think the point is to observe the discipline. To get in the practice of starting something challenging, and seeing it through to the end.

Music or writing might be good analogies. As a writer, I am relatively undisciplined. My first or second draft is generally good enough to get my point across. Once I feel like an essay or poem is "done", I don't generally have the interest to go back and proof-read it, or hone it. It's done. I'm ready to move on to the next thing.

I don't generally write outlines before I start my essay. In the case of at least two essays I wrote for the Ordinary Time collection, I started off thinking I was writing about one thing, only to end up someplace else entirely. Thing is, I didn't always go back and change the beginning to reflect the new place I ended. I convinced myself that the reader might appreciate reading my thoughts as they developed.

Talk about hubris, right?

I've been told I'm a good writer. I have a number of fans (at least three known to me personally). Imagine how much better I would be if I wrote outlines, proof-read, and honed. Heck, I might become professional quality!

Here's another example. I have played a harmonica since I was a pre-teen. I bought my first Horner Marine Band (with Beatles' song/instruction book) in a pawn shop on NW 23rd Street. I learned the scale, I learned the tunes, I taught myself to play a number of things by ear.

Now, almost forty years later, I can play with just about any tune as long as I know the key and have the appropriate harp for that key. I know where the "home" note will be (the fourth hole), and instinctively find my way around from there.

The word "discipline", as you may know, comes from the root, "disciple" - which means "student". But this is a different sort of student than you find in the normal classroom. This student patterns her/his behavior on the teacher's. The obvious example is Jesus' disciples. He called upon them (and us) to pattern our lives and actions on his example.

Jesus' model is radically different than what the World teaches. Sometimes it's even different than what our Sunday School teacher might tell us. That's why it takes extreme discipline - because we are told by a vast number of other sources that we should be doing just the opposite.

Our Lent discipline may be just a sort of practice for the sort of discipline we are called to observe year round. Consider that. You're called to do more than just "give up" chocolate for forty days. You are called to daily strive to conform your life to the example Jesus modeled.