Spiritual discipline is the creation of self-imposed boundaries:
Parker Palmer writes the following in his book, To Know as We Are Known: Monks were to remain in their cell, “…unless a man could find God here, in this one place, his cell he would not find Him by going somewhere else.” These monks often made a “vow of stability” as part of their monastic life. “With this vow they renounce the temptation to believe that some other monastery would be a better place to learn and grow.”
I think this is interesting in light of our current consumer driven culture. If I don't like my church because the music is too loud or the sanctuary is too hot or too cold, I can simply find another one. But when I do this I never really learn one important aspect of being a follower of Christ: faithfulness.
Parker continues: “Good teachers know that discomfort and pain are often signs that truth is struggling to be born among us… Such teachers will not allow their students or themselves to ‘flee from the cell.’ They will hold the boundaries firm and hold us all within them so that truth can do its work.”
We never really learn truth about ourselves or about God unless we choose to remain "in the cell."
I like some of the ways the Amish look at things. Their position on these things can be described in one word: boundaries. Barbara Kingsolver, in her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, puts it this way: “The work horse places a limit on the size of our farms, and the… horse-drawn buggy limits the distances we travel. This is what we basically need. This is what keeps our communities healthy.” It makes perfect sense of course that limiting territory size can yield dividends in appreciation for what one already has, and the ability to manage it without debt. The surprise is to find whole communities gracefully accepting such boundaries inside a nation that seems allergic to limitations, priding itself instead on the freedom to go as far as we want, as fast as we can, and buy until we run out of money – or longer, if we have credit cards."
