Discipline

             Whoever heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray. (Proverbs 10:17) 

            Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-15)

 

          As we race along toward the beginning of Autumn (only 34 days from now.) If school hasn’t started, it soon will. While I don’t go to school any more, it’s a pattern of life I can’t seem to stop. It doesn’t help that Church activities resume, that the main vegetable harvest is at hand, or that it’s getting close to the time that snowbirds start heading south. It all makes this the cusp between the end of one part of life and the beginning of another.

          All of that means that it’s time to set goals, consider directions, and seek wisdom, and all of those require discipline. As I wrote the last sentence, part of my mind whined, “Goals? Again? Didn’t we just make those and fail to achieve them?”

And that’s the point. Goals get made and left on a shelf and then when the calendar says, “Time’s up!” all we can do is groan. Goals are about discipline; discipline doesn’t mean beating ourselves up to motivate or punish ourselves. It’s about breaking and building habits. That requires focus, which means it’s probably not a good idea to set goals once a year. Even once per season is probably not enough.

            A lot of my life revolves around gardening, partly because it’s harvest time, and partly because I’ve recognized some errors I need to correct. I need to be much more vigilant about labeling plants. One of two plants I marked as a Yellow Squash turned out to be a Zucchini, and it’s only now that there’s fruit on the vine that I can guess which tomatoes are which. And when I’m drying plants, I have the same problem. Which kind of Basil is that?

            Another issue I’m finding is how to tell when to harvest something. You can pull some things (like tomatoes), and they’ll continue to ripen. Cucumbers don’t seem to be like that. And how many days from planting are we? How many days should this plant take to be ready for harvest? I like one of the resources I looked at, which said that September and October are good times for harvesting seed heads from Bronze Fennel. I’m told October is a good time to plant garlic up north.

            If you’re not a gardener, the last two paragraphs are probably boring. The point is that I need to learn to pay attention. I need to learn how God’s creation (including me) works. I need to keep better records. The same can probably be said about every area of my life, because what one lacks in one area is likely to be lacking in another. And all of that involves discipline.