Book

So I finished reading "The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible." It's about the author's experiment in trying to obey all the rules the Bible contains. The guy who wrote it also wrote a book about reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, which I want to read now. (The book, not the encyclopedia.) "The Year of Biblical Living" was good. It was funny, interesting, a good read. Towards the end it started to sound like one of those "atheist checks out churches" books that it turns out I've read my personal quota of already, but if you haven't already read those other books you wouldn't notice that. He said some really good things, some things I wanted to keep a record of. This is the place where I do that!

On the topic of being thankful and saying grace before meals:
"I'd like to thank God for the land that he provided so that this food might be grown."
Technically, that's enough. That fulfills the Bible's commandment. But while in thanksgiving mode, I decide to spread the gratitude around:
"I'd like to thank the farmer who grew the chickpeas for this hummus. And the workers who picked the chickpeas. And the truckers who drove them to the store. And the old Italian lady who sold the hummus to me at Zingone's deli and told me 'Lots of love.' Thank you.
Now that I type it, it sounds like an overly earnest Oscar speech for best supporting Middle Eastern spread. But saying it feels good...
The prayers are helpful. They remind me that the food didn't spontaneously generate in my fridge. They make me feel more connected, more grateful, more grounded, more aware of my place in this complicated hummus cycle. They remind me to taste the hummus instead of shoveling it into my maw like it's a nutrition pill. And they remind me that I'm lucky to have food at all. Basically, they help me get outside of my self-obsessed cranium.
I'm not sure that this is what the Bible intended, but it feels like a step forward. (95-96)

Regarding the time he ends up locked inside the bathroom:
By noon [after two and a half hours] I'm sitting on the floor, my back against the shower door. I sit. And sit some more. And something odd happens. I know that, outside the bathroom, the world is speeding along. That blogs are being read. Wild salmon is being grilled. Reggaeton is being explained to middle-aged white marketing executives.
But I'm OK with it. It doesn't cause my shoulders to tighten. Nothing I can do about it. I've reached an unexpected level of acceptance. For once, I'm savoring the present. I'm admiring what I have, even if it's thirty-two square feet of fake marble and an angled electrical outlet. I start to pray. And, perhaps for the first time, I pray in true peace and silence - without glancing at the clock, without my brain hopscotching from topic to topic.
This is what the Sabbath should feel like. A pause. Not just a minor pause, but a major pause. Not just a lowering of the volume, but a muting. As the famous rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, the Sabbath is a sanctuary in time...
[Eventually his wife comes home and lets him out.]
I am free. I can return my emails, make my calls. It's kind of a shame. (124-125)

Considering avoiding negative language:
The interesting thing is, the less often I vocalize my negative thoughts, the fewer negative thoughts I cook up in the first place. My theory is, my thoughts are lazy. They say to themselves, "Well, we'll never make it out into the world, so why even bother?" It's more powerful than repression. The thoughts don't even form enough to require being repressed. (157)

Obeying the commandment to only eat fruit from trees over five years old:
I tried to find out the ages of all the fruits I ate by emailing and calling grocery stores and companies. This was not a success... I was reduced to researching which kinds of fruits came from slow-bearing trees and which came from fast-bearing. I learned that peach trees can bear fruit in two years. Too dangerous. Pear trees in four. Again, too risky. But cherry trees, those are slowpokes. They take at least five to seven from planting to produce.
Cherries are safe. Not my favorite fruit, but they will be my fruit for the year. I went to Fairway supermarket, bought a half pound and began eating them out of the plastic bag on the walk home, spitting the seeds into garbage cans on the street corners.
Each cherry took about three seconds to eat. Three seconds to eat, but at least five years in the making. It seemed unfair to the hard-working cherry tree. The least I could to was to devote my attention to the cherry in those three seconds, really appreciate the tartness of the skin and the faint crunching sound when I bite down. I guess it's called mindfulness. Or being in the moment, or making the mundane sacred. Whatever it is, I'm doing it more. Like the ridiculously extended thank-you list for my hummus, the fruit taboo made me more aware of the whole cherry process, the seed, the soil, the five years of watering and waiting. That's the paradox: I thought religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world. (172)

Receiving advice regarding motivation:
He told me: Stop looking at the Bible as a self-help book. That is the way I view it a lot of the time. I ask myself, "How can religion make me more joyous? How can it give my life more meaning? How can it help me raise my son so he won't end up an embezzler or a racketeer?"
But religion is more than that. It's about serving God. Yossi tells me this story:
Two men do their daily prayers while at work. One spends twenty minutes in his office behind a closed door and afterward feels refreshed and uplifted, like he just had a therapy session. The other is so busy, he can squeeze in only a five-minute prayer session between phone calls. He recites his prayers superfast in a supply closet.
Who has done the better thing?
"The first," I say.
"No," says Yossi. "The second."
The second guy was doing it only for God. He was sacrificing his time. There was no benefit to himself.
I think: That's interesting. Prayers are a good way to teach me the concept of sacrificing my time for the higher good. I'll become a more selfless person. A better person.
And then I realize: I'm back to self-help again. I can't escape it. (208)