Author: Dallas Willard

Publication details: HarperCollins, New York, 2006

                     “Apprenticed to Jesus” (Dallas Willard)

                    “Like stars in a dark world” (Paul of Tarsus, Philippians 2: 15)

Dallas Willard talks of the Great Disparity in the Christian life. He refers to the promises of new life through salvation and faith in Jesus Christ, and the disappointing reality that mars so much of the Christian walk. What did we miss between the hopeful “accepting Christ” into our hearts and the actual day-to-day life that follows? A simple look at the life of Jesus himself would dispel our doubts as to the workability of the Christian faith. If that is so, our failure in living as he lived is all the more wretched and puzzling. Willard explains the reasons for this in The Great Omission, a book meant to bring back the emphasis of the Christian life to the forgotten matter of discipleship. If the walk does not work at all, or “only in fits and starts”, he says, then the logical thing to do is to trace the problem back to its beginnings, which is “that … we do not give ourselves to it in a way that allows our lives to be taken over by it”.

Willard thus puts the blame squarely on discipleship, or the lack thereof. Part 1, Apprenticed to Jesus deals with this. The existence of the true follower of Jesus is the life of conscious, deliberate discipleship. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be one who “continuously ‘grows in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’ (2 Peter 3: 18)”. But what makes a disciple? And what is it in our contemporary Christian discipleship that makes it not quite the kind of discipleship that causes the life of Christ to spring up in us? Much of our contemporary understanding of Jesus’ Great Commission involves telling the gospel with the one view of “saving” folks and getting them into heaven. Lifeboat Christianity is not new, but certainly today, it is pervasive. The gospel’s salvific effect is aimed only at getting folks “in”, and involves making converts: “the governing assumption today, among professing Christians, is that we can be ‘Christians’ forever and never become disciples …. And this … is the Great Omission from the ‘Great Commission’ in which the Great Disparity is firmly rooted”.

Yet Jesus’ instructions in his Great Commission are clear: make disciples. Jesus’ idea of discipling is essentially to take a person, and yoke him with his yoke. Thus the disciple must be “a learner, a student, and apprentice—a practitioner”; but more so, he must be a constant apprentice, one given to a purposeful reorientation of his life, behavior and perspective that sets him along on a completely new path and pattern determined by Christ’s yoke. Primarily, discipleship in Jesus’ day meant walking with him in an “attitude of observation, study, obedience, and imitation”. Jesus’ own disciples, having been thus yoked to him, were to then go out and do the same, multiplying not converts for the kingdom, but truly converted men and women with renovated hearts that mirrored Jesus, experiencing the reality of the “kingdom of God” that he spoke of on earth. Such is the spiritual transformation that true discipleship looks for and aims at.

As the teacher, Jesus has been totally subsumed by Jesus the Messiah in today’s cultural Christianity. Yet to forget the excellencies of Christ as rabbi is also to regard his essential soteriological role lightly. If discipleship really means leaving all behind to follow (be apprenticed to) him, then Jesus the Teacher cannot be apart from Jesus the Savior, for it is only the Savior who offers the liberation, boldness and assurance to take the step of accepting the “cross-shaped yoke” of a completely different life (repentance). Cheap grace and easy Christianity which do not exact demands of utter loyalty and a complete turnaround of allegiances are actually more costly, not less: they cost us our abiding peace, a life that is totally imbued with the light and energy of God, a life of spiritual fruitfulness, and power for righteous living. In short, it is the abundant life that Christ promises (John 10: 10) that we shall forfeit if we are not truly his disciples. No wonder then that there is the Great Disparity between our beliefs and our lives. Being apprenticed to Jesus the Teacher and Disciple-maker means therefore that the “cross-shaped yoke … is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul”.

Living and walking with our Teacher, Jesus, opens our eyes to see the wonders of his person, and to understand that when he was on earth, he was simply the best of all human beings. His good heart, his generous compassion, his rapier wit and brilliance, tell us that to choose any other substitute than God in Christ is not only idolatrous, but utterly dreary. Nothing quite compares with Jesus in worth and excellence.

Such a discipled life is founded on grace but requires effort. Grace, contends Willard, is “not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action”. Many Christians mistakenly think that to expend effort and conscious discipline to the work of spiritual transformation is legalistic, and a harking back to salvation by works that formed Paul’s Galatian contention. But they fail to understand that faith without works, as James insists, is dead. The need for action and effort lies in the deliberate and focused working out of our salvation with fear and trembling (sanctification). We are not, however, saved by our efforts. No Christian earns his salvation–that is, rather, the case with sin, the futile ”wages of sin” being  “death” (Rom. 6: 23). Christians are reformed and renewed persons who have been saved, through the free gift of grace and forgiveness, in order to perform good works; hence, the need for effort, or “actions of grace”, as Willard cleverly puts it, in the renovation of our lives. This action of grace gives us the keys to enjoy access to God and the abundant life. But what are the resources available to Christians today to make a start where effort is concerned? Willard returns to the spiritual disciplines of classical Christianity, such as silence, solitude, prayer and fasting, worship and study, fellowship and confession. The spiritual disciplines are the divine resources—grace-sustained disciplines—given to everyone who wishes to live a disciplined life.

The rest of the book builds on the premises laid in Part 1. Part 2, Spiritual Formation and the Development of Character expands on the disciplined life. Being consciously and deliberately engaged in our own spiritual formation means, first of all, deciding to do it, setting our hearts and wills to the execution of whatever discipline will effect our spiritual transformation. The practice of the spiritual life is thus founded on practical Christian living. Such determination upholds our obedience to Christ, and as we are formed by the Spirit who enables our effort, we become the persons we want to be in Christ, and our deeds flow naturally from our lives. Part 3, Discipleship of the Soul and the Mind, offers an explanation of sin as a psychological reality, and how the practice of the grace-sustained disciplines facilitates the breaking through of the health of the gospel message into the depths of our beings, thus leading to our transformed (and truest) selves. Part 4, Books on Spiritual Living: Visions and Practices, completes the book by turning to the experiences of Christian mystics. These witnesses who have gone before us stand as those disciples of Jesus, who having taken his yoke upon themselves, have discovered that abundant life of which Jesus spoke. Our response to them (our disciplers in Christ) will determine our own satisfaction with the life of the Kingdom promised us. In the end, their exhortation to us simply underlines Willard’s point: Christ’s call is for sustained apprenticeship; we are to be constant disciples—apprentices of Jesus—as we learn to live out Kingdom life, proving to a disbelieving world that what the gospel promises is “all true …works … is accessible to anyone. And there is nothing in the world to compare”.       

Authors: Henri J. M. Nouwen and Walter J. Gaffney
Publication details: Image Book (Doubleday), 1990
           

“The vast majority of mankind looks upon the coming of old age with sorrow or rebellion. It fills them with more aversion than death itself.”
                                                                        Simone de Beauvoir
 

 “When hope grows we slowly see that we are worth not only what we achieve but what we are, that what life might lose in use, it may win in meaning.”
                                                                        Henri Nouwen and Walter Gaffney

Gerontology is not generally a subject many people express much interest in, unless they are themselves old and aging. Yet it is the case that all of us are aging, from the moment we are born. Henri Nouwen and co-writer Walter Gaffney offer a sensitive perspective to the subject of growing old, regarding it as a season of richness and maturity, when the soul, like a wagon wheel, comes nearly full circle in its journey through life. The book is divided into two main parts, Part One: “Aging”, and Part Two: “Caring”. Framing these two meditations are the Prologue: “The Wagon Wheel”, and the Epilogue, “The Wagon Wheel”. Thus Aging opens with the suggestion that the image of the wagon wheel that is introduced and worked so well and carefully into the text is descriptive of the life of a human being: “No one of its spokes if more important than the others, but together they make the circle full and reveal the hub as the core of its strength. The more we look at it, the more we come to realize that we have only one life cycle to live, and that living it is the source of our greatest joy”. The wagon wheel is there as a powerful reminder to us that “the pains of growing old are worthwhile” because the season of agedness is, contrary to what our fears tell us, a time when we are most able to say, “I really am”.

Integral to these reflections are 85 black and white photograph accompaniments, visual presentations inserted meaningfully into the worded page to enhance our meditation. Indeed, in the Prologue, it is the peaceful picture of the old wagon wheel resting against the birch tree in the deep snow that first impresses on us the many unspoken nuances of being aged and fulfilled. “I really am” resonates from both the word and the image. 

Part One: “Aging” reflects on aging as an opportunity and journey, which undertaken, leads into either darkness, bitterness, and painful regret, or into light, acceptance, joy, and humour. Aging brings bitterness and pain mainly because of the way in which the elderly are treated in society: “They are ostracized, excommunicated, expelled like contagious lepers, no longer considered as full members of the human community”. In a world that values productivity, power and strength, it is not difficult to see why man fears growing old. A society that places great importance on calibrating success by how many things we “have”, rather than the sort of persons we are or have become (“being”), can only finally tolerate the old as having “passed the line of productivity” and usefulness—but they are on the way to death, and therefore, are disposable. Without the power to demand that they be taken seriously, the aged cannot expect to be honoured, “because real honor would undermine the system of priorities that keeps this society running”. In such a world, the old are segregated by society and themselves; as society rejects them, they too reject themselves, believing that since they have reached the point of non-productivity, they are, as society tells them, useless.

The desolation of being marginalized in the world is intensified by their shrinking personal worlds, as friends die, or grow too feeble to visit, or drift away. Segregation and desolation rob the old of their sense of self and hope. These are the old who walk in the way of darkness, who grow old, embittered, resentful, angry, and perhaps even violent. Such pessimism and darkness does not easily give way to the light except through the discipline of hope which we must learn early on in life—before we grow old: “Every time life asks us to give up a desire, to change our direction, to redefine our goals; every time we lose a friend, break a relationship, or start a new plan, we are invited to widen our perspectives and to touch, under the superficial waves of our daily wishes, the deeper currents of hope. Every time we are jolted by life, we are ‘faced with the need to make new departures.’ But if this does not happen in the early years, how can we expect that it will come about later?” In other words, in order to view aging as a way into the light we learn to take each changing season and twist in life with openness and humour and vision. Embracing change rather than resisting rigidly the natural movement and development of time is the means by which our minds stay versatile and our souls flexible. Thus the season of old age can become yet another new change, another new opportunity for maturing experiences, enjoyment and participation rather than a time of fear and confusion: “It is this vision … that may make a narrowing path into a widening avenue”.

Caring for the elderly entails that we first contemplate our own journey to old age. It is thus to fearlessly allow the old to speak while we listen attentively, in order to bridge the gap of consciousness and experience between these frightening “strangers” of our future mortality and us. It is only when we give up our defences and create a friendly space for the elderly that we will learn from them concerning ourselves (Part Two: “Caring”). By our compassionate openness, we open the way to restore their role as our teachers—as the old (elders) are meant to be, teaching us about the life we have not yet lived, the path we have not yet taken.  Such caring that opens up ourselves to be in communion with the old changes and deepens us to see that caring for the aged is simply “creative interaction among the generations”. While it does sometimes involve special nursing care, caring for the aged is essentially “not a special type of care”. Dividing the world up into young, middle-aged and old is to fall into the trap of what the writers call “societal segregation”, the fragmenting and isolating disconnectedness that is the undoing of modern life. Caring rather is allowing for society to integrate and accommodate the young, middle-aged and old into one community so that we may be always present to each other. In this way, the community becomes healing to the individuals who live interconnected lives within it. The human community is thus reminded continually of the wagon wheel of life: that grandfather, father, son and grandson stand as different but connected generations that give witness to the fullness and the challenge of human life. The writers affirm for us that standing in solidarity with the other is the “basis of the human community where real care and healing can take place” (Epilogue: “The Wagon Wheel”).

Aging shows us a different way to live. It demonstrates that every season of life meaningfully and gradually matures us till we reach that final season where, autumnal and mellowed by long experience, we can look back and offer a hand to those who are still coming from behind. Far from being a reason for despair and isolation, growing old is a time for leaving legacies, for reaching the height of our best selves, and condensing the core of our strength. The wagon wheel still reclines against the birch in the deep snow, saying, “I really am”.                              

“The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.”  (Shaker Proverb)

I came across Torey Hayden’s name recently when my 12-year-old niece mentioned that she was looking for her books. A little intrigued at the thought that a giggly pre-teen would want to read “stuff” by a special ed. teacher who wrote about her teaching experiences with emotionally and behaviourally traumatized children, I decided to investigate this writer myself. I discovered Hayden’s books strewn all over several local bookstores, stacked variously under Psychology, Humanities and Teaching/Learning.  The book titles themselves are generally not impressive, such as One Child, Somebody Else’s Kids, Just Another Kid, Beautiful Child, Ghost Girl … It is easy to get the drift after a while: she writes about children.

Torey Hayden was born Victoria Lynn Hayden in Montana in 1951, and has worked and written over the past few decades as a special education teacher, a clinical psychologist, university lecturer, and child advocate. Her special field is elective mutism, and a number of her non-fiction books deal with children who, out of the brutal experiences they have endured, elect no longer to speak, in case their speech brings disaster to themselves and their fragile worlds. Her children suffer from other things that she describes, too, like dyslexia, mental retardation, autism, Tourette’s syndrome, sexual abuse, and fetal alcohol syndrome. Hayden currently lives in Wales. She also has an official website discussing her life and her work with emotionally and behaviourally disordered children, and several fan sites to boot.

To date, Hayden has written about eight non-fiction books based on her teaching experiences. They are first person accounts of her encounters with traumatized and/or disabled children, and record the joys, defeats, challenges, triumphs of these little lives struggling with so many odds piled against them. The books are simple to read, thoroughly inspiring and engaging in the unadorned and straightforward style that Hayden chooses to write in. The format becomes predictable after a while: teacher meets student, teacher reaches out to student, student resists, teacher persists, student responds… Yet, this predictability of form is never really seen to be a weakness in Hayden’s books. For one thing, although the traumatized children share a background of trauma, their individuality and distinctiveness as entities in their own right, is key to Hayden’s characterization of them. This is her gift: she is able to flesh out, with the insight of an empathetic adult who is keen and compassionate, the uniqueness of each child whom she encounters and with whom she interacts. Given the scenarios of suffering, the reader eagerly conspires with Hayden in hoping that the predictable format will yield the dénouement we are all waiting for—that these wild and disordered, psychologically unhealthy children, in responding to persistent, educated, and objective adult compassion, will reach back through the horrifying and daunting distance of time and trauma, and say, as Sheila of One Child did to Torey: “Tame me.”

Hayden’s encounters with the children of her passion and dreams occur within the confines of the classroom, primarily. She takes pains to tell us that she is first and foremost, their teacher, and that her function and usefulness take place most frequently and effectively within the structure and organization of the classroom setting. The boundaries and limits that the classroom sets are not only physical and organizational, but more crucially, emotional too. Hayden explains its importance:  “I find it easy to love people – anyone literally – if this person’s care is given to me. I find it easy to get up close and personal and to stay there until I get the job done. I find it easy to care in a very real way. But, and this is an important “but,” I also find it naturally easy to be objective at almost all times, to keep my personal needs out of the picture, to keep an eye on the timeframe, to know at all times where the boundaries are . . ..” (posted at http://www.torey-hayden.com on 09/01/01).

Embracing a pedagogic strategy and ethic of caring and loving requires the corresponding limits and boundaries that the discipline of a classroom provides for teaching effectiveness and student recovery. While intensely relational and caring in nature, Hayden’s teaching style is nevertheless clearly objective. Emotional boundaries are seldom, if ever, crossed. Her one purpose is the recovery and healing of the child. Her success at drawing out these children, in “enticing” them to come out of their emotionally bat-ridden caves and rejoin the world in living and loving, is testimony to these two teaching necessities of adult caring and objectivity. So much of her lore deals with the teacher’s compassionate persistence, and the broken child’s eroding resistance to the siren call to be human, and therefore, alive.    

• One Child (1980)
  
• Somebody Else’s Kids (1981)
  
• Murphy’s Boy (1983), also titled Silent Boy
  
• The Sunflower Forest (fiction, 1984)
  
• Just Another Kid (1988)
  
• Ghost Girl (1991)
  
• The Tiger’s Child (1995) [sequel to One Child]
  
• The Mechanical Cat (fiction, 1999)
  
• Beautiful Child (2002)
  
• The Very Worst Thing (fiction, 2003)
  
• Twilight Children (2005)
  

Much of what passes as teaching today is, unfortunately, mere mechanical drudgery. Idealism in young inservice teachers is quickly extinguished by the harsh realities of the classroom setting and the ugly indifference of many a staffroom. Yet there has never been such a great need as now for steady, persistent adult teachers to stick to the task of teaching and forming young lives, disabled or otherwise, especially with numerous opportunities locally for rewarding work elsewhere than the frustrating classroom.