Discipleship

Tonight I will simply quote a few excerpts from The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard, which I am still reading (and enjoying!). These are from chapter 8, On Being a Student, or Disciple, of Jesus.

It is with this entire context [all of our life in apprenticeship to Jesus] that we most richly and accurately speak of "learning from him how to lead my life as he would lead my life if he were I." (p285)

Once you stop to think about it, you can see that not to find your job to be a primary place of discipleship is to automatically exclude a major part, if not most, of your waking hours from life with him. (p285)
And to repeat the crucial point, if we restrict our discipleship to special religious times, the majority of our waking hours will be isolated from the manifest presence of the kingdom in our lives. (287)

Eternity is not something waiting to happen, something that will commence later. It is now here. Time runs its course within eternity. (288)

Practically speaking...

... practical, experimental steps seem to be lacking... [discipleship] remains only a distant, if beautiful, ideal. (291)
... what exactly would one do who didn't intend to go into "full-time Christian service" but still wanted to be a disciple...?

"Clarity about the bargain" - to paraphrase: we "count the cost" and realize that we have found an incredible bargain in this kingdom! (293)

"What we should do":
"Ask "

The rule of the kingdom is to ask (295)

"Dwell, reside, in His Words"

He always sees clearly what is at issue. We rarely do (297)

"Now Decide: The power of Decision and Intention"

Here Willard quotes William Law:
"It was this general intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety... And if you will here stop and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it."

Morning in an Abbey

Today I attended mass at the Abbey of the Genesee. The life of the Cistercian, or Trappist, monks intrigues me and causes me to reflect on the nature of the church and individual callings.

I spent some time on their website, trying to understand a bit about them. They are a "a monastic institute wholly ordered to contemplation". To this end they devote themselves to silence, solitude, prayer, etc. Entry into the community is note something to be taken lightly, and the process takes years. Near the end of a description of this process, the site notes that

The primary responsibility of the newly professed monk is to love with all his heart. The vows presuppose this love and express it exteriorly by incorporating him into a state of life which has no other reason for existence than the love of Christ and all that implies.

This is in many ways an attractive way of life to those who strive daily to turn all the loves of our heart toward Christ, amidst the noisy and busy world of ordinary life.

Yet... I am still left with some questions, which I will note here before ending this brief post:

• What is the role of these communities within the church?
• All followers of Christ are his disciples in different ways. However, do those who choose such a specific vocation find themselves limited in the ways they can obey and imitate Christ? For example, how do they share the good news when they are so hidden from the world?
  
• Are there certain times in the cultural and historical climate for which this way of following Christ is more or less appropriate?