IST1000-2-WI14 - Vocation and Orientation

Instructor: Vince Tango vtango@iliff.edu 303-765-3106  Office Hours: By appointment

The topic of our quarter together is the ongoing process of vocational discernment, with particular attention to how vocational journeys intersect with the experience of formal theological education. The texts for this course will weekly articles, the lives of the students and instructor, the lives of the mentors you choose as living conversation partners, and historical partners accessed through autobiography or oral history.

Through our work together over the quarter in a small group setting, we will attend to the following four purposes (Here are the

Degree Learning Goals Supported by this Class

MDiv

• Demonstrate personal and professional self-awareness and emerging competency in characteristic practices of religious leadership
• Describe strategies for their continued spiritual development and self-care
• Demonstrate an awareness of the importance of social location (race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability/disability, etc.) for self-understanding and professional practice
• Establish an effective presence as a leader in the vocational context to which they feel called, and demonstrate adequate self-awareness of their characteristic styles of interaction, commitments, strengths and limitations as they move into new contexts
• To clearly interpret one's beliefs and behavior to the community one serves

MAPSC

• Students will identify and critically evaluate the ways in which their personal, religious, and cultural experience, along with their activities in pastoral and spiritual care, shape their theology, moral orientation, and vocational formation.
• Students will learn an engaged or clinical approach to spiritual care that will help them identify and work with the differences between their own religious/spiritual worlds and the spiritual/religious worlds of those receiving care.

1. Providing a small group “sacred space” where students can come to know one another, including their different faith understandings and traditions, at a deeper level than is usually experienced in their other courses. Sacred space has the expectation of honesty, transformation, and healing. It may sometimes be uncomfortable, much as athletic training can be challenging in a way that does not harm, but yields greater strength and skill.
2. Introducing new students to Iliff, and assisting them in understanding and adjusting to the framework and characteristics of theological education, which are somewhat different from those in other kinds of educational programs students may have experienced in the past. Students will be invited into agency about their negotiation of these experiences throughout their time at Iliff.
3. Assisting students to reflect theologically on their personal and professional identity, and their ongoing vocational discernment. Focus will move back and forth between who we are as unique individuals and the needs of institutional contexts for particular kinds of leaders.
4. Beginning the development of personal and professional skills required to work effectively across difference in North American multicultural society.

Course Texts

1. Students in this course are required to choose one autobiography, spiritual memoir, or oral history of a person who has chronicled their vocational journey over a significant portion of their life. You might choose this person, (your “historical partner,” ) because you have admired them, because you know little about them and want to know more, or because their life shares important commitments or identity features with your own. Mostly, it should be someone you are willing to spend ten weeks getting to know better. The Veterans of Hope Project (housed at Iliff) has many oral histories recorded that you can use for this element of the course. Or, you can read a published autobiography or spiritual memoir of a person from whom you hope to learn. 

2. There will be common readings (articles or book chapters) posted on Canvas for each week of the course. See syllabus or modules for the readings. 

Course Requirements and Grades

• This course is graded pass/fail (P/F)
• Assignments are graded with points
• Students pass the course with a minimum of 77%. (C+)

1. Participation:  This class depends on the participation of students in order to provide a learning community for one another.  Because participation is so central to the learning experience, regular, timely participation in the online and class activities is essential to pass the course. Students will engage in weekly online journaling in which they put their own experiences in conversation with their historical or living partners around the themes.  A passing grade requires that students regularly post the required assignments and respond to their classmates in a timely fashion. Posting later than the posted deadlines inhibits conversation among the small groups and the learning of your classmates.   Missing more than one weekly posting assignment or more than one face to face session may be grounds for failure of the class. Please be diligent in order to enable your own and your classmates’ learning. (54% of grade).

• Collaborative and appropriate presence in the classroom and in online discussions
• Reflection Journals posted in a timely fashion
• Evidence that reading was regularly completed through participation in discussions
• Attendance was regular and timely
• Evidence that spiritual practice engaged throughout the quarter
• Attendance

See rubric for participation grade for more information.

2. Reflection Journals: There are eight reflection journal entries, 3-4 paragraphs each, due weeks 2-9 of the course.  These draw on your interactions with your historical partner and your mentor interviews and become one of the texts for the course for your instructor and classmates. Reflection Journal Guidelines. (50% of grade)

3. Final Project: The final project is an image, song, poem, or other representation of your vocational journey.  See Final Project for more information. 10% of grade)

Your “mentor,” is a living person with whom you have a relationship and who is willing to have three to five in-depth conversations with you over the next few months. This should be a person who has sustained a sense of vocation and integrity in their work over time and who is someone that you respect and hope to learn from. They don’t have to be older than you, nor do they have to be in a professional position that you hope to attain. Rather, they are a mentor to you in that they seem to live their life with purpose, commitment, balance and other things you value.

Once you have identified a prospective mentor, contact them and see if they are willing to have three to five, hour-long conversations with you in which you will talk about their formative years, their calling into their life’s work, moments of struggle and contradiction, endings and shifts in their vocational journey, and how they have sustained themselves. These conversations would be best in person, but can also happen by phone or Skype if you are unable to be in the same place. You will want to let them know that you will keep their name and identifying details confidential (your instructor will know them), but that you will need to share the wisdom they have given you with your classmates and professor in a password protected online conversation. If they are willing to work with you, schedule your first conversation.

Your instructor is the only person in the class who will know who your mentor is. Click "Submit Assignment" on the right. 

Spiritual Memoirs and Autobiographies (available at libraries and online retailers). Choose one. 

Oral History/Memoirs available in library and for purchase from www.veteransofhope.org

• Bernice Johnson Reagon, James Lawson, Ruby Sales, G. Zoharah Simmons, Andrew Young, Dolores Huerta, Anne Braden, Charles H. Long, John Biggers, Vine Deloria, Tom Feelings, Sonia Sanchez

Spiritual Practice

As you move into the busy-ness of graduate theological education, you may discover that you may lose connection with the deep currents of being that brought you into this study. Part of staying connected with one’s sense of vocation is taking time to listen for the deepest meanings and broadest visions that fund our work.  One way to do this is by maintaining a spiritual practice that helps us to keep our focus, maintain our center, and stay grounded in what really matters.

A requirement of this course is to commit to a regular spiritual practice that helps you stay attuned to your own sense of calling and direction.  Because the practices that are life-giving vary from person to person, you have the freedom to choose a spiritual practice that resonates with your spirit. This may be a traditional spiritual practice from a specific religious tradition, such as lectio divina or Zen meditation. Or it may be a less-traditional practice that you understand helps you to stay in touch with what is the most important reality for you, such as keeping a journal, reading the poetry of Mary Oliver or the essays of Wendell Berry, engaging an art form such as playing the piano or sketching, meeting with a spiritual director, listening with full attention to music that inspires you, or walking in silence each morning. Below there are brief introductions to several practices, and you are invited to try one of them on for size if you don’t have a spiritual practice already in place that works for you.

Examples

You have the freedom to choose what spiritual practice you will engage, but please engage it with discipline, focused attention, and regularity (for an hour or so once a week, or for 10 minutes daily). I know this is difficult to maintain in the midst of everything else, but part of living into your vocation is engaging in practices of listening and self-care that help sustain you in the midst of the busy-ness of daily life.

The following are examples. You may choose from this list or chose your own. Click here to submit your choice of spiritual practice.

1. Morning journalling practice, from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way:

Morning Pages.docx 

2. Ignatian Examen (an historic Christian daily prayer practice)

examen-pdf.pdf

3. Lectio Divina (a prayerful practice of Biblical reading):

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Catholic/2000/08/How-To-Practice-Lectio-Divina.aspx

4. Guided Meditation (Tara Brach)

http://www.tarabrach.com/audioarchives-guided-meditations.html

5. Yoga

6. Prayer with sacred texts

7. Centering Prayer (Fr.Thomas Keating explaining)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IKpFHfNdnE

Reflection Journal Guidelines

• Several layers of editing generally occur between a good journal entry and the stream of consciousness that marks the beginning of thought process on a topic.
• Your instructors and classmates will be reading your reflection journals, so you are writing for an audience rather than as a personal journal. Be sure to re-read your entries a few times before posting them to be sure that they are relevant and readable.
• Because of the need for editing and potential posting problems, it is always a good idea to compose your reflection journal in a Word file or other document and save it to your own computer as you create it, and then to cut and paste it into the discussion forum for your journal. This allows you to have a copy of the journal should something happen in the process of posting it.
• Good reflection journals are lively and engaging, concise, on topic.
• 3-4 paragraphs in length. Word count 700-1000 words

Self- Disclosure in Professional Contexts

This class does not call for absolute vulnerability in self-disclosure, but rather thoughtful engagement with your own experiences as a source of learning material. The value of reflecting on your own experience is that such narratives are more likely to become a resource rather than a roadblock in your professional life. Another value is that you may learn ways to talk about formative experiences as you might in ordination or certification processes, sermons, teaching sessions, care conversations, and other professional occurrences. The disadvantage of writing about your own experiences is that you will likely need to be able to process psychologically and spiritually the memories and feelings that come from writing and talking about your own experiences.

You will not receive a better grade just because you have disclosed more information or deeper feelings than your classmates. We invite you to be thoughtful about how your personal disclosure and disclosure of the experiences of your living mentors contributes to the learning of the class. Alternatives to this would be disclosures for the sake of self-healing, attention-seeking, entertainment, or gossip. While there may be places and times for extended personal storytelling in these modes, for the purposes of this class we are not generally engaged in this kind of sharing of personal narratives. Each person is responsible for his or her level of self-disclosure. There will be no pressure to disclose more or less, either in online journals or with class colleagues in person.

Confidentiality

Personal disclosures and conversations occurring in online discussions and class conversation are not to be discussed outside of the community of learners in your section without agreement and permission of the involved parties. This is professional rather than absolute confidentiality: limits to this confidentiality include Colorado reporting laws and practices with regards to disclosure of abuse or potential harm to self or others. Due to the personal nature of some of the topics of this course, there may be times when you need to seek consultation outside of class to address emotions and reactions that have been generated in you by the experience. You, of course, have the right to seek the support of your informal circles of relationship and trust in processing issues and ideas that arise in the class that have been challenging to you. However, in doing so you cannot report what has been said by other people in the class to persons outside of the class. These conversations should be limited to discussions of your reactions and emotions to the conversation, unless you are discussing the incident in a professional consultative conversation where the practices of confidentiality are legally held (i.e. therapist, physician).

In this particular class it is especially important to treat the stories of living mentors with great respect and to offer them as much confidentiality as possible. Good practice requires that you change the name and identifying details of your mentor when talking about them in your reflection journal, unless you have been given express permission to share their stories with the group. Because professional and denominational circles can be quite small, holding these stories with confidentiality can be of special importance given that members of your group may one day be in professional relationship with the mentor you have selected.

Feelings and Emotions

Given the emotional content of reflecting on formative experiences, there may be moments when we react strongly to each other. When this happens we need to first do an internal check-in with ourselves to process our reactions, before we post our responses. Next, we need to judge whether a response would enhance group learning, or whether it is solely for the purpose of processing our own feelings. If the former is the case, we need to respond with an “I” statement that identifies our feelings, not a “you” statement, particularly one that implies a global assessment of the other person. This internal processing is especially important in blogging responses to each other in an online format because responses are more likely to come across as critical when we can’t communicate compassion through our body language or tone of voice.

Language Framework

Please use inclusive language in your writing for this class. Inclusive language attempts to respect all forms of sexual, gender, and sexual orientation diversity and to avoid terms that have been used to diminish the humanity of oppressed persons. Using inclusive language is a learning process for many students, and we will work together to move toward greater inclusivity and respect in our language.

Degree Learning Goals

Quotes and Images

“I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.” God knew you, as he knew Jeremiah, long before you were born or even conceived. He thought about you and planned for you. When you feel discouraged or inadequate, remember that God has always thought of you as valuable and that he has a purpose in mind for you. JER1.5.NLT.