The Life of Prayer

Instructor: Rev. Dr. Cathie Kelsey, ckelsey@iliff.edu or text 303-968-9812 office hours M-F 9-4:30 mtn

This course will have you study the life of prayer as if it were a river, studying it by getting in and swimming, by experiencing it with many senses, giving yourself over to it. Only then, but surely then, it will have you reflecting theoretically and practically on what you have experienced. The course will work with a broad definition of "prayer" that attends to receptivity and engagement as the foundation upon which words might later be laid.

The Life of Prayer is organized very consistently.

Every Monday there is an assignment that has two tasks:

1. the reading for the week. I think this will take you about 2 hours to read and start to inwardly digest each week

2. the daily practice prompt for the week. The daily practice is 20 minutes per day, 6 days a week = 2 hours each week.

Two things are due to be posted by Friday every week:

3. posting to the discussion thread for the week. I think this will take you 30 minutes, including returning to respond to your colleagues by Sunday.

4. posting to your Weekly cumulative journal for the week. I think this will take you 30 minutes, after you have done the reading and several days of the daily practice.

The Final project - a teaching video is due the last day of class, August 19th. I think it will take you 2 to 3 hours to create. In the final week, when this is due, there is no new reading so that you have time to create your video.

Thus, I think this course will require 5 hours of your time each week for the 10 weeks.

Graded items are: 1. weekly posting to the discussion thread (100 pts); 2. weekly posting in your cumulative journal (100 pts); and 3. the final project teaching video (50 pts). 

Obviously, I think your reflections on your daily practices and on the reading will show up in the weekly posting and weekly journal entries.

Questions or comments? Be in touch!  ckelsey@iliff.edu or text me at 303-968-9812.  Cathie

Course Objectives/ Learning Goals

1. You will demonstrate attentiveness to how you engage your prayer life. I will grade this by noting your curiosity and reflective-ness about what you experience as it is expressed in your personal journal and in your "pearl of insight" contributions each week.

2. You will teach others the prayer practice that you use in weeks 7-10 to others in the video due in week 10. 

3. You will reflect theologically on your experience of prayer. This includes noticing what God must be like if God engages you in the ways you have experienced, and also what must be true about you as a human being in the relationship and as a part of the world. The Holmes readings will both help and challenge you in this task. Your reflections will show up in your journal.

4. You will be attentive to learning from the experience of others and you will learn how to express attentiveness, curiosity, and encouragement for the prayer life of others.

I do not feel qualified to "grade" your prayer. So I'm not going to--even though half of your time investment in this course will be given to actually praying 20 minutes 6 days a week for the 10 weeks.

I am able to grade the following:

1. You will demonstrate attentiveness to how you engage your prayer life. I will grade this by noting your curiosity and reflective-ness about what you experience as it is expressed in your personal journal and in your "pearl of insight" contributions each week.

2. You will teach others the prayer practice that you use in weeks 7-10 to others in the video due in week 10. 

3. You will reflect theologically on your experience of prayer. This includes noticing what God must be like if God engages you in the ways you have experienced, and also what must be true about you as a human being in the relationship and as a part of the world. The Holmes readings will both help and challenge you in this task. Your reflections will show up in your journal.

4. You will be attentive to learning from the experience of others and you will learn how to express attentiveness, curiosity, and encouragement for the prayer life of others.

Notice that those four items are also learning goals for the course.

Finally, please note that I will NOT be using the convention of certain percentages equal a certain grade (such as 90% and above is an A, 80% and above is a B, etc.).  I will use the accumulated points to see how students cluster and then I will assign grades by cluster.  I'm sorry that this does not allow you to know precisely where you stand at any given point in the term.  You might try considering this unknowing a spiritual practice. As in, "I know I'm putting in the work/prayer time, but I can't tell at the moment where that is taking me or how to evaluate myself. I guess I am being asked to trust the One who walks with me on this path."

Here are basic rubrics I expect to use in grading this term.:

Weekly postings:  out of 10 points, 9 points awarded for doing the required number of posts on time with basic attention to your colleagues in your responses. Tenth point awarded for really attentive, insightful responses to more than the minimum number of colleagues.  At least one point deducted for late posting.

Teaching a practice video: out of 50 points, 45 points awarded for meeting the expectations of the assignment, regardless of how sophisticated (or not) the technical aspects are. I will stop watching at 8:00 minutes.   There is real value in learning to be succinct! If you have more to say, you might describe in your word-post what a series of videos would contain and then make the video you submit be one of the series. Points deducted if the viewer doesn't know how to get started with the practice after having watched the video. Points added for welcome, insight, great use of technology or eliciting the thought "I should try that."

Cumulative journal entries:  out of 100 points, 90 points awarded for meeting the expectations of the assignment. Additional points awarded for courage, persistence, insight, connections to theological ideas, several "ah-ha!" moments.   Fewer points awarded for simply reporting what happened without pondering its meaning.  Missing entries deducted 10 pts per week.

The whole course on one page This is a chart that week by week shows all the assignments, readings, postings, and how much time I think you will spend on each.  The course is designed to use 5 hours each week for everything.

Books required:

Barbara A. Holmes, Race and the Cosmos, Second Edition , CAC Publishing, 2020. ISBN 978-1-62305-050-4

Jane E. Vennard, Fully Awake and Truly Alive: Spiritual Practices to Nurture Your Soul , Skylight Paths Publishing, 2013. ISBN 978-1-59473-473-1