The Life of Prayer

Here's a quick video with the theory of prayer on which this course is built. Watch it. The rest of the course will make more sense to you. This isn't a typical "in your head" Iliff course.

The assignments for the first two weeks are practices taken from The Way of Discernment : Spiritual Practices for Decision Making by Elizabeth Liebert (Westminster John Knox, 2008).  You might want to read more of the book than we will be posting in Canvas, but it is not required.

The course can be taken either for a grade or pass/fail. Please email Cathie if you want to take it pass/fail ckelsey@iliff.edu Expect to spend 3 1/2 hours per week praying and an additional hour per week on the other assignments for the course.

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.

Neither Cathie nor Anthony feel qualified to "grade" your prayer. So we're not going to--even though most of your time investment in this course will be given to actually praying 30 minutes daily for the 10 weeks.

We are able to grade the following:

1. You will demonstrate attentiveness to how you engage your prayer life. We 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 3-10 to others in the video due in week 8. There is both history to each set of practices and there is your experience with the surprises and pitfalls of practice that can be used to help others find and grow in their own prayer relationship with God.

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. This is a primary task of the final reflection, but you will help yourself write this reflection through your writing in your personal journal.

4. You will be attentive to learning from the experience of others in your small groups 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 Cathie and Anthony 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.).  We will use the accumulated points to see how students cluster and then we 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."

Added June 10, 2017:

Here are basic rubrics used in grading this term. They emerged as Cathie and Anthony did the actual grading; our apologies for not being able to post them in advance in this first offering of the course. They are offered here so you might interpret what we did and so that we can provide them in advance the next time the course is offered.

Weekly postings:  out of 5 points, 4 points awarded for doing the required number of posts on time with basic attention to your colleagues in your responses. Fifth point awarded for really attentive, insightful responses to more than the minimum number of colleagues.  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. We have learned to stop watching at 10:00 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.

Cumulative journal entries:  out of 50 points, 45 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 5 pts per week.

Final reflection paper: out of 50 points, 45 points awarded for meeting the expectations of the assignment, in particular for noticing how your experience in prayer this term informs thinking about the nature of God and the inclinations or nature of human beings. This assignment requires stepping back and doing that kind of second order thinking. Fewer points awarded for simply summarizing  what you experienced and what you learned about prayer. Our experience in prayer can become the building blocks for our theologies. This assignment asks you to makes steps in that direction.

Life of Prayer planning grid Spring 2017.pdf This shows you the complete workload plan for the term - though it does not specify the readings. Those will be found in the assignments themselves when they are ready to post. (These readings are still in process on 3-24-2017)