Preparing for Class Presentation
Now that you are plunging into the reading and thinking about your spiritual classics, keep the course themes in mind as you read and discuss (posted below, with questions highlighting some themes). Each group will be responsible for providing me as an e-mail attachment a one-page overview of the main points your group is making in your presentation, to be posted here on the blog. (This is a single page, giving a paragraph of background and then listing your main points as bullet points - one per group, not one per person.)
Presentations (and one-page overviews) should do the following:
-- Say something about the writer, and the historical context for the writer (primarily the writer's place in the history of the religion represented, with some attention to broader history).
-- Also, where the writer is describing someone else (the Desert Fathers, St. Francis), place those people in the historic context.
-- Describe the book briefly - format, main content, the author's purpose.
-- Then for the bulk of your presentation, link the book to important course themes as well as to the writing and thoughts of authors already encountered in the course.
Here are the themes (choose only the ones that are most strikingly evident in the book and the life or lives represented in the book):
naming and discerning the divine
transcendence and immanence
nature and the sacred
false self and authentic self
individual and community
ritual and practice
ethical and social concerns
gender in religious language, experience
metaphor, symbol, and myth
race/ethnicity and class shaping religion
spiritual path or progress on the journey
Pay particular attention to the following three questions that highlight important themes.
1. What helpful information does this text give in regard to the stages, attitudes, techniques, and goals for the reader’s progress on the spiritual path?
2. Ethical concerns: what does this text suggest regarding the relationship between ethical behavior and spiritual progress?
3. What is the nature of the divine in this text, and how do we encounter the divine? (Transcendence and immanence may play a role here.)
Beyond these, look for any of the other themes that show up – some texts will have material related to gender, some to nature.