6th Semester, Week 11

This is one of my last blog posts, which is kind of surreal.  I cannot believe how my time at Loras has flown.  This blog post I am supposed to be reflecting on my practicum and the progress I have made with it.  For my practicum I have been mainly working with the Archdiocesan office of Adult Faith Formation.  I have been working with a woman named Mary Pedersen who is a recent hire.  I have been doing a menagerie of things for her.  One of the first things I did was do research regarding adult faith sharing, learning, and discipleship models.  While I did not think I would like to do mainly research, I actually found it fascinating and it opened my eyes to how complicated adult faith formation is.  When I say complicated I mean that there are so many factors that go into how a successful adult formation program is built.

 The next project I worked on was helping both the Archdiocese and Loras College restructure the lay formation program.  I was asked to research dioceses in the United States that were similar in size, demographics, majority rural areas, and Hispanic presence.  Then, after identifying similar diocese’s I was asked to take a close look at each of their lay formation programs and interview the person in charge of their program to understand how they built their program.  The dioceses that I ended up interviewing were Davenport, Lacrosse, and Winona.  After I did that I was asked to write up a proposal for possible curriculum changes in the program for the Archdiocese of Dubuque’s lay formation program. 

  The next and last large thing that I have been asked to work on is helping the Loras College Religious Studies department do research regarding wants and needs of parish leaders in the Dubuque area regarding continuing education and lay formation.  This project is still in progress, but we have our first interview group finalized for the second week of January and I have also just submitted a proposal for interview questions. 

 If you couldn’t tell already, my practicum is not on schedule.  Due to no fault of my own (verified by Dr. Waldmeir), I do not have enough hours to be able to complete my practicum for the end of the semester, so Dr. Waldmeir has kindly agreed to give me an incomplete and I will finish the practicum over J-term.  I will also do most of my writing of the portfolio over Christmas break and J-term.

 In regards to the topics that I plan to discuss when I present my capstone to the religious studies staff and students, I will probably talk about how I have learned through research and experience that adult faith formation is essential to help the whole Church flourish and how it is much more complicated than I first thought it was.  I also was planning on talking about my research work regarding the lay formation program in the Archdiocese.

Second Semester After Declaring Major. Week 6

I am ending my second semester as a religious studies major and and wrapping up a religious studies elective class called Religion and Consumer Culture.  Although this class is not listed in the three categories below, it would fit under Group Three.  This group talks about being able to use theology to interpret beliefs and practices- religious or more broadly cultural- within the contemporary world.  

In this class, we looked at different aspects that make up a religion and by comparing these to aspects of consumerism, we looked at the possibility of it actually being considered a religion.  In order to do this, we specifically looked at  consumerism through the eyes of Christians and Buddhists and some other ideologies such as Marx.  

By looking at consumerism through these different religions and ideologies, I was able to get a better understanding of how consumerism not only has beliefs and practices that is enforces, but it also can be compared and contrasted to the beliefs and practices of religions.  For example, consumerism tries to get consumers to believe that through the consumption of goods, all of their desires can be fulfilled.  When we compared this to the beliefs of Christians, we saw that Christians' beliefs would contrast this and say that consumerism can only fulfill some desires and when it does, they are short term.  Christians say that God has put a desire in everyone to know, love and serve Him and this desire cannot be fulfilled by material possessions regardless of what consumerism tries to convince us of; only he can fulfill this desire. 

Overall I thought this was a great class.  I learned a lot about religions through studying consumerism.  Maybe if consumerism was looked at in light of a few more religions other than Christianity and Buddhist, it would have given even more of a clear picture of its religious aspects and how other religions view consumerism.

Semester 2

This blog will look at the World Religions January Term class and how the various texts of the class were evaluated for religious and theological values according to both written and oral communication skills. One aspect that I really like about World Religions was that the "texts" of the class were not limited to actual written documents, although we did look at some of those, but included a wide variety of other medium. For instance, we analyzed the Matisyahu song "Jerusalem" for a paper and listened to other audio recordings,  we visited numerous religious sites and wrote blogs combing what we had seen with what we had read and  reflecting on the experience,  and we discussed each religion with an active, practicing member of that religion, again reflecting on it in our blogs. The variety of medium that we were able to use to learn about each religion really enhanced the class and broadened our learning beyond just reading analyzing words on a page.

This is not to downplay the importance and value of reading and analyzing written religious texts because I found that to be a very valuable part of the class as well, but to stress how much the variety added to the course. In fact I wish that we had been able to read and have a day to discuss each religion before visiting the religious site because this would have helped me to come in with more informed questions and a fuller background of the religious tradition we would be visiting. This was not always possible however due to scheduling and weather constraints.

Written competency was shown most heavily through the blogs I wrote reflecting on each of the sites we had visited. I think this was a good choice of medium because we were able to use pictures to add a visual component to our reflections and share our experiences with others in the class. Written competency was also shown through papers, such as the one on Matisyahu's song mentioned earlier and through our final project. Oral competency was shown mainly through the final presentation that we gave at a nearby nursing home. For the presentation we were split up into groups of three and had to put together an oral presentation, a poster, and an experiential component. For instance my project was on Zen Buddhism and my group and I prepared a presentation about how the Japanese Tea Ceremony reflected beliefs of Zen Buddhism complete with an abbreviated reenactment of the Tea Ceremony and green tea for guests to try. I also liked that instead of presenting our projects to just our classmates, we were able to go out into the Dubuque community and present them at a nursing home there to people who hadn't had three weeks of background in world religions.

I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to take World Religions as a January Term course and for the wide variety of forms of "texts" from written to audio to visiting actual religious sites that I was able to use to evaluate the equally wide range of religious and theological values I learned about.

Semester 4 Week 6

          In the fall of 2011 (last semester) I took REL 320 which is the Sacraments class.  This class was very essential in helping me achieve these objectives of accessing, gathering, organizing, and using information from different sources.  In this class we learned how the Sacraments have changed from before the Second Vatican Council and how they are now and the communal function they serve.  The basis of the class was the students had to write a term paper that had the students doing different writing processes throughout the semester.  The basis of the paper was to focus on one or a few of the Sacraments and discuss how there was a communal aspect to them.  So for example my thesis was: “This symbolization of the sacrament (marriage) emphasizes a communal aspect that is essential for the health of the marriage and the community that surrounds it.  This communal aspect is shown in Christ’s command for us to love our neighbor, the Holy Trinity and the relationship between the three Divine Persons, and procreation which is one of two goods of marriage.”

          This paper had to be around at least 12 pages long.  To achieve this length and to support my thesis I had to be able to do all of those objectives listed above.  The final draft of my paper had 13 sources in the bibliography, but I looked at many more than that for the research of my paper.  To start off we had to do an annotated bibliography at some of the sources we first looked at.  While I personally do not enjoy doing annotated bibliographies because they are tedious and take forever, it was very helpful because it helped me narrow down what types of books and articles to look at more in depth.  Besides all the different drafts of bibliographies we had to do, we also had to make a chart on how all of our evidence connected using a concept map tool.  This was one of the most helpful things we did to organize all of our ideas and small tidbits of information we had gotten from many different sources.  It showed me how in some places my ideas and evidence were very well connected and then how in other places I needed more evidence to make a good connection.

          As I said before my final draft of my paper had 13 sources.  I used the most variety of sources I have ever used before in a paper.  I used papal encyclicals, journal articles, books, textbooks used for some of my other classes, the Catholic Rites book, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  The variety of sources, while time consuming to read through, really made my paper dynamic and gave a plethora of viewpoints and connections.

          Something that I think could have been changed to make the class more effective in reaching the objective that majors can access, gather, organize and use information from important primary and credible secondary sources is the peer review process.  In every step of our paper we were peer reviewed and I did not find this very helpful especially for the portions about the sources we were using.  While I like the idea of a peer review, most of the reviews given to me were very generic and there was not a lot of effort or insight put into them.  I know the professor does not have the time to go through each step of the process and grade students on their different steps, but I think there has to be some way to make students do better a better job at peer reviewing.

                  

First Semester After Declaring Major (By Week 11)

I feel like the most educational and rewarding class I have taken in my time at Loras so far would have to be World Religions with Dr. Waldmeir. Now, I could say that it was the amazing people in my class that did it, but it was a lot more than that. I did not really know a lot about many other religions besides Catholicism before taking the class. Yes, I knew all of the obvious stereotypes about the different faith traditions, but that did not mean anything to me. Throughout the entire course I was able to read and discuss different faith traditions, and then after the class was done reading and discussing we actually got to go to the worship spaces of these faith traditions and get hands-on experience about what the tradition is really about. These fieldtrips are where I learned the most during the course. It not only gave me a deeper understanding of the faith tradition but a greater reverence and respect for them as well.

Even though I was learning about other faith traditions during this course, I was able to also come to a greater understanding of my own faith. I was able to learn more about who God is, not only to me but to everyone else around me. I was able to see God in a bigger sense because I was able to take Him out of this “Catholic box” that I have had Him in all of my life. I was able to see God more fully as the God of the universe and the God of ALL peoples around the world. Of course, I still hold my Catholic faith at highest regard, and I know that the Catholic faith is the truest form of worship of God on earth. However, I was able to see that God shows Himself differently to different people in the world. I was even able to see God when we studied the Hindu tradition which has over 300 gods. You see, the Hindus have a belief that there is an overseeing force in the universe that keeps everything together called Braman. This Braman is how the Hindus explain God, and all the other 300 gods are the different attributes and characteristics that our God has. After taking the World Religions J-Term I am able to understand, not only the other traditions that we studied, but God Himself in a greater light.

I do not know if there are a lot of things that need changing about the course. I would say that maybe there should be a bit more structure in the way the fieldtrips are planned out so that we are visiting a place that we are studying at the time we go on them. I think we only had that problem once throughout the course, however. I would also think it would be a good idea to try and fit in another faith tradition to study or alternate which ones are studied throughout the years in order to add some more variety.

My first post!

I'm creating this blog for my religious studies major. I am rather late on creating this blog. Technically it was supposed to be put together in October. Better late than never, right? Right.

Alright, now for my assigned questions:

What do you expect or hope to learn as a Religious Studies major?

I expect to learn about more about my faith. I hope to learn more about people and how to teach them about faith. I really want to be able to bring people closer to Christ through my work in the world.

Where do these expectations come from?

I suppose these expectations come from the whole reason I’m majoring in Religious studies. I want to share my faith with others and bring them closer to Christ. I’m not really sure where that desire came from. When I was in high school I would go to Youth Days and other events. I was blessed to be in a group where the cool thing was to be Catholic. My family is also very Catholic. I guess I can’t imagine life without my faith.

During my first semester at Loras College I took the class Intro to Theology and Religious taught by Dr. Osheim. I loved it, especially the journaling. I already keep a journal, but having to write journal entries about what I was learning in class really helped me connect my life with the themes and ideas I was learning in class. I was really amazing how much I saw my life connect with what I was learning. The second class I took was Bible and Literature taught by Dr. Waldmeir. I also really enjoy that class because it connected the Bible, which I’ve read and heard all it life, with real life situations. Finally, the most recent class I have taken is Catholic Social Teaching with Dr. Shadle. I learned a lot of the recent issues during the Church.

Perhaps one the best aspects I’ve learned so far in this religious studies major is how my life connects with the Church and its teachings. The Catholic faith is so deep and full of beauty. In the future, I hope throughout the rest of my years at Loras I can learn how to show others the beauty I have been blessed to see.

Alright, so that pretty much all I can think of saying at the moment. God bless!