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ANNOUNCEMENTS
“The Death of St. Jerome”
The Belles Heures of John, Duke of Berry
|
WELCOME
to CHRISTIAN
ASCETICISM!
THIS
is the
Announcements
page. It will be the first thing you see each time you log on to
this webcourse. The other sections of the
course may be accessed through the navigation bar to the left, (the panel with the
praying lady at the top). If you click any of the blue-colored links on the
navigation panel, this central panel will be replaced by the section of the
course you have chosen. You may always return to this original configuration by
clicking on the red course title in the center of the banner (the panel at the
top of this page). You will not need to use the grey links on the banner: they
will take you places you do not need to go.
WHEN
you have finished reading this introductory material you should go to the
Lectures and Assignments section, where you
will find five tasks awaiting you (and please forgive me if this sounds like
some sort of medieval quest!). In that section you will find each
week's work listed under the date of the Sunday that begins each of the fifteen
weeks of our course. The first week's work consists of:
A) Making sure you can play audio-lectures;
B) Reviewing the Course Syllabus;
C) Introducing yourself in the
Introductory Discussion Forum
D) Reading the texts and listening to the first four
audio-lectures for Section One of the course.
E) Answering questions and sharing
reflections in Discussion Forum One.
THE
question was recently raised when papers (/research projects) are
due. The last week of classes begins May 3; and I believe I have to submit
grades by the following week. So I would be grateful if you could have
your projects in to me by May 11 at the latest. Remember, if you elect to
do a PowerPoint or WebPage based presentation, I need the narrative that
accompanies it, either written out as text, or recorded. Feel free to
submit the voice recording by e-mail as a .wma or .mp3 file. Or, the
spoken text may be included within the presentation, if you are comfortable
doing that. Please let me know if you have any questions,
April
24, 2007
AND
WELCOME
to our final week! This week we will look - all to
superficially - at the intertwined vices of vainglory and pride, concluding with
a glance at St. Benedict, (which should surprise no one given the persuasions of
both the institution and the professor).
INEVITABLY
the question of extensions for papers arises about this time. I am willing
to grant extensions; but I need an explanation and a firm and realistic date by
which the paper will be in. If the paper is not submitted by at least a
week before the date by which I am required to submit grades, then I am required
by the academic office to submit an incomplete, which can be changed when the
paper has been graded. Please let me know if you have any questions.
April
24, 2007
WELCOME
to our second-to-last week of class! This week our
discussion will be on acedia and holy zeal; and next week's discussion of
vainglory and pride will, sadly, be our last. I have very much enjoyed
reading all your postings: please keep up the excellent work.
April
11, 2007
WELCOME
back! I hope you all had a restful and fruitful Holy Week.
We are up and running again, and I have opened our next discussion forum.
March
30, 2007
HAPPY
(almost) Palm Sunday to you all! Holy week will be a
holiday as far as this course is concerned. I won't be opening the next
discussion forum until after the Triduum; so have a wonderful rest.
March
13, 2007
SEVERAL
of you have asked when the paper is due. I will need
to have it in either printed or electronic (e-mail attachment) form - whichever
you prefer - by the last day of the course, May 4th.
YOU
may have noticed that the text for this week by Smaragdus on
fasting is not yet available. I must confess that including Smaragdus
among our course readings is something I have hoped for but not yet achieved.
It is not an essential piece of reading, but it is a bit fun, and interesting
from the monastic standpoint. Please regard it is optional if I am able to
sneak it in by the end of the week: until then, Cassian and Evagrius should
offer you plenty of scope for reading and reflection!
February
22, 2007
CONGRATULATIONS
to you all on your spirited discussion of apophatic and
kataphatic prayer in last week's discussion forum. We will continue to
discuss the need for balance between these poles in our section on
lectio divina that will begin
next week.
MANY
thanks to those who have shared with me their plans for papers
and presentations. I look forward to hearing from the rest soon.
February
7, 2007
IT
was suggested that some participants in our class would
appreciate printable "text-only" versions of the webpages we are studying.
I have prepared these for Weeks Four through Eight: they are available to
download or open in the Course Documents section of the course. Please note that
these do in any sense replace the webpages, and that they cannot be used
effectively with the lectures, since I often refer during lectures to the
colored bars and images on the webpages. Please let me know if you find
these "text-only" pages useful, or if you have any other comments or
suggestions.
A
QUESTION
has
been
raised
about the expected level of participation in the discussion forums. As you will
have noticed in the Syllabus, there is no midterm or final for this course: the
Discussion Forums take the place of exams. I presume everyone will respond (but
not necessarily restrict themselves) to the questions I pose at the beginning of
each forum. Whether your reflections on these questions takes the form of
an original posting or a response to another posting is up to you. Keep up the
good work!
February
2, 2007
ALL
seems to have gone well with the transition to the new site (see
the note below if you are not sure what that is about). I need to apologize in
advance for the amount of material we will need to work through next week.
Please note that in the discussion forum I do not expect you to respond to ALL
the questions: they are simply intended to help you formulate your response.
In general, this is the maximum number of lectures we will have during a week;
so if you survive this fourth week, you will survive anything!
I
HAVE
opened next week's discussion forum early for those who may wish to begin
working ahead. Again, please let me know if you are having any
difficulties.
February 1, 2007
WELCOME
to our third week of class! If you are reading this text you have
successfully found your way to the new location for our webcourse site.
Everything should look and work the same as it did in the former site.
Please let me know if you have problems of any kind (
ldysinger@stjohnsem.edu ) I won't
bore you with the technical reasons for this change; but if all goes well it
should not happen again.
IT
is not too early to begin thinking about subjects for your
research papers or (PowerPoint/Webpage-based) presentations for this course.
If you have any questions or if you have already decided on a topic, please let
me know. I am very much enjoying our discussion forums: keep up the good
work!
January 25, 2007
JUST
a gentle reminder that we are now well into the second week of
our class, and the lectures (§ 5-10) and
Second Discussion forum have been open and available since Sunday. I presume no
one is having any difficulty finding the appropriate lectures and texts: if so,
please let me know. Simply scroll down the page in
Lectures and Assignments to the appropriate
date and week number. I look forward to our discussion.
January 19, 2007
MANY
thanks to all of you who have both introduced yourselves and made
use of the First Discussion Forum in "Moodle". All seems to be
working well. I will generally tend to hold back a bit in terms of my own
participation in discussions so as not to push the discussion in one direction
only; but I will certainly jump in from time to time.
YOU
may have noticed that the
Lectures and Assignments section now
contains the lectures and texts for our first four weeks of work. Some
people like to work ahead; and you are more than welcome to do so.
However, I will not open the discussion forums until the beginning of the week
for which they are intended. Previous discussion forums will remain open
throughout the course and may be revisited anytime.
January 17, 2007
THE
discussion forums are ready for you to enjoy! We will be
using the SJU-CSB "Moodle" system for our forums. If you click on the
"MOODLE"
DISCUSSION link on the
navigation panel (dark blue, on the left, beneath the praying lady) you will be
taken to the "Moodle" login page, where you will be asked for your SJU-CSB user
name and password (the same ones you use to access e-mail minus "@csbsju.edu").
You will then be given a link (MONS
435 / SPIR 435: Christian Asceticism)
to the site where the forums are posted and awaiting your pleasure. Your browser
should open the Moodle discussion in a new window, which means that
this page should still be available when you
finish working in the discussion forums: there is also a link on that page that
will return you here.
ONE
or two final points: if the "MOODLE"
DISCUSSION link does not take
you to the right place, you probably need to press the "refresh" key on your
browser to update the links on these pages. Failing that, you can go
directly to the Moodle login using this address
https://moodle.csbsju.edu/login/index.php
. Please feel free to experiment wildly in the
Introductory Forum and get the feel of both responding to the comments of others
and posting your own "subjects" (sometimes called "threads"). Also, for
the adventurous there's a way of adding your own picture (or any identifying
picture you like) to replace the "smily face" in Moodle. You will need to
adjust your user profile: Patty Weishaar (PWEISHAAR@csbsju.edu)
can put you in touch with the IT department if you
need help with that or with any other aspect of using Moodle.
AND
please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have:
ldysinger@stjohnsem.edu .
WELCOME
to CHRISTIAN
ASCETICISM!
THIS
is the
Announcements
page. It will be the first thing you see each time you log on to
this webcourse. The other sections of the
course may be accessed through the navigation bar to the left, (the panel with the
praying lady at the top). If you click any of the blue-colored links on the
navigation panel, this central panel will be replaced by the section of the
course you have chosen. You may always return to this original configuration by
clicking on the red course title in the center of the banner (the panel at the
top of this page). You will not need to use the grey links on the banner: they
will take you places you do not need to go.
WHEN
you have finished reading this introductory material you should go to the
Lectures and Assignments section, where you
will find five tasks awaiting you (and please forgive me if this sounds like
some sort of medieval quest!). In that section you will find each
week's work listed under the date of the Sunday that begins each of the fifteen
weeks of our course. The first week's work consists of:
A) Making sure you can play audio-lectures;
B) Reviewing the Course Syllabus;
C) Introducing yourself in the
Introductory Discussion Forum (this forum
should be up and running by Wednesday, January 14);
D) Reading the texts and listening to the first four
audio-lectures for Section One of the course.
E) Answering questions and sharing
reflections in Discussion Forum One. (this
forum should be up and running by Wednesday, January 14);
AN
ANNOUNCEMENT
for those who may be interested in getting together face-to-face with their
classmates:
On
the weekend of March 27-29 I will be giving a workshop at my monastery (Saint
Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo). Any members of our class who are in a position
to travel to Southern California for that weekend are most heartily invited and
encouraged to participate. We will focus on the place of psalmody in
monastic ascetical/mystical theology; and the notion of the Psalter as a "mirror
of the soul" plays a significant part in our study this semester. This
weekend-retreat is, of course, optional as far as our course is concerned.
Anyone interested in signing up needs to do so within the next two weeks: please
contact the retreat office at the Abbey (661-944-2178 /
retreats@valyermo.com ) for
information on costs and bus transportation from LAX; and please let me know by
e-mail that you plan to attend.
JUST
one final point before you get started. Please note that
the Class Roster link will take you to a page that
shows the names and e-mail addresses of all class participants. I have been requested to use ONLY
these e-mail addresses in communicating with class
participants; so whenever you send me a note (and you are welcome to do so
anytime!) please use ONLY
your
St. John’s e-mail address to send and receive messages in matters that
concern this class. If you are not sure what this means or have not yet
worked out how to use the St. John’s webmail service, please contact Patty
Weishaar (
PWEISHAAR@csbsju.edu ), the theology
webcourse coordinator at SJU.
I
look forward to working with and getting know all of you.
Fr. Luke Dysinger,
OSB.
ldysinger@stjohnsem.edu
....x.... ’ “”.