Prophetic Spirituality of Justice

This course focuses upon the integral role that "acting justly" plays in the self-understanding promoted by the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faith traditions. Guided by the feminist writing of Dr. Mary Grey, this course enables participants to rediscover the pivotal role that peace-making, doing justice, and sharing resources have with the prophetic spirituality of the Abrahamic faiths. This course has four required chatroom sessions of 90 minutes each (details below).

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Spirituality is …"That which ultimately moves you--the fundamental motivation of your life.

Spirituality is… "inclusive and holistic. It crosses frontiers and makes connections. It is characterised by sensitivity, gentleness, depth, openness, flow, feeling, quietness, wonder, paradox, being, waiting, acceptance, awareness, healing and inner journey."¹ (Joan Chittester)

CONTENTS OF THE COURSE

Unit 1	Seeking a spirituality of justice through motherly care and compassion--I have chosen motherhood [as my opening theme] because it is an easy place to see how essential are care, tenderness and compassion for the sustaining of life. It is also chosen because motherhood is a neglected yet well-attested metaphor for the love of God.(3)
Unit 2	Dangerous Memories--The first task of dangerously remembering is the breaking of the official silence and hearing the voice of the victims. Secondly, the voices of the victims and the truth of the victims are heard and acknowledged to be true. And this is a dangerous recognition because it privileges the truth of the sufferers and victims, their families, all who stand with them, over and above the truth of the oppressive regimes. It is a subversive truth, a truth and memory running against the grain of the establishment. What has to be done in theology and in faith community is to create space where this truth is heard, honored and witnessed to, placed within an ecclesial tradition of remembering and witnessing.
Unit 3	The prophetic community of the Holy Ruah--Reliance merely on outstanding figures is not only insufficient but could even be counter-productive in an individualist culture. We have gone as far as we can go with this model. If 'to be is to relate', to be in process, movement, it is in the quality of the community as prophet that our hope must be situated. By all means let us give honor to women and men of courage, but let us also take the responsibility of becoming the kinds of communities which challenge society and live by a transforming ethic, communities which 'shine like stars' because they are 'offering the word of life' (1 Peter).
Unit 4	Prophetic spirituality of peacemaking--The culture has become so divorced from spirituality that what we preach as the gospel of love at the personal level disappears into the gospel of national outrage on the public level. We wound and kill and threaten in proportions previously unknown in the history of humankind and call ourselves holy for doing so.
Unit 5	Taste and see the prophetic within your neighborhood
Unit 6	The prophetic spirituality of envisioning the future--To begin this lesson, let us consider the inspiring words of the American theologian Maria Harris in a remarkably prophetic book, Proclaim Jubilee: A Spirituality for the 21st Century: 'The demand is liberation; the emphasis is connectedness; the corrective is suffering; the power is imagination, and the vocation is tikkun olam, [Hebrew="the repair of the world"].'3
Unit 7	Prophetic imagination and the nourishing of earth communities--Because of the avity of the ecological crisis (which will be explored in detail in the following lesson), and because of the strong spiritualizing tradition within Christianity, it has become easy to see the crisis as the end of nature, the death of nature and the end of time. Eschatology and life after death become viewed as life after earth. In a culture where all is disposable and throwaway, nature too is disposable. We can do without all things earthly, because we are only pilgrims here, passing through, so her significance is transient. What is more, our future, the new Jerusalem, is beyond the earth. So, when the earth becomes a spoiled plaything, do not despair, because ‘Daddy will give you a new one’.16
Unit 8	The message and meaning of modern astrophysics in relation to Genesis 1-3.
Bibliography	Bibliography

Footnote

1. Cited in Neil Paynter ed., This is the day:reading and Meditations from the Iona Community, (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications 2002), Month 1, Day 30.

Computer Assisted Learning

Many of the stories examined in each session can either be read silently, read out loud, or listened to as audio recordings. In addition, there are some short videos that will be viewed. Accordingly, those taking this course will want to test their internet access speed and their computer settings to assure themselves that they can enjoy a clear reception of audio and video files. If you are working on a computer in a public space, you will want to have your earphones handy. To test your computer system, double-click on the image below. [Note: It takes about ten seconds before the sound track begins. At the end, use your browser's reverse button to return to this page. If you have technical difficulties, click here.]

Learning Style

Preparation: The course presumes no special previous training; however, for someone who has no familiarity with any of the Western fairy tales (e.g., Little Red Riding Hood), the first two lessons will be especially challenging because you will be expected to analyze fairy tales that you will be meeting for the first time.

Types of feedback called for: insightful reflections in response to the themes set out by Prof. Mary Grey (and two guest presentors); In the fifth week, participants will be exploring for themselves a group in their neighborhood working for justice. In the final week, participants will share personal reflection on one's life, one's deams, and one's actions in the world in behalf of Justice.

Cross-cultural component = +5 Based on a scale +1 to +10. This rating indicates the degree to which the presentation of this course includes an examination of (a) the rich diversity of cultures existing today and (b) the transformations that a given culture experiences over a span of time.

Interactivity: Besides offering one's own thoughts for comment, each participant normally spends twenty minutes each week reflecting upon and offering feedback regarding the reflections of others in their learning circle. Guidelines for offering feedback are presented and implemented in such a way as to assure respect for the individuality of each participant and to provide a safe atmonsphere for free and open exchanges.

Graduation Certificate: Participants who wish to merit a Graduation Certificate are asked to complete a research project that requires ten to fourteen hours of research and writing beyond the eight lessons of the course. Practice shows that the choice of topic is best left open until the final weeks of the course when further details will be distributed.

Chatroom activity: On the eight Saturdays, members of this course will participate in a 90-minute chatroom exchange on the topic of that week. The 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th chatrooms are required. The other four are optional (yet encouraged).

These chatroom exchanges help to put a human face on the other members of your learning circle, and they result in depths of understanding that go beyond the Exploratory Questions in each Lesson. These chatroom sessions are highly structured, highly engaging, and offer strong elements for feedback as well.

Since participants in your learning circle live in various times zones, I ask that you click here in order to determine the local time for you when it is 8:00 a.m. in New York city. Please arrive in the chatroom 10 minutes early so that everyone can begin together on the designated Saturdays.

If you notice that the local time when the chatroom runs presents a grave difficulty or an impossibility for you, then please send a notice immediately to Moderator@fuse.net describing your difficulty. If you foresee that prior engagements prevent you from participating in two or more chatrooms, then please describe this in an email as well.

To activate the chatroom, paste this address below into your browser or click here: Please try out this link now so that you can assure yourself that it will work for you when you need it.

http://www.basechat.com/c-files/catherinecollege.net/justice.htm

Participants are welcome to meet with other participants in the chatroom at times and for purposes they set for themselves at any time during the course. If you notice that a class is in session, then please do not login.

Tutor availability: A tutor will be overseeing each session. You may contact your tutor via email anytime (and, in some instances, via phone during limited hours). You will receive regular feedback, encouragement, and challenges from your tutor and other participants of your learning circle each week.

Textbook: none. All readings are supplied online.

Time required each week: 3 to 4 hours at times convenient to yourself plus the 90-minute live chatroom session.

Introduction

I have chosen motherhood because it is an easy place to see how essential are care, tenderness and compassion for the sustaining of life. It is also chosen because motherhood is a neglected yet well-attested metaphor for the love of God.(3) Mindful of the diversity of contexts where motherhood is lived out, I am trying to hold before readers' eyes the dilemma between the constraints and burdens of motherhood on the one hand, and yet the crucial importance of the qualities most privileged for contemporary spirituality, such as tenderness nurture, care and compassion. I also want to bring the lived experience of mothers into reflection on spirituality. The body of the mother--frequently despised or erased from texts—is sometimes idealised by intense devotion to the Virgin Mary. (I will return to and deepen this reflection in a later lesson.) This focus on motherhood neither attempts to romanticise, nor to describe women's identity as necessarily being about mothering: I will range cross-culturally in this exploration and attempt to show how the care and nurture of mothering need to be interpreted in a far more holistic way.

My personal story

This journey matters to me deeply, not least because motherhood has been part of my life across three generations. I explained that I was the eldest of seven children growing up in north-east England. My parents were teachers at a time when teachers were very badly paid. They relied on my assistance - and that of my sisters - with the newest baby and small children, and with house work, as my mother needed to keep teaching just to help our family survive. So from an early age I struggled to balance study with care of small children. I experienced history repeating itself a generation later, when I began to study theology in Louvain (Belgium), with four small children of my own, the youngest being just two years old. All my examination periods at the university were fraught [with troubles]because of my children's illnesses. And now that I have a growing number of grandchildren, the pattern again repeats itself; one of these children is autistic, and his special needs have brought his parents and the extended family into a new awareness of the kind of caring needed by children with such a different experience and perception of life.

Textbook: none. All readings are supplied online. Tutor availability: A tutor will be overseeing each session. You may contact your tutor via email anytime (and, in some instances, via phone during limited hours). You will receive regular feedback, encouragement, and challenges from your tutor each week.