The Learning Reflection will be due on Friday, the 12th of June.  Your reflections are to be emailed to belyea@stu.ca.  These are private, and will not be posted anywhere on the website.  I am ok with giving an extension if you feel stressed by your involvement in the upcoming class schedule -- but extensions can also be curses if you are a procrastinator.  Be careful in taking too long to submit your work   If you go past the date set, I will need to submit what your grade is without the Learning Reflection.

Final Learning Reflection
The time has come to try and make some sense out of your introduction to the academic study of ritual.  The course has moved so fast.  My hope is for this assignment to be a way for you to have time to reflect on your learning, draw connections, let thoughts gel, and all of those kinds of things which can't happen during such condensed study schedule.  If it were me writing this, I'd let a few days go by before doing this work and, well, you have to wait for me to compile all the work you've done before you can start anyway.  When it comes time to respond to this my advice is to go online (http://people.stthomasu.ca/~belyea/2009/InterriteI/rit15.html   )since it is filled with links to make use of.

The Ritual Studies I website is made up of prompts, group work, and individual responses to all of the readings, the stone patterns and their descriptions and more.  These are all accessible for you to make use of in writing your learning reflection.  The only thing I ask is that you cite everything you make use of.  If you are  drawn to a particular colleague's response go ahead and use it, just make sure to cite her/him.  In the same vein, if there is a colleague or colleagues you wish to acknowledge for contributing significantly to your learning in this course, please make use of Question 4.  This question is there in case you cannot seem to place this learning in the context of any of the other "questions".

You will write in response to two questions.  Please respond to one of the first two questions, and one of the second two questions.

Question 1
During the first week of classes we did some preliminary work on a list of things which might typically be part of ritual activity.  

Grimes four categories -- ritual. rite, ritualize, and ritualization, and more Grimes,  some , researching birth rites in another culture,--  all work you have done which has brought you face to face with the some of the major ideas, meanings, symbols and theories in the study of ritual.  Pick at least 3 "items" from our list, discuss why you chose each one and identify the ritual significance of those items by reflecting on your reading of Deeply into the Bone, last rite attended the birth ritual research reports, as well as your group reports, and individual responses to the readings.  Of course, you don't have to write about absolutely every occurrence of those three on the web site,  but you will need to read a substantial amount of our web work site to make sure you are considering all the occurrences or uses of/for the items you have selected to discuss.  It is important to clearly identify which documents and/or individual work you are using to respond to this question. Dates, names, quotations, make sure I know where to find the examples you are quoting from and discussing.  Oh yeah, it is possible that you're going to see characteristics we hadn't identified in the first week.  Feel free to identify other characteristics and write about where you see this occurring in the writing of the course.

Question 2
As you know, Grimes feels initiation rites are vital to a healthy culture.  Thom told us on Thursday, Mircea Eliade (considered the father of the history of religions) thought that without this embodied action we aren't fully human.  We listened as Thom spoke about an extremely important sunnet rite in Northern Cyprus.  We were challenged by what we witnessed.   sense of importance, acceptance, respect, value, identity and embodiment.  I too feel that ritualizing is important for us to do in order to honour particular kinds of passage, to experience transformative "power" -- and also to mark significant experiences in intentional and mindful ways.  _Do_ing with purpose and intention is to invest one's self in creating or re-imaging rites  What might honouring a passage from girlhood to womanhood, or boyhood to manhood look like in this Western Culture we live in?

After reading through the  forum responses to Thom's presentation, and also the responses to different parts of Grimes' chapter "Coming of Age", what ideas can you form which might serve to mark and ritualize a point of significance which could well serve as a point of transition? What kinds of values would you want driven deeply into the bones of the participants.  What characteristics of rites should be included in this rite?  If you have a hard time imagining passage rites, maybe it would help to think about sustainability.  So, imagine you have been asked to develop a rite for children having something to do with sustainability.  Something which underscores particular values you would like to see instilled.  What actions might symbolize these values, and what gestures might be important to embody.  Don't let me limit you.  If you can think of another place in our lives where we need to take a moment to make a moment in time, please explore this.  Or, perhaps there's a rite already practiced that you find problematic.  What would you do to change it, what parts would you alter, and why?

Don't forget to talk about what parts of the website you are reading to help you construct your response to this question, quoting and citing as you go.  Copying and pasting of URL's will suffice as referencing for the website work, but people have names, so if you are quoting a colleague make sure you use their name. 

Question 3

A portion of our course had us engaged in ritual-like behaviours.  The rock painting, the small fire-rite, the stone patterns, and the ending of the course.  Alicia and others spoke of how they felt we should be writing in response to all of these experiences.  I completely agreed, even figured out roughly how to go about this without making you feel uncomfortable -- but then I couldn't find a good place in the course to do it.  I would like to provide a space for you to do that here. 

We were only able to engage in a small amount of ritual symbolism and meaning-making during such a short course.  Still, some of you obviously felt strongly about these opportunities and I want to learn more about why.  What difference does doing this ritualizing make for your learning?  Identifying your own learning, talking about the value in _doing_ ritual as well as reading and writing, will be valuable learning for me as well.  This question is open to your reflection on these experiences.  

Question 4
Often times the most significant learning happens in ways I don't address with my larger questions.  Since I don't intend this to be a test of what you haven't learned, I want to give you as much freedom and opportunity to address your learning experience as I possibly can.  Is there anything I haven't provided an opportunity for you to address and you feel has been important to your learning about ritual studies, computers, collaboration, research, writing, expressing yourself, being heard, or some other aspect of the course?  In as much detail as possible, explain this learning, how it happened, who contributed and why it is important to you?