Week 9

                                                       

        The groves were God's first temples.  ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"

Good afternoon.  I hope that you are all well today, and feeling good about life and your place in the world.  For the last assignment of the semester, I have two options, from which you will choose one.

     The first involves exploring the meaning of a word that has some significance in your life, in your behavior and in your thoughts and, perhaps, spiritual practice.  I use the phrase spiritual practice in no particular religious sense but loosely to refer to the many ways we attempt to bring ourselves in to harmony with the world, the people we share our lives with, and, perhaps most importantly, with our own self.  The essay involves defining the word you have chosen in an extended fashion.  That is, you might employ a simple dictionary definition of the word's most common meaning in use, or the secondary or tertiary meaning, as listed in a dictionary entry.  The development of the essay will proceed with narration and description of the meaning the word has in your life, story and description to illustrate the meaning it has in the context of your life experience.  The following is a list of abstract words (i.e. they cannot be physically seen or touched as say an apple or a diamond or a tree can) that you might choose from:  

Attention

Beauty

Compassion

Devotion

Faith

Grace

Justice

Peace

Reverance

Silence

Wonder

With abstract words or concepts, one must bring them to life by means of the concrete, the tangible, the three-dimensional world we live in.  Our notions of beauty, for example, derive from the visible, the audible, the tactile–the world of the senses–even as we also comprehend abstract notions such as truth and peace as being, in a real sense, manifestations of beauty.  So the assignment requires you to define a word as you have come to understand its meaning.  I want you also to use one quotation, either as an epigraph (appearing just below the title of the essay) or somewhere in the text of the essay.  A simple google search of the word plus  key word "quotations" should provide you an array of choices.

You might choose a concrete word, rather than an abstract.  Again, you have the dictionary to supply an essential definition but you provide description of appearance, constituent parts, function, historical and cultural and personal significance.  What is a tree?  Clearly, it is a living organism, with certain characteristic features (depending on species), an ecological role to play, an historical and cultural role in the life of humankind, and so on.  Trees are also symbols of strength and shelter and wonder and beauty and mystery.  We've all admired trees, played among them, climbed them, photographed them, too, perhaps.  What is it about trees that makes us love them so?

The second option is to read one of two short stories I will present in class and to put together a piece that builds on the topic or theme each story takes up.  One story called "Girl,"  written by Jamaica Kincaid, records the kinds of lessons a young girl received from her mother while growing up.  Another, called "Half a Day," by Naguib Mafouz, records a child's first day at school, to his awakening, many years later, an old man.  It is a story about time, and how quickly it can seem to pass.  For either of these stories, you may choose to summarize and provide a quote to illustrate something of the original, as you develop the point you want to make about the story's meaning to you.  You can share lessons you were taught growing up, or experiences that have defined your sense of the way life and time move forever onward, taking us with them.

Whatever your choice, you should write from 400-500 words.

Note:  the final essay exam is set for week ten.  You should have all outstanding work in by that day.  If you miss class week ten, you must come week 11 to take the exam.