Project 52: Week 4 (12/25/23)

Welcome to Project 52: Week 4 (12/25/23) (and, here's a link to Week 3)

Introduction to the Learning Strand of Tri Cosain

.. an open invitation to join us so that we might discern whether (and to what extent) these weekly micro-modules and accompanying exercises and reading materials worked to build courageous careers, develop formal and informal approaches to learning, and discern what matters most to us -- and WHY

Our prayer, and opening reflection ...

"You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do it. Do not ask for anything now; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted! If that happens to us, we experience grace. ~ Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be

Welcome to Project 52: Week 4

Tri Cosain learning strand introduction

The practice that we call Tri Cosain, from the Irish Gaelic, proposes the weaving together of three strands or three pathways: a sense of personal inspiration; a personal career journey of creativity, service, fulfillment, and abundance; and a lifelong journey of learning to bring inspiration to life, expressed among other ways through career.

As we work with you on the learning strand in the context of Spirit-filled career services, we intend to address learning in a broad sense: not only the acquisition of domain knowledge, which is certainly essential, but of knowledge and wisdom regarding the full range of capacities, capabilities, and skills required to live a fulfilling and abundant life in faithful service. Learning may be close to the center of your experience at this moment in time, and we propose to integrate and align with your learning journey as you experience it and as your current work/life/learning institutions inform the context and environment of your now and how all of this might unfold in the years ahead -- and beyond this moment.

The learning strand of Tri Cosain is interwoven with the other two strands: our learning ambitions, we suggest, often arise from our sense of personal spiritual inspiration and feed, develop, and enhance our careers, spoken of in the broadest and most inspired sense.

We will invite you and ourselves to adopt an aware, intentional, prayerful, and lifelong approach to career-focused learning and discernment, entirely consistent with your faith's ethos: continually growing and evolving.? As we consider career ambitions, we invite ourselves and you to create and follow an “Agile”? personal career-focused learning plan, as described more fully elsewhere in career development material.

The intended outcome of this work is that each participant.

• Will have access to and will have put to work several practices for effecting a lifelong, dynamic, career-focused learning journey in faith
• Will have at least a first version of a personal career-focused learning vision
• Will have at least the seed of a personal career-focused learning taxonomy
• Will have at least the seed of a personal career-focused Agile learning plan, including?some significant longer-term objectives some more specific goals for the next quarter (or so), and?some even more specific goals over the next two or four weeks

Motivations for learning and personal learning vision

In our travels, we have experienced reasons for learning to fall into four main categories.

• Learning for love - learning things we love to know about or practice purely for the love of it.
• Learning for “citizenship” - learning that helps us take up our roles in relationships, communities, societies, and ecosystems in more effective and healthy ways
• Learning for credentials - learning focused on meeting the requirements of a diploma, degree, or certification.
• Learning for a career - learning that helps us do our Work more effectively - allowing us to be more creative, more in service, and more abundant for the benefit of ourselves, our loved ones, and society.

We invite our clients and participants to create a personal learning vision that suits each of us and reflects our ambitions in these four broad areas (or others if we have different lenses on the broad subject of learning). In our careers work, of course, our principal focus will be on learning for a career.

We encourage creativity and uniqueness in personal learning visions.? Some people wish to write their vision in words, sentences, or paragraphs. Some may want to capture it as an image or a drawing on a work of art or performance. Others might see it captured in a particular physical object, found or created, or in a scene from fiction theatre, film, or video. We invite and expect these visions to be the subject of prayer and Spirit-filled discernment for people of faith.

In any case, we invite everyone to discover a vision with one or several themes - to save it in a protected and honored, though accessible, place. We invite people to revisit, develop, and adapt their visions over time and refer to them often to shape their learning plans and journeys.

We want you to know that our learning vision may be closely linked to a sense of personal inspiration as one of the three strands of Tri Cosain (see other sources in our Project 52/ careers series on the Tri Cosain strands).

A Personal Learning Taxonomy

We have found it helpful to create a personal map of the potential areas of learning (a taxonomy, to use a somewhat technical term).? Many taxonomies, expressed or implied, have been created by students of learning (university and seminary prospects and catalogs could be relevant examples).

We invite our participants to create their taxonomies. As this can seem daunting if it arrives as a fresh challenge or invitation, we offer below a “straw-man” version widely referenced in the education community. This taxonomy is based on the work of the Partnership for 21st Century Learning.

An initial suggestion for a learning taxonomy - for personal refinement, dialogue, and discussion

Learning and Innovation Skills

• Creativity and innovation
• Critical thinking and problem solving
• Communication
• Collaboration

Information media and technology skills

• Information literacy
• Media literacy
• Information, communications, and technology (ICT) literacy

Life and career skills

• Flexibility and adaptability
• Initiative and self-direction
• Social and cross-cultural skills
• Productivity and accountability
• Leadership and responsibility

Key domain subjects and 21st century themes

• Language skills in native and incremental languages~ Reading~ Writing~ Speaking~ Listening
• Arts
• Mathematics
• Social sciences
• Science - physical and biological
• Geography
• History
• Government
• Civics

Domain areas specific to ministry and spiritual service* (if this is your calling)

• Scripture
• Pastoral practice
• Theology
• Preaching
• Philosophy
• Organization and administration of faith-based institutions

*Note: We work with individuals and cohorts as well as institutions and associations to co-create and co-participate with you in terms of developing specific domain areas relevant to your vision for your learning strand

As always, I will be pleased to accompany you and support you in developing a personal, spirit-filled, career-related learning vision and plan.

Please be invited to Week 4 of our year-long series of installments, introducing our framework perspective Tri Cosain, Irish Gaelic for three pathways: inspiration, learning, and career.

We are pleased to accompany you on this journey.

Monday, 25 December 2023

Gerald Doyle

And a concluding prayer and reflection from Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes, Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church from 1974–2011, in his introduction to the Second Edition of The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich.

"We know that our demons are not easily dismissed, that we year for more than simply the ability to get through the day. We would like to make a life and not just a living, which - as we know from our experience and that of others -- takes courage. Tillich does not deny the world in which we find ourselves; he denies the ultimacy of its power over us. Self-affirmation, in the Tillich lexicon, is not an exercise in countering low self-esteem, the kind of ego-boosting so popular in an age which fears failure so much that it refuses to concede that it exists. Self-affirmation, for Tillich, is the paradox of "participation in something which transcends the self." (165)

I cannot imagine a more timely message for a more needy people than that contained in The Courage to Be. Its final sentence may well be the beginning of a spiritual adventure for millions of new readers in the new century:

The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.

Tri Cosain materials are developed with my colleague and friend of 40+ years, Scott Downs.

Copyright Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle 2023

Residing in Chicago, Gerald Doyle provides ministry placement research and consulting for Career Services at the Catholic Theological Union and career services and coaching to students, families, and community members at Wolcott College Preparatory High School. He advises several edtech companies, including Upkey and GetSet Learning; he has also joined TSI - Transforming Solutions, Inc. in their Higher Education and Career Services practice.

Scott? Downs, a former investment banker, management consultant, and entrepreneur, now works as an Agile coach, seeking to call forward great leaders and great organizations based on great cultures. He is a consultant with Expleo Group and is an associate of the TrustTemenos Leadership Academy.

Scott and Gerald are co-founders of Tri Cosain, a practice that weaves inspiration, learning, and career for leadership in life and work. Gerald and Scott co-authored 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work, Conversations of Inquiry, and several other volumes in the Tri Cosain series. Their work embraces equity, inclusion, diversity, and well-being as foundations for personal leadership.