Course Introduction and Details
Join MORSL in exploring these questions through our six workshops on meaning making while also enjoying social time and lunch. The Lunch and Learn events feature topics on identity and belonging, the role of rituals, gratitude, and dealing with uncertainty, among others. Please register for each workshop separately on myInvolvement. We encourage you to take advantage of all the events, but you are welcome to register for whatever combination and number of workshops best suits you!
- Relationships, Belonging and Community
- How to Translate Values into Action
- Regular Rituals
- Gratitude and Humility
- Spiritual Identity
- Navigating Uncertainties
Supplementary Resources
At the links below you'll find supplementary materials and handout downloads for each workshop. The series is not an online class, and the resources provided are not intended to substitute for participation in the workshops. Though we hope they will be interesting and helpful in your spiritual life whether you join us in the workshops or not!
Relationships, Belonging and Community
- How to Have a Good Conversation (12 min.) Crucial to building and enhancing good community is how we speak to each other. Striking a conversation, a good conversation, is very essential in establishing relationship and in showing the ‘other’ that they are accepted and that they belong. In this video, Celeste Headlee, a famed talk show host, shares various ways that we can hold a good conversation. “Go out [and] talk to people, listen to people, and be prepared to be amazed!”
- Belonging (4 min.) presents George, a young Syrian who struggled to find his identity as a child. After fleeing his country and going to Paris, through evoking his memories as a boy scout, he rediscovers his belonging to a community.
- Where is home? Where do you belong? (5 min.) What does it mean to feel at home? Is your feeling based on culture, love, or location? In this talk, Vamba explores his ideas about what it means to truly belong. Vamba Sherif, born in Liberia, is a novelist, journalist, and film critic. He's lived in Kuwait and Syria before settling in The Netherlands.
- The meaning of home: More than Bricks and Mortar? (16 min.) Dr. Craig Gurney, a lecturer, asks: what is the true meaning of home? Is it really a place of safety and security? Learn about the meaning of home.
- Visit MORSL's Connect with a Community Page for a directory of McGill faith clubs, listings of off-campus communities and programming, and a directory of our volunteer chaplains who offer one-on-one consultations.
How to Translation Values into Action
- Building with Purpose: Learning to put values into action by Laura Yates (12 min.) In this video Laura, who values and is passionate about environmental and personal health, discusses how she was able to translate her value through the building of a “Tiny house” project. In this video, she outlines the lessons and values she has learned throughout the process.
- Values and Committed actions in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (4 min.) Acceptance and Commitment therapy techniques offer important lessons on how to identify and clarify values, commit to actions, and overcome obstacles that hinder progress.
Regular Rituals
- What is a ritual, and what is its impact in today's society? “What isn't a ritual?” asks Michael Norton in this fascinating talk about the role that ritual continues to play in our lives (17 min.)
- Enjoy this focused discussion on rituals marking certain holidays and the role of rituals in meaning making (6 min.)
- For more on the mental health benefits of rituals, see Prof. Norton’s interview (text) in which he studied rituals and found that those who use them feel better and more in control. Restorative power of Ritual.
- This video surveys a variety of rituals by some noted NBA players before they play in a competition. By performing these regular rituals, players provide their reason for doing them (11 min.)
Gratitude and Humility
- Brother David Steindl-Rest discusses how various virtues such love, trust hope weave together into Gratitude as a gateway of encountering the other (55 min.)
- Spiritual Practices in Times of Crisis: Gratitude Page Mary Davis explores the theme of spiritual practices of gratitude in times of crisis.
Spiritual Identity
Navigating Uncertainties
- Prof. Walid Afifi explores the extent to which uncertainty affects our well-being. He also discusses various ways to deal with uncertainty (17 min.)
- If our brains interpret uncertainty as a threat, a disease, or something wrong with us, then why do we still crave significance, meaning, purpose and to change the world when there are no guarantees? Watch Joshua Bailey as he explores this question and more with goal of encouraging us to embrace uncertainty as part of our neurological disposition (9 min.)
- “Gracious Uncertainty," a devotional reflection from a text in the Christian New Testament by Oswald Chambers.
