The Messy Quest For Meaning

Drawing on lessons learned from Catholic monks and saints as well as his own experience, Stephen Martin has crafted five unique practices to help Catholics grapple with life's truly important questions and discover their calling in the world. The Messy Quest for Meaning is one of the first books to tap into the wisdom of the Catholic spiritual tradition to help readers discern a vocation that will not only provide them with a livelihood but also just might help save their lives. Martin first tells of his own struggle to find meaning and purpose in his life and then details the five transforming practices that he learned, over time, from the Trappist monks whom he studied, interviewed, and prayed with.

Collectively, the narratives highlight the importance of recognizing personal experience in settings of higher education. They also present compelling evidence for acknowledging the significance of inquiry, creativity, imagination, dialogue, interaction, and integration in enabling learners to bring the whole of their being to the learning process, to the exploration of the stories by which they live, and to the creation of new narratives for their future lives.

Bringing together narratives and theory-based analyses of practice, this volume illustrates collaborative curricular and co-curricular approaches to promoting vocational discernment amongst students in a Catholic university setting. Drawing on cultural, religious, and secular understandings of vocation, Engaging with Vocation on Campus illustrates how contemporary issues around vocation, work, and careers can be addressed within the Catholic intellectual and spiritual tradition. Chapters presents a range of contributions from students, faculty, and staff from a single institution to highlight practical approaches to supporting students in this area, and acknowledge the complementary and intersecting roles played by student support services, academic staff, and on-campus ministry in helping students develop an individualised understanding of vocation. Considering the value of both curricular or non-curricular activities and processes, the volume highlights spiritual, personal, and community value in offering students explicit and tailored support. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in higher education, religious education, and the Christian life and experience more broadly. Those specifically interested in career guidance, theological curriculum and pedagogy, and Roman Catholicism will also benefit from this book.

New Dimensions in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging expands the traditional focus of religiosity to include and evaluate recent research and discoveries on the role of secular spirituality in the aging process. Contributors examine the ways conventional religion and other forms of spirituality affect human development, health and longevity, and they demonstrate how myth-creation enables humans to make meaning in their lives. Taken together, the book points to further research to enhance current knowledge, approaches to care, and social policies.

Demonstrates how students and educators can resist narrow, utilitarian views of higher education’s purpose. While the search for meaning and purpose appears to be a constant throughout human history, there are characteristics about our current time period that make this search different from any other previous time, particularly for college students. In this book, Perry L. Glanzer, Jonathan P. Hill, and Byron R. Johnson explore college students’ search for meaning and purpose and the role that higher education plays. To shed empirical light on this complex issue, the authors draw on in-depth interviews with four hundred college students from different types of institutions across the United States. They also analyze three sets of national survey data: the National Study of Youth and Religion, College Students Beliefs and Values, and their own Gallup-conducted survey of 2,500 college students. Their research identifies important social, educational, and cultural influences that shape students’ quests and the answers they find. Arguing against a utilitarian view of education, Glanzer, Hill, and Johnson conclude that colleges and universities can and should cultivate and aid students in their journeys, and they offer suggestions for doing so.

Heaney traces the hidden history of music's presence in Christian thought, including its often unrecognized influence on key figures such as von Balthasar, Barth and Bonhoeffer. She uses Lonergan's theological framework to explore musical composition as a theological act, showing why, when and how music is a useful symbolic form. The book introduces eleven ground-breaking theologians, and each chapter offers an entry point into the thought of the theologian being presented through an original piece of music, which can be found on the companion website: https://bloomsbury.pub/suspended-god. Heaney argues that music is a universally important means of making sense of life with which theology needs to engage as a means of expression and of development. Musical composition is presented as an appropriate and even necessary form of doing theology in its quest to engage with the past, mediate truth to the present and tradition it into the future.

This book is about a 21st Century mythic adventure and spiritual odyssey. A real life Dan Brown novel where science meets reality, the mystical meets the mundane and the esoteric or hidden is made manifest. More mind bending than the Matrix movie and as s

Using a bio-psychosocial framework, this popular textbook explains the wide basis of perspectives on which we build an understanding of people's behaviours and why and how we respond in the way we do. This book accessibly explains key concepts including attachment, trauma, developmental psychology and oppression to highlight and enhance social workers' understanding of practice. Thoroughly updated since its popular first edition, the book now includes: A brand new chapter on Attachment More coverage of neurological concepts and their influence on behaviour Expanded material on older people and resilience, crime and violence against black and minority ethnic groups, and domestic violence issues More coverage of mental health, alcohol and drugs and their impact on behaviour Fully updated to reflect the Munro report and recent social worker task force recommendations, this new edition also includes brand new and additional case studies and pedagogy, making this a practical, insightful and wonderfully comprehensive text suitable for all students of social work. "This second edition is a most inclusive, accessible and fully updated text. It provides a thorough overview of the major theories and concepts and brings these to life with case examples. The inclusion of contemporary issues such as domestic abuse is a welcome feature. I would fully recommend this text to any student studying for a social work qualification." Debbie Thackray, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK "This second edition expands on topics that are vital to good social work practice. The chapters on attachment and trauma are particularly well-written, and speak to topics often overlooked in academic texts. The sections on foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) provide readers with essential knowledge that will enhance practice on many levels. Although this has been written in the context of social work practice, this important book will be compulsory reading for a broad range of students... I consider this an invaluable contribution to any student library." Jill Davey, Framework Lead for Social Work, Sociology, Social Policy and Anthropology, Bournemouth University, UK "This is the most useful text I have ever found for teaching social care and youth students the basic explanatory frameworks for human behaviour. It is superbly balanced in that it gives weight to all perspectives and proffers critiques of key theories. It is also very strong in applying theory to practice - a skill which is always difficult to develop in students. Particular areas of strength are the chapters on attachment and mental health/ trauma. The work is an engaging read as it includes some fascinating historical insights and illustrations as well as contemporary case studies. I will certainly recommend it to my students." Gwen Chaney, Course Leader for Social Care & Faculty Lead for Learning and Teaching, University of Gloucestershire, UK