GLP Materials & Resources
Public Religion
The GLP Undergraduate Course
Religion in cities can help address spiritual and mental health, food and housing insecurity, violence, addiction, public education, and other quality of life issues that emerge in urban environments. Efforts to address these by congregations and non-profit organizations are shaped by particular visions of the good life/human flourishing. This course is an invitation to reflect on the visions of human flourishing that shape our engagements with cities. The course includes critical engagements with theories and methods, case studies, and a practicum. Our Good Life Course emerged as a form of continued and collaborative reflection in which students are invited to contribute to our collective understandings of what a good life can be while also mentoring a new generation of public scholars in community engaged/led work.
GLP Undergraduate Course Syllabus, Slides, Videos, Assignments & other Learning Materials
Title: Our Good Life Course: Theory, CRC Case Studies, & Student Projects
Author: Harold Morales with support from the Lifeways of Hope team, the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life, the Public Religion Research Institute, and many others.
The GLP Archive
We want to learn with our communities about lessons from the pandemic and about what the Good Life or a Healthy City/Community should include after it. Rather than work toward "returning to a normal" that was never healthy for many of us, we hope our voices will illuminate a path toward a better future. Our stories are archived and published on this web exhibit along with short documentary films, learning materials, and toolkits.
To those who record and upload Good Life Stories to the collection and/or make use of our growing lessons plans and learning materials that are available here, many thanks!
GLP Undergraduate Oral History Interview Assignment & Listening to the Archive Assignment
Title: Contributing and Listening to the Archive
Author: Rupa Pillai, Sierra Lynn Lawson, and the Lifeways Team
GLP High School English Lesson Plan
In the early stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the CRC began listening to and contributing to conversations regarding the history of epidemic and pandemic diseases and its effects on urban areas and research on religion and cities. These took place during the organic conversations of our everyday lives and in more formal settings including in our Contagion, Religion, And Cities Podcast.
We are grateful to Lucia Lee for both her contributions to our early conversations regarding the possibilities and limits to dreams born of scarcity, especially with regard to diaspora communities in cities across the US., and also for her contributions to our growing collection of GLP Materials & Resources.
GLP High School English Lesson Plan
Title: Reflecting on Diaspora & Good Life Questions in The Great Gatsby During the Pandemic
Author: Lucia Lee
Mindfulness is a key component in creating and maintaining a Good Life. Being able to acknowledge and accept the present moment gives us power over our past and future. We can learn to develop tools and mindframes to better navigate experiences that are inevitably subject to change and/or are out of our control.
As a student of life who also happens to be a creative and a naturalist, I like to dissect my experiences to help me better understand myself and the world around me. Both creativity and agriculture call for cultivation, problem-solving, analysis, patience, and innovation. Having made this connection, I found a better way to incorporate this knowledge in my own life and frame my mindfulness practices.
I created a mindfulness activity for each week of Our Good Life course based on the week’s themes as they relate to agriculture and/or other supporting literature. Each activity aims to offer a tool to effectively work through a journey with our idea of a Good Life. Concepts inspired by: Blue Zones, gratitude practices, love and relationship mapping, reciprocal relationships with nature and self, failure and decision making, and natural cycles, and more.
GLP Mindfulness Activity Materials
Title: Ayo’s Good Life Activities
Author: Ayodélé La Veau
We are grateful to the Public Religion Research Institute for their support of the GLP, including consulting on the overall project, our infographics, and GL
