Joe Zefran, Instructor

Home Department: Social Work

Office location: LWH 3042

email address: joezefran@comcast.net

Involved with FYE program since: Fall, 2010

Welcome to the NEIU Social Work Department's First Year Experience course, Search for Meaning of Life,.

The social work profession seeks to help people live happily and productively with joy and purpose and meaning. Social work values diversity including what the oldest wisdom traditions teach us about the meaning of life. In this course, we will visit sacred places in Chicago to experience the teachings and practices of six wisdom traditions -- Christian, Jewish, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu, and Native American – to learn what they can tell us about living joyfully and purposefully.

All spiritual traditions have in common this teaching: The purpose of our life, the bottom line of all our desires and wants, is to...BE IN JOY FOREVER, nothing less than ECSTASY. Huston Smith in The World’s Religions

This course provides an introduction to the social work profession and its values of empowerment and diversity, especially the diverse wisdom of six of the most ancient spiritual traditions - Christian, Jewish, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu, and Native American. As an international city of spiritual diversity, Chicago offers several sacred sites. During this course, we will visit six sites where we can directly experience the rituals and ceremonies and teachings of these ancient wisdom traditions. In class, we will prepare ourselves through readings, discussions, and the Dances of Universal Peace before each visit and reflect on the value of their teachings for our lives. We will explore how the teachings of the six wisdom traditions can guide us in our new experience as Northeastern Illinois University students.