Work as a part of life

•Ora et Labora (work and pray) (St Benedict)•All work is a dignified part of a human life.•Even the most boring, repetitive work has meaning in that you are contributing to society

The Key Question

•How do we have a life which finds time for work, rest, study, and prayer and thus respects our basic human rhythms?

Alienation

•When you work, you become dehumanised – an instrument in someone else’s schemes.•It is a loss of control of our lives•Karl Marx

Or to put it another way…•“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war... Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact.”•Aka The Hedonic Treadmill

The Thing in Our Favour

•We have a choice.•We don’t have to buy shit•We can choose to live in a worthwhile way.•Perhaps we even have a responsibility to do so?

Interaction

Turn to the person near you who you know least well and tell them your career story.

•What do you do?

•How long have you done it?

•Why did you choose it?

•What do you like about it?

•What do you dislike about it?

A Question

•Does your faith have an effect on what you do for a job, or how you do it?

The Task

It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.

Abraham Maslow

Another Inspiring Quote

Vocation is "the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need."

(Buechner , Palmer)

Questing

Now I become myself.It's taken time, many years and places.I have been dissolved and shaken,Worn other people's faces…

(Mary Sexton, quoted in Parker Palmer)

First World Problem?

•The way I see it, this is a responsibility •We have an unprecedented opportunity to live well•Only if we are not slaves to the system can we think clearly enough about what needs to happen to make a decent life for everyone.•This isn’t to say that it’s easy…

Now What?

•What did you like to do when you were a child?•What do you naturally find yourself doing now when you have space and time?•What gives you energy?

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say

- William Stafford “Ask Me”

Read

Let Your Life Speak Parker Palmer

An excerpt: http://www.explorefaith.org/palmer/chp2_9.html