Working With Spirit: Engaging the Spirituality to Meet the Challenges of the Workplace

Working With Spirit

is a Path Book

offering practical spirituality

to enrich everyday living.

"Your word is a lamp to my feet

and a light to my path"

Psalm 119:105

Gratitudes

I am grateful to those who reviewed parts of this book in its manuscript form and gave their feedback, especially my friends of different faiths - O. P. Dwivedi, Michael Grand, Ken Hood, Bill Hulet, and Iftikhar Sheikh. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the members of the Spirituality in the Workplace groups at the University of Guelph, who have shared their stories, struggles, and joys so honestly and generously, and taught me so much. Special thanks, too, to Robert Maclennan at ABC Publishing for his encouragement as we turned assorted thoughts and stories into this book.

L.R.

First, my thanks to Lucy Reid. When I proposed this book to Lucy, she immediately shared and enhanced my vision. I am also grateful to Lucy for keeping our writing moving along when there were many other tasks vying for our attention. Lucy truly represents spirit at work at the University of Guelph.

I too am grateful for the guidance we received on this book from our colleagues at the University of Guelph and from Robert Maclennan at ABC Publishing. I would also like to acknowledge Margaret Murray and John Veltri, SJ, for helping me understand spirituality at work issues.

F.E.

December 2003

Working

with Spirit

Engaging Spirituality to Meet the

Challenges of the Workplace

Lucy Reid & Fred Evers

Path Books, Anglican Book Centre

General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada

80 Hayden Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4Y 3G2

abcpublishing@national.anglican.ca

www.abcpublishing.com www.pathbooks.com

Copyright © 2004 by Lucy Reid and Fred Evers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville, 1989. Adapted slightly by the authors occasionally.

Text set in Daily News Regular Cover and text design by Jane Thornton Cover photograph by Jane Thornton

Library and Archives of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Reid, Lucy

    WorkingWithSpirit: engaging spirituality to meet the challenges of the workplace / Lucy Reid and Fred Evers.

ISBN 1-55126-417-X

l. Work. 2. Spirituality. 3. Work — Religious aspects — Christianity.

4. Spirituality — Christianity. I. Evers, Frederick T. (Frederick Thomas),

1949- II. Title.

BL65.W67R43 2004      248.8'8      C2004-903272-0

Dedication

For David, my beloved co-worker in parenting and ministry. And for my colleagues and friends at the University of Guelph. L.R.

For Susan, whose wisdom and love guide me daily. And to our daughters, Jerry and Courtney, for their love and support.

F.E.

Contents

Introduction: Spirituality and Work

Part One: The Challenges of the Workplace

Chapter 1: A Fragmented Life

Chapter 2: Workplace Woes

Chapter 3: A Culture of More

Part Two: Simple Gifts

Chapter 4: Weaving Wholeness

Chapter 5: Humanizing the Workplace

Chapter 6: Creating a New Culture

Chapter 7: The Christian Contribution

Chapter 8: Wisdom from the World's Religions

Chapter 9: How to Get Started

Chapter 10: Suggested Reading

Works Cited

---INTRODUCTION---

Spirituality and Work

We live in interesting times. In Canada, as elsewhere in North America and Europe, our society is generally considered to be secular, with religion and state separate and the overt role of religion in public life minimal. Over the last fifty years there has been a massive decline in church membership and religious practice. In Canada in 1957, for example, according to statistics gathered by sociologist of religion Reginald Bibby in Restless Gods [2002], 53% of all Canadians were attending religious services weekly. By the year 2000 that figure had plummeted to 24%. Among Canadian teens, in 2000 one in four was identified as having no religion at all [Bibby 2002, 20, 86]. Even allowing for a rejection of religion that is temporary and age-related, the phenomenon of spiritually disenfranchised youth and young adults is new and challenging.

Paradoxically, at the same time as this shift away from organized religion, interest in spirituality is greater than ever. People are searching. According to Bibby, they are not dropping out of religion altogether so much as dropping in — church-shopping, testing the waters, looking for meaning and guidance without committing to regular membership and practice. They are responding to an inner voice that drives them to ask questions and seek answers in a variety of places and in a variety of ways.

The commercial response to this quest is a growing number of books, retreat centres, conferences, and leaders in the field of spirituality. The mainline churches may be struggling with membership decline, but the shelves of any bookstore are well stocked with titles on spirituality of all kinds. It is as though the new religion is spirituality: I'm not religious, but I am spiritual is today's creed. As spirituality has widened beyond the container of organized religion, people have been exploring and experimenting for themselves, and looking for ways to relate spirituality to the whole of life. In particular, the notion of a spirituality of work is emerging. Books, speakers, even web sites are focusing for the first time on spirituality in the workplace.

What is meant by this phrase? There is a recognition that as human beings we have spiritual needs and drives as well as physical, mental, emotional, and social ones. We do not leave our soul at the door of the workplace. It enters with us and can either help us engage more deeply, meaningfully, and compassionately with our work, or reveal to us the futility, ferocity, or soul-destroying aspects of work. As poet and author David Whyte writes in The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of Soul in Corporate America, "If work is all about doing, then the soul is all about being…. [We are exploring] the possibility of being at home in the world, melding soul life with work life, the inner ocean of longing and belonging with the outer ground of strategy and organizational control" [Whyte 1994, 201].

The spirit within us needs purpose and meaning as much as the body needs food and water. The context of the workplace, in which we spend so many of our waking hours, raises profoundly spiritual questions, if we choose to hear them, such as:

Is this all there is?

What would I be doing if I didnt have to earn a living?

Is my work worthwhile? Does it benefit the world in some way?

Am I what I do, or is there more?

Where is God in my work?

On my death bed will I look back and be glad I did this?

Each of these questions addresses something deeper than the surface issues of productivity, employability, income level, seniority, and so on. These are the questions that float up and catch us unawares in unguarded or vulnerable moments. They can accuse and confuse. No one has prepared us for these, in the way we learned how to write exams and résumés, manage interviews and people. Our workplace throws these questions at us, but supplies no answers. Even discussion of such matters is rare and uncomfortable at work, and we risk being seen as religious fanatics when we raise them. Yet the questions remain, and they have a way of haunting us and tripping us if we try to ignore them, sending us physical and emotional symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, irritability, restlessness.

When we dare to ask ourselves, Why am I spending my life's energy in this way? we are setting foot on a path that can open the heart to a renewed sense of vocation and purpose, and a deepened understanding of life. This path leads us to God, to the Spirit beyond and behind and within our spirits. And so the workplace need not be the enemy of our spirituality, but the crucible in which our spiritual life is burnished and shaped.

Spirituality in the workplace, then, is not a cunning managerial strategy to make us more docile drones, nor is it a token nod in the direction of God at work, like saying the Lord's Prayer at school. It is the pursuit of meaning and integrity, the attentiveness to deep questions, the unleashing of creativity, by which our work is humanized and sanctified. This book is oriented to the spiritual explorers of today who seek understanding of how their work relates to thfefr spirituality. Spiritual explorers seek a richer life for themselves, their families, and their colleagues at work. They want work that goes beyond a pay cheque and rungs on the corporate ladder. They search for a higher purpose to their work and lives. They search for a way to handle life's hardships: the death of a colleague, a sick child, divorce, job loss.

For many of us, most of the time, our work feels anything but sacred. Where the rubber hits the road, there are skid marks more often than smooth acceleration to God. As we were working on this book, for example, we became distracted and bogged down by the demands of full-time work, the ups and downs of family life, problems at our churches, personal health issues, and sickness and tragedy among friends — in short, the tangled stuff of life. We wanted to write about finding God at work, but were in danger of blatant hypocrisy as we struggled unsuccessfully to balance our own lives and live by our spiritual beliefs.

We are not experts, then, so much as people who care enough about the questions to ask them aloud and embark on the journey toward answers. We are all too aware of the problems and pains of the workplace in this twenty-first century world. We know that work is stressful and hard, whether it is digging up roads, designing software, or caring for children. We take seriously statistics such as the decline in job satisfaction among Canadians, from 62% in 1991 to 45% in 2001, as related by Tom Harpur in Finding the Still Point: A Spiritual Response to Stress [2002, 11]. Canadian researcher Linda Duxbury reports that absenteeism in the Canadian workforce costs some $3 billion (Canadian) per year. [See her survey report Voices of Canadians, published in 2003.]

The workplace in our culture has become almost synonymous with stress, overwork, instability, and flux. Duxbury's research shows that 25% of Canadians are working more than fifty hours a week, compared to only 10% doing so ten years ago; 30% report depression; 40% cannot face going into work some days and take mental health days off, and an alarming 60% report feeling high levels of stress from work. Reginald Bibby's research has found that 48% of Canadians polled in 2000 said that their top personal concern was seeming never to have enough time [Bibby, 2002, 205]. People are feeling stretched to the limit, with very little downtime for recovery and few spiritual resources to sustain them.

We are writing as two people engaged in a modern workplace with all its problems. This is not an academic analysis or a theological work, but a book for all spiritual explorers, regardless of their religious background, who are trying to integrate spirit and soul with work and daily life. We are both Christians, and clearly our faith influences the way we think and write. If we were Jewish or Muslim, this book would be different, but we hope that all readers will find it useful.

The perspectives we bring are broadly sociological and theological. Between us we have expertise in teaching, working with organizations, preparing students for the work world, and addressing the spiritual needs of people at various life stages. As a sociologist and a priest we have different working lives, but a shared desire to find God, spirit, holiness in the ordinary world, and to live connected to that sustaining centre. We do not have the answers to all the challenges of the workplace. Life, as Scott Peck memorably wrote, is difficult. And work will always be challenging. But we do have some insights into the simple gifts and truths that lie at the heart of spirituality, and we are convinced that as these are engaged so our work will be leavened and sanctified.

The book is structured in a straightforward way. Part One: The Challenges of the Workplace deals with issues of work today on three levels — the personal, the corporate, and the societal. Chapter 1 focuses on individuals dealing with the fragmentation between public and spiritual life. We look at the way life became compartmentalized over the centuries, and spirituality became divorced from work. Where God and prayer were a central part of agrarian living, the impersonal factories were soulless and seemed far removed from what was sacred. The legacy for individuals today is a disconnection between the public persona at work in the world, and the private being whose beliefs, longings and joys are kept locked out of sight and out of play during working hours.

Chapter 2 deals with the workplace. It looks at the reasons we work, and the way that we tend to define ourselves by our work, and then fall prey to its destructive characteristics of overwork, conflict, anxiety, and burnout. Chapter 3 is oriented to issues at a cultural level, and considers how competition, consumerism, and materialism, the cornerstones of our economy, contribute to an unsustainable situation for both individuals and organizations, leading to collapse.