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The Reinvention of Work: New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time, A

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In The Reinvention of Work, Matthew Fox brings together the work of Eastern and Western mystics, ancient, medieval, and modern, to propose a new paradigm for how we work and what we do. Citing Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, Hildegard von Bingen, the Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, Studs Terkel, Patch Adams, and progressive economists, Fox explores the concept of work and how it can be healthier physically, emotionally, and intellectually, but primarily socially, environmentally, and spiritually.

Fox believes that the Enlightenment and the industrial age have left us with a machine-centered, anthropocentric world that focuses on outer work and rewards at the cost of inner work and spirituality, and destroys rather than creates. Real wealth results from preserving the health of the planet, not in the artificiality of money or possessions. The result has been a world often at war, where the gaps between affluent and poor continue to spread, where the environmental health of non-industrialised nations is sacrificed for the comforts of the industrialised, and where the work that is available and that most people have serves machines and leaves the worker stressed, addicted to work, ill, angry and even violent, and unfulfilled intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

Fox cites mystics like Eckhart and Aquinas to show that they understood what is important and that they prophetically understood the traps that man is prone to fall into. He also recounts the stories of people who reinvent themselves through work, who are willing to sacrifice position and possessions to find an avocation that matters, like the man who gives up a high-paying position to become a fireman and who is ecstatic about the meaning it brings to his life.

Fox carefully sets up all that is wrong with our modern concept of work and, indeed, life, since so much of who we are, how we feel, and how we live is tied up in what we do for a living, or what we mistakenly call "work." His proposed solutions are centered around creation spirituality, which is a "creation-centered mysticism that is also prophetic and socially transformative." While creation spirituality is not very clearly defined here-Fox has written several other books about it and refers to them-it appears to center around the idea that creation comes from within and that we create our world, which is part of a greater, interdependent cosmos that continues to undergo creation. For Fox, "enlightenment" might mean recognising and embracing creation spirituality and our responsibility and role in the ongoing creation of the cosmos-a recognition that begins with inner work and extends outer work, and that redefines wealth and poverty. Fox is quick to point out that this is neither communism nor socialism, both of which suffer from the same destructive values as capitalism.

There are many elements involved in creation spirituality, which embraces many aspects of life that have been neglected, distorted, or abused, from education, health care, art, psychology, and sexuality to something he believes is critical yet missing or misused-ritual. In creation spirituality and the reinvention of work, properly conceived and performed ritual is meaningful, bringing people together, bringing out emotions, and acknowledging what has been done in the name of war, destruction, and hate. Ritual can also be playful and energising, for example, circle dances. Whatever the focus, ritual brings us together to share our common joys and sorrows. Ritual heals.

Mysticism appeals to me, and Fox's assessments of what's wrong and what could be done to change our course make sense and are supported by the quotes he provides from a broad array of sources, including psychologists, economists, writers, and artists. The consequences of not changing are clear, but it is equally clear that those consequences have not penetrated to either the masses or their leaders. (Even the rising price of gasoline in 2005 has not inspired any more than cautious apprehension.) We are like smokers who are able to quit our habit only when terminal lung cancer has been diagnosed.

To get billions of conditioned consumers (and their consumers-in-training children) to give up their increasingly complex lifestyles, comforts, and amusements in the interest of a healthier, more just world for all and for better personal mental and physical health requires a utopian change that most people will not embrace. As with the Woolgers in their book, The Goddess Within, Fox tries to find a movement in the mid-1990s that has not materialised yet. Generally, people do not choose to change; they are forced to. Perhaps someday, when the gaps have widened too far, and society and our home can no longer support our appetites (and the corresponding waste), we may be ready to listen to Fox and his adherents, at which point they will need to provide practical answers. Who will "make ritual"? Who will produce the necessities and how? Who will distribute them? How will they be paid, or what will replace a monetary/barter economy? What if there is imbalance between what people want to do and what needs to be done? In practical, everyday terms, what does the reinvention of work look like? And do I want to live long enough to experience the disasters that are likely to be required to bring it about?

Eckhart, Aquinas, von Bingen, the Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching-all wise beyond their times. And beyond ours as well.

Diane L. Schirf, 21 August 2005.

Like most of Fox's books, this one ranges from the sublime (the cosmic implications of "true work") to the ridiculous (there's nothing sillier than a celibate priest writing about sex). And Fox's ego is far too much in evidence at times. Still, I'd recommend this book to anyone who's trying to rethink their relationship to "work." I picked it up at a time when I was undergoing immense life and career changes. Although it wasn't much help in practical decision-making, it did give me a fresh perspective on how my values related to the jobs I'd had (they didn't), and got me thinking about how I could translate them into work I felt better about. Also, although I'm a former Catholic and hypersensitive to writers who try to force their doctrinal perspective on you, I felt that Fox generally managed to be spiritual without being sectarian (that's probably why he's no longer a Catholic!). In general, this book has a lot to recommend it, although keeping your tongue in your cheek at times is strongly advised.

The Reinvention of Work changed the way I view work. As a Career Counselor I realized new ways to work with clients. The book helps one go deeper into understanding what we are really all about in relationship to work. It is not a self-help book and does not profess to be one. The book helps us step outside of ourselves and to consider what is important to each of us in our work beyond the paycheck. It truly creates a vision of what our work life can be if we take the time to listen to our inner wisdom.

A wide ranging exploration of the meaning of work and a call for its resacralization from a creatively radical priest, this book offers both challenge and hope. Noting that hunter/gatherer societies had no unemployment whereas modern industrial society now forces more than one sixth of the planetary population into that state as a permanent condition, Fox pronounces the system a failure. We have created jobs without meaning and devastated the earth in the process. His call is for a redefinition of wealth and a return to the roots of "economy" which originally meant running a home. He suggests that there is no intrinsic reason to value scarce metals and gems, gold is only valuable because those who hold it claim it to be so. Fox suggests that real wealth is having our house in order, having a biosphere that supports life, having a sufficiency of material necessary for participation in the creative work of the Universe. His perspective is deeply spiritual, seeing humanity's role as inseparable from the work of God, all that is, the Tao, the Cosmic Christ ... his definition of our source is widely inclusive. In fact, his view is so inclusive that it begs me to ask, "Why include religiosity at all?" If we look around at what needs to be done, Fox suggests, our work is plain. There can be no unemployment in a society which values life as the highest goal. Notwithstanding his religious hang-up, the breadth of Fox's view is delightful and surprising. In conjunction with theorizing, he offers practical ways to renew ourselves and our perspective on work. He suggests that vegetarianism, recycling, bicycling, farming organically, adopting clean energy systems, taking back our entertainment hours from industrial producers, studying, becoming activists, stabilizing population and investing responsibly are expressions of an urgently needed new ethic. He argues that we are sacred, life is sacred, our work must be sacred too. Well, okay. But the suggestions work just as well if one strips out the putative sanctification and simply honors the living system that supports us. From a book laced with pertinent and thought provoking quotes, I will conclude with this. "A person works in a stable. That person has a breakthrough. What does she do? She returns to the stable."-Meister Eckhart.

this is the best book i've read bar none about changing my perception about the meaning of work vs. job. who i choose to be within this framework of employment is crucial. choosing peace rather than suffering really is an option...

Matthew Fox (born 1940) is a theologian and bestselling advocate of "Creation Spirituality." He became a Catholic priest of the Dominican order, but was removed in 1992, and has subsequently become an Episcopalian priest. He has published an autobiography, Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest.

He states in the Introduction to this 1994 book, "it constitutes a creation theology of sacrament just as my The Coming of the Cosmic Christ constituted a Christology and Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth constituted an ecclesiology... I have never connected work and sacrament so explicitly before... All work, I propose, constitutes an expression of one of the traditional seven sacraments, analogously understood... To bring spirituality to bear on our discussions of work is to bring out the mystical as well as the prophetic dimensions of work."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"Education on a mass scale IS the new work. Our minds never know too much. Our minds want to be stretched to experience the infinite, another word for which is Spirit."
"I believe that where life is most desperate ... art is the answer. Let me propose a wild and necessary idea: a series of art/entertainment universities set up in the inner cities of the United States... I believe such universities would succeed. Why? Because many unemployed persons would attend, drawn by art's natural attraction."
"As I see it, the most important work of our time is work on the human species itself. This is how we will both reinvent work and redeem the work worlds in which we operate."