Spirituality At Work

Spirituality, Work and the Movies (Part 2)

By Woodeene Koenig-Bricker

Last month and this month, we are presenting movies that illustrate and illuminate the spirituality of work from Greg Pierces' book on the Spirituality of Work by Ave Maria Press, (c) 2005 by Gregory F. Augustine Pierce (800) 397-2282; spiritualitywork@aol.com. They are all available on the Internet. If you look carefully at some films (and even at television shows in some cases), you can observe the spirituality of work being practiced. One of the things you will notice is that truly spiritual work is not about how pious the person is but about how and why he or she does the actual work.

Here are the second five of our top 10 movies about work.

6. Norma Rae, written by Irving Raetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., and directed by Martin Ritt

This is another great movie about blue-collar workers. Sally Field won an academy award as best actress for her portrayal of Norma Rae, a Southern textile worker who joins and eventually becomes a leader in a labor union. Ron Liebman plays a union organizer who goes about his work with courage and integrity, always putting the best interests of the workers ahead of his own agenda. Again, there is little mention of organized religion in Norma Rae’s life. It is in her work as a mill worker and a union leader as well as a wife and mother and daughter that her spirituality lies.

7. Dead Poet’s Society, written by Tom Schulman and directed by Peter Wier

Robin Williams plays John Keating, an iconoclastic and charismatic English professor who inspires his students to live life to the fullest. The scenes of Williams teaching his students to love poetry is a great example of the spirituality of work in action. “What will you’re contribution be?” he asks his students about the meaning of their life’s work. Williams interactions with the stuffy, inflexible teaching colleagues is also worth viewing.

8. Patch Adams, written by Patch Adams and Maureen Mylander and directed by Tom Shadyac

Here is Robin Williams again, this time playing Dr. Hunter “Patch” Adams, a real-life doctor. (In my opinion, Williams has a knack for realistically and insightfully portraying people in different occupations as well as anyone.) Again, Williams’ character is an iconoclast who is trying to deal with the medical establishment without losing his soul. This movie offers an example of someone who cannot function inside “the system” and must go out and create an alternative way to do his work.

9. Saving Grace, written by Celia Gittelson and directed by Robert M. Young

Tom Conti plays a fictional pope who somehow gets locked out of the Vatican and ends up in a small mountain town in Italy, where nobody recognizes him. The spirit of the townspeople is low, because they are poor and have lost faith in their ability to improve their lives, symbolized by their failure to finish building a new aqueduct to bring water to their town. Conti’s character begins rebuilding the aqueduct on his own, eventually joined by the children and widows and eventually the rest of the townspeople. It is the work itself that saves the town’s—and the pope’s—soul.

10. The Gospel According to Vic, written and directed by Charles Gormley

Again Tom Conti stars, this time as a teacher in a Catholic school in Scotland. The school is named after “Blessed Edith Semple,” a local woman who has been declared “blessed” by the church but needs one more miracle in order to be canonized. Conti works very hard with one particular student who is severely learning handicapped and has a major breakthrough. The student starts functioning normally, and everyone says that it is the miracle the church had been looking for. Conti spends the rest of the movie defending the profession of teaching, insisting it was his good work as a teacher that had cured the boy, not the intervention of a saint. To me, this movie raises a lot of issues about the meaning and holiness of all of our work.