Spirituality At Work

Working Spirituality in Lent 

By Woodeene Koenig-Bricker

Friends of mine who are in 12-Step programs often talk about “working their program,” the key to their abstinence being to take life one day at a time, sometimes one moment at a time.

In many ways, the same approach is necessary as we seek to balance spirituality and work—day by day, minute by minute, living only in the present moment.

It seems to me that living in the present is the key to spirituality in all areas, but especially in the workplace. It’s so easy to let our minds get distracted and to function on autopilot during work hours, particularly if our work is tedious, repetitious, or boring (as all work sometimes is). To be fully in the present moment means that we can see the value of the work we are doing at the time we are doing. Consequently, it becomes infused with meaning. We begin to see the “bigger picture” of what we are doing, not just as one isolated worker, but as part of the entire human community working to create and recreate the world in the image of God.

How to do this consistently is, of course, the big question. And it’s a question that is particularly relevant as we begin the Lenten season and the journey to Easter. I seem to achieve being present in the present best when I view all of my work as prayer. I don’t mean praying while working (rosary beads and keyboards seem to be mutually incompatible, at least with my fingers), but rather by considering my work itself as my prayer. In other words, to view everything I do in the workday, from writing to filing to making phone calls to talking with colleagues, as an integral part of my prayer life.

When I think of work that way—as prayer—then no matter what I do, even if it’s boring, dull or unpleasant (note to boss: Nothing in my job is boring, dull or unpleasant!) seems to increase my attention to detail and thus automatically increase the quality and care with which I work. It becomes, not a vicious circle, but a blessed one. As I strive to make my work into my prayer, my prayer becomes my work.

It’s not just those of us with so called “white collar” jobs who can transform our work into a prayer. In Spirituality@work, Greg Pierce quotes a letter carrier who says, “…in the midst of business, there can be a stillness in which God speaks and acts. So often I have had the deepest sense of God or had some revelation when I’ve been hard at work. My best time of prayer is when my feet are moving on my route.”

Now, as winter relinquishes the land and the hope of spring blossoms with the coming of Easter, let us begin by seeing that all we do, is as the famous Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “charged with the grandeur of God” and work accordingly.

 Originally in The Journalist, the official newspaper of the Catholic Press Association.