The reinvention of work

How many of us can really say that our work life is in balance with our personal life - that our values and desires are reflected in our daily vocation, that our personal life and professional life are integrated, or that we find satisfaction, not a crushing defeat of the spirit, in our workday existence? According to most polls and reports, very few of us do. Now controversial author and radical priest Matthew Fox shares his thoughts on one of the focal points of our lives - work. Like E. F. Schumacher before him, Fox has a unitive vision of the world. He urges us to overcome our feelings of isolation, insecurity, and alienation in our work lives and to embrace a vision of the world where the self is not sacrificed for a job, but is sanctified by authentic "soul work." He envisions a world where intellect, heart, and health come together in a harmony of essential life experiences that celebrates the whole person. Fox shatters industrial-age models of work by applying the principles of the new cosmology, calling on the prophetic voices from an array of professions - people who are asking critical questions about the way they work. Drawing on the rich legacy of great mystical teachings - from Hildegard of Bingen to Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, and the Bhagavad Gita - Fox proposes as a foundation for true work a spirituality rooted in the interconnectedness of all things. Like Thomas Aquinas before him, Matthew Fox believes that "to live well is to work well" and sets out to reconnect the postindustrial world to the Great Work of the universe. He addresses our unemployment crisis and our work crisis with a whole new model of livelihood for our time.