Who should read this book?
I believe there is a growing thirst in our western contemporary culture for depth, purpose and meaning in our lives. It feels like our world is speeding up. Economic pressures are leading to workloads that are ever-increasing. Our capacity to attend to our inner lives weakens in the face of expanding external demands. We often feel either wound up or worn out. Yet we are aware of our alienation (although sometimes only dimly) even in the midst of our frantic busyness. We do sense our dis-ease.
Some of us may attend worship on Sundays and yearn for intimacy with God through the rest of our week, but rarely experience the presence of the Real away from our community of faith, in our workday world.
Others of us may have given up on the Church or have never been part of a faith community. And yet we have somehow been drawn into the orbit of the Divine and sense a kind of holy restlessness in our lives. We're not sure how to orient ourselves towards this Mystery in the mayhem of our jobs. And we doubt our capacity to make any significant difference in our troubled world. The Spirit at work in our own work lives? It doesn't seem possible.
Deep Work: Spiritual Practice in our Workday World has emerged from my life-long desire to discover how God's abundant life can grace our work lives. Four inter-related convictions have grown out of my own work experience and which wend their way through the pages of this book:
- The Holy One is present and active in the whole of our lives: in our paid employment, just as surely as in Sunday worship.
- We are invited into communion with the Real in every aspect of our lives; in our active engagements as well as in dedicated times of prayer and reflection.
- The contemplative and active dimensions of our lives need not be mutually exclusive. Our inner orientation towards God and God's world can connect in profound ways with our actions towards others and with the work that we undertake. Both contemplative and active dimensions of our lives interweave, nourish and inform one another.
- As we respond to the Divine invitation to enter into communion with God, (which for Christians is through the risen Christ) we are drawn by the Spirit into God's own good work. We begin more consciously to participate in the Creator's deep purposes of reconciliation and renewal that is intended for the whole of creation. God's transforming Presence becomes more active in and through us in all dimensions of our lives - although usually in ways that are imperceptible to us at the time, and always in ways that are beyond our capacity to fully understand.
This book has been written for those who long for a greater depth of aliveness in the hours that they spend in paid employment. It is for those who seek a deeper integration between their inner soul-selves and their outer active work-selves. You may be a Christian wanting to grow more Christ-like in your work hours, or a sceptic who nevertheless seeks greater depth in your spiritual journey and are open to a contemporary Christian's experience. This book is also for ministers and priests whose role is to provide guidance to those members of their faith community who work in paid employment and who also long to make meaningful connections between their Sunday morning faith and their workday world.
