Spirituality @ Work
10 Ways to Balance Your Life on-the-Job

Gregory F. A. Pierce
168 pages
Loyola Press, 2001
Retail price: $17.95
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From the Publisher
For over three years, author and publisher Gregory Pierce and 400 other working people have grappled with connecting faith and work through an e-mail discussion group. Together, they explore a spirituality that involves getting into the world rather than away from it. Pierce's new book, Spirituality @ Work: 10 Ways to Balance Your Life on the Job, grew out of this continuing discussion. It's a blueprint for integrating the seemingly diametric worlds of spirituality and work.

Challenging the conventional wisdom on the nature and practice of spirituality, Pierce argues that the contemplative life is not the only way to connect with the sacred, and that spirituality should not be confused with religion or piety. In fact, he writes for the "piety-impaired" - those who, like himself, are uncomfortable with displays of religiosity, especially in the workplace.

Instead of adapting traditional disciplines to the workplace, Pierce calls for a new model. "If a spirituality of work is going to be successful, it cannot be based on exercises that take us away from the daily grind" he says, "but rather must allow the daily grind to be grist for our spiritual mills."

Pierce offers a set of disciplines tailored for the workplace, where they can be done "consistently, without disrupting work, and without anyone knowing what you are doing." They embody values of honesty, integrity, loyalty, encouragement, justice and generosity. Among the practices he mentions are surrounding yourself with sacred objects - anything from a piece of religious art to family photos; living with imperfection in yourself and others; giving thanks and congratulations; building support and community; and dealing with others as you'd have them deal with you.

Like all spiritual disciplines, these have to be done faithfully and regularly, Pierce says. He provides tips for implementing each one, with examples of how to personalize them. Participants in his free email group (available at gfapiercegaol.com) share ideas for intentional spirituality in the workplace in sidebars throughout the book.


About the Author
As a publisher, editor, community organizer, volunteer baseball coach, Catholic lay leader, husband and father of three teenage children, Gregory Pierce, 53, knows how difficult it is to incorporate one's faith into the work day. His new book, Spirituality @ Work: 10 Ways to Balance Your Life-on-the-Job, resulted from his search for a real-world spirituality.

"Most people equate spirituality with getting away from the world to find God, but God is already present in the hustle and bustle of daily life," Pierce says.

Recipient of the 1997 Hillebrand Award for the Social Justice from the Archdiocese of Chicago, Pierce is a former president of the National Center for the Laity and one of the founders of Business Executives for Economic Justice. He is also active in the Catholic Book Publishers Association and United Power for Action and Justice.

Pierce is copublisher of ACTA Publications, which specializes in books on integrating the Christian faith with daily life. He writes and speaks extensively on the vocation of the laity and the spirituality of work. For several years he wrote a syndicated column, "Faith and Work."

Pierce lives in Chicago with his wife, Kathy, and their children Abby, Nate, and Zack. They are members of St. Mary of the Woods Church on Chicago's Northwest side.


Books by Gregory F. A. Pierce

Activism That Makes Sense: Congregations and Community Organization
Confident and Competent: A Challenge to the Lay Church
For Those Who Work: Stations of the Cross and Ordinary Mysteries of the Rosary

Book Reviews
Spirituality at Work is based on the premise that we find God, and more importantly God finds us, where we are. Since we spend so many hours at work, Greg Pierce challenges to us it dive into the world of "noise, crowds, and complexity" in order "to make the world a better place, a little closer to the way God would have things."

This is the flip side to the "silence, solitude, and simplicity" of traditional spirituality, but Pierce points out that Jesus was not a monk and "was more oriented to staying in the world than getting away from it." It's not all or none, but the challenge is to recognize that the quantitative demands of the contemporary work world compel us to seek God and meaning among the many hours spent there.

There are ten carefully developed "disciplines" to making and
finding spirituality at work:

1. Surrounding yourself with "sacred" objects
2. Living with imperfection
3. Assuring quality
4. Giving thanks and congratulations
5. Building support and community
6. Dealing with others as you would have them deal with you
7. Deciding what is "enough" and sticking to it
8. Balancing work, personal, family, church, and community responsibilities
9. Working to make "the system" work
10. Engaging in ongoing personal and professional development

I found that Spirituality at Work builds positive momentum as you move from chapter to chapter. This is one of those thoughtful books that might best be read back-to-front. In many ways this effort is still a work in progress. Pierce is building a rough cut, fully framed structure, to which we must do the finishing work and decorating. That is as it should be.

Spirituality at Work is a blueprint for the development of an understanding of the role work plays in our life and salvation. As work increasingly dominates our lives, this book invites and urges us to build the meaning and purpose of our work into the larger construct of our lives and destiny.

— R. Paul Nelson, President Emeritus
Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, MI

The National Catholic Reporter (February 2, 2001) features Greg Pierce and Spirituality @ Work in its cover story entitled, "Spirituality for the piety-impaired: Greg Pierce to the rescue for folks on the go." In the article, Robert J. McClory reports that Pierce wants a spirituality that can flourish within the nitty-gritty of the workplace, one that recognizes "the intrinsically spiritual nature of work," and sees God's presence in life, "whether bidden or unbidden."

To read more about the life and work of Greg Pierce, a sampling of spiritual practices for the workplace, go to http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/020201/020201a.htm.

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