Spirit, Work and Money

Over the past 30 years, many of us throughout the world have discovered that work is not just a way to earn our living, but also a way of serving a purpose that goes way beyond what’s necessary to earn a paycheck. To this work, we bring not just our rational minds and training, but also our caring, our intuition, our instincts and all the other aspects of wisdom-generating consciousness. Increasingly, we’ve been bringing more consciousness and caring to our relationships with money.

As a writer and speaker about spirit and work for more than 14 years, it’s been my honor to interview hundreds of people about what makes work meaningful and satisfying. I’ve discovered that whatever our beliefs or faith — whether or not they are attached to a formal religion — we all endowed by our Creator with a sense of wonder, a natural sense of integrity, and a longing for connection not just to other humans but also to the earth and all upon it. This, and much more, is the essence of our spiritual nature.

When we bring spirit to any task, stress melts, burnout disappears, and creativity blossoms. We’ve got more energy not just to tackle problems of today but also to create new ways of working and dealing with work and money. We find simple ways to begin or end our work in prayer or even, like the Benedictine model, to allow prayer to become our work and work to become our prayer. We see how work, to paraphrase Khalil Gibran, becomes love made visible.

We develop new approaches to work and business, such as the rapidly growing conscious capitalism or socially responsible business movements. And we re-discover the ancient wisdom of all faiths for work and money.

It’s been my great joy over the past 14 years to report how others at any level of the corporate or nonprofit ladder are connecting spirit, work, money and business. Now, as the economic crisis presents both new opportunities and new challenges, the reporting continues here. Hopefully, this blog will become a thoughtful watering hole for the sharing of visions and inspiration as well as what works to enrich all the ways we earn, spend, share and invest money.

Welcome,

Pat McHenry Sullivan
www.visionary-resources.com
www.spiritandworkresourcecenter.com
510-530-0284

all contents copyright 2009 by Pat McHenry Sullivan, t/a Visionary Resources