By PatSullivan
When I ask groups of people what success means to them, most everyone starts with “it means making a lot of money.” When I ask them to define the word wealthy, the usual first response is “wealthy means having a lot of money.” So both success and wealthy are primarily equated with obtaining and having money.
That’s not how I define them. Take wealthy, for example. I prefer one dictionary definition of wealthy as “rich in character, quality, or amount; abundant or ample: e.g., a novel that is wealthy in its psychological insights.” Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
Raise your hand if you dislike and/or feel overwhelmed by your job. Also lift your hand if your job now is to find a job while dealing with the hard realities of ever-diminishing (or already diminished) financial resources.
Congratulations! You’ve just taken the first step to a spiritual makeover of any problem. By admitting the problem, your attention, at least for a few seconds, is diverted from any 24-hour stress/worry/whatever negative programming that is polluting your right mind, and you’re open for at least a few nanoseconds to the thought, “maybe things don’t have to be this way. Maybe they can be better.” Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
The most powerful spiritual principle regarding work, money, and any other human issue can be summed up in one word, “integrity.”
If integrity were considered exciting or sexy in our culture, it would get at least as much attention as a minor celebrity’s latest wardrobe malfunction or love life. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
Workdays may have changed a lot in the last 1500 years, but the ancient Benedictine rule has some good advice for anyone who wants more meaningful work: “Laborare est orare.” Or, if your Latin is fuzzy, “to work is to pray.” St. Benedict (480-547) probably never said these exact words, though he definitely promoted the spirit of work done prayerfully as well as carefully and efficiently. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
The heart and soul of any profession includes service, truth and consciousness. It’s hard to see that heart and soul today in the health insurance industry, while our country seeks a way out of the current health care financing mess. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
The Bible and other sacred texts are filled with prophets who blow the whistle on danger, fraud, waste or abuse of power. Other prophets alert us to the good news of hope and possibility.
Now that we finally have cable and decent streaming capability on our computers, my husband and I have become faithful to the late night fake news shows of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. We’ve also maintained our loyalty to Bill Moyers on PBS, whose prophetic guests are not always amusing.
The big difference between prophetic comedians and the people we usually think of as prophets is that we’re more likely to listen when we get to laugh first. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
The older I get, the more grateful I am for people whose individual choices have led to widespread movements of hope and creativity today.
Much spiritual wisdom today comes from how people dealt with war, racism and other pain decades ago.
In July 1942 when I was born, the world was at war. Now many who went through the worst of that war are guiding us to a more peaceful and meaningful humanity, like Auschwitz survivor and Nobel peace prize winner Elie Weisel and Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor and peace activist Takashi Tanemori. Continue reading this post »
