The document discusses different perspectives on work and vocation. It addresses how work can be both meaningful and alienating. It explores finding fulfillment and purpose in one's career. The key ideas are that work should be a dignified part of life where we contribute to society, but we often become dehumanized when work controls our lives instead of us controlling our work. We have a choice to live in a worthwhile way and not be slaves to consumerism. The challenge is discovering our vocations where our passions meet the world's needs.

3. Work as a part of life
•Ora et Labora (work and
pray) (St Benedict)
•All work is a dignified part of
a human life.
•Even the most boring,
repetitive work has meaning
in that you are contributing to
society

4. The Key Question
•How do we have a life
which finds time for
work, rest, study, and
prayer and thus
respects our basic
human rhythms?

5. Alienation
•When you work, you
become dehumanised –
an instrument in
someone else’s
schemes.
•It is a loss of control of
our lives
•Karl Marx

6. Or to put it another way…
•“Advertising has us chasing cars and
clothes, working jobs we hate so we
can buy shit we don't need. We're the
middle children of history, man. No
purpose or place. We have no Great
War. No Great Depression. Our great
war is a spiritual war... Our great
depression is our lives. We've all been
raised on television to believe that one
day we'd all be millionaires, and movie
gods, and rock stars, but we won't.
We're slowly learning that fact.”
•Aka The Hedonic Treadmill

7. The Thing in Our Favour
•We have a choice.
•We don’t have to buy
shit
•We can choose to live
in a worthwhile way.
•Perhaps we even have
a responsibility to do
so?

8. Interaction
Turn to the person near you who you know
least well and tell them your career story.
•What do you do?
•How long have you done it?
•Why did you choose it?
•What do you like about it?
•What do you dislike about it?

9. A Question
•Does your faith have
an effect on what you
do for a job, or how you
do it?

10. The Task
It isn't normal to know
what we want. It is a
rare and difficult
psychological
achievement.
Abraham Maslow

11. Another Inspiring Quote
Vocation is "the place
where your deep
gladness meets the
world's deep need."
(Buechner , Palmer)

12. Questing
Now I become myself.
It's taken time, many years and places.
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces…
(Mary Sexton, quoted in Parker
Palmer)

13. First World Problem?
•The way I see it, this is a
responsibility
•We have an unprecedented
opportunity to live well
•Only if we are not slaves to
the system can we think
clearly enough about what
needs to happen to make a
decent life for everyone.
•This isn’t to say that it’s
easy…

14. Now What?
•What did you like to do
when you were a child?
•What do you naturally
find yourself doing now
when you have space
and time?
•What gives you
energy?

15. Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say
- William Stafford “Ask Me”

16. Read
Let Your Life Speak Parker Palmer
An excerpt:
http://www.explorefaith.org/palmer/chp2_9.html