Who Me? A Prophet??

As If by Magic...

Last Word or First…?

Choose your poison…
or not!

Darkness Giving
Way to Light...?

Time To Say Yes

Of Science, Oatmeal
and Meaning

The Cypress in the Garden:
A Koan Revisited…

Divine Hospitality
at Work...

For the Time Being...
Some Thoughts on the Stewardship of Time

Choose your poison… or not!

By Whitney Wherrett Roberson

For many in the Christian tradition, these weeks before Easter are marked as the special season of reflection called "Lent." As someone accustomed to making connections between work life and the life of the spirit, I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that I've I've found myself musing about Lent at work. Lent is traditionally a time when Christians take a break from "business as usual." Since, for most of us, our "business as usual" is "work," my musing has lead me to wonder what it might mean "do Lent" at work? (Assuming, of course, that -- attractive as it might be -- we're not really free to give up work for Lent!)

Reflecting about the connection between Lent and work brought me to the idea of forgiveness - a word we don't often associate with the workplace. Maybe that's because we don't usually use its companion concept - sin - at work. Not that there isn't sin at work - but we usually don't call it that. Sometimes we call it "arrogance" or "ambition" or "rudeness" or, if it involves a lapse in competence, we may call it "failure." (Although I do think there's a difference between "sin" and "failure." The latter is more likely to be ethically neutral. Still, underlying a "lapse in competence" may be sinful habits of behavior or attitude.)

I wonder what it would look like to experiment with forgiveness at work? How to begin? Well, maybe simply by reflecting on those workplace situations that annoy or grieve us, or in which we've been mistreated or wronged; maybe by letting ourselves feel the feelings associated with those experiences -- but without acting on them. Sometimes wisdom emerges from such reflecting and a way to forgiveness and creative action emerges just by our making room for the feelings and waiting quietly beside them.

And sometimes it takes something more. A wise and holy friend of mine once shared with me what he called the five steps of forgiving. I can't remember all of them, but I do remember the first few (tells you something about my own progress in learning to forgive that I never made it passed Step Two!) The first step, I remember, was "stop saying or doing the unkind thing." "But, hey," I protested to him at the time, "I'm the one who was wronged here; why are you telling me to stop being unkind…?!" Well, the truth was, I was nursing my hurt: rehearsing it in my imagination, talking to others about it, plotting fantasy revenge … you know the routine. I wasn't leaving any room for divine Myster to work transformation, either in myself or in the relationship. My friend rightly noted that while I couldn't change the actions of the other, I could change my own

Step two, as I recall, was "pray for the other person; pray that God bless that other twice as much as God blesses you." Now, I could manage the first part: I could - barely - pray for the other: "God, help so and so see the error of his/her way…" which is probably why my friend added that second bit! And, you know, that second bit was really hard. And it really worked. After some days of praying blessing on the other, something shifted. Was the shift in me, or in the other - or in whatever was between us? I could never tell - but things began to change.

One of our regular Spirituality at Work participants is fond of saying "Failing to forgive another person is like taking poison and expecting that other person to die!" What better way to take a break from "business as usual" - now or at anytime -- than to look at the poisons we take at work - and, maybe, to choose to stop taking them?!