SAW Would Love to Hear from YOU!

How Has Our Work Touched You? 

The leadership of Spirituality at Work is in the process of writing a major grant proposal in hopes of funding our work for the next several years.  As part of the proposal, we’d like to include the anecdotes or musings of people who have been involved in some way in the project: as conversation and workshop participants, as readers of our newsletter, as purchasers and/or our handbook or other materials.  In short; we’d like to know what the work of SAW has meant to you, specifically:

• What was of use to you in our workshops?

• What has participating in a conversation group been like for you?

• Has anything you’ve read in this newsletter ever struck a responsive chord in you?

• How have your consultations with SAW’s leadership proved fruitful for you?

• Where do you work or what kind of work do you do? 
• In what context have you been involved with SAW? 
• If we may use your name, or if you’d rather we kept your remarks anonymous, please tell us this as well.

Your contribution is tax-deductible. Checks may be made payable to: 

Spirituality at Work 

Spirituality at Work, c/o Diocese of California, 1055 Taylor Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.

• Do you have a webpage related to spirituality and work?  We are in the process of re-doing ours and would love to explore the possibility of linking our website to yours.  E-mail us with your website address! 
• Are you interested in starting spirituality and work conversation in your own work neighborhood?  Get in touch with us by phone or email and let us know how we can assist you. 
• Do you live in the San Francisco Bay Area? Would you like to become involved in our local projects?  Most of our leadership is volunteer, people who believe passionately in the vision of SAW and want to do what they can to make it happen.  Let us know of your interest! 
• Is prayer a part of your own spirituality?  If so, would you add us to your prayer list?  We believe this is one of the most powerful ways you can support us!

So here I am: sitting at my desk, wondering what wise and clever thing I can write in this, the final SAW newsletter of the second millennium. Truth is, I don’t think a whole lot about the turn of the millennium: part of me is in deep denial, I suspect. After all, I’m going to wake up on January 1st and things are probably going to be pretty much they way they were when I woke up on December 31st.  (I’m not one of those who worries overly much about the Y2K gremlins: more denial?  I’ll know soon enough...!)  And yet, this isn’t an ordinary transition, and I’m finding that something in me does want to pay a little closer attention, to think a little more deeply about who I am and about these times in which we live.... 

Maybe that’s why I noticed some-thing that’s never occurred to me before: as we’ve arranged our calendar, the New Year always comes at the darkest time of the year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere.) Actually, it’s a few days after the Winter Solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year, a turning point of sorts when darkness begins to give way to light. I turn the idea over and over in my mind: darkness into light, turning point ... pivotal moments... surely the turn of the millennium must be something of this sort.... And I find myself recalling vaguely an expression I ran across my first year of graduate school when I read futurist Alvin Toffler’s stimulating trilogy which began with FutureShock in 1970, continued with The Third Wave in 1980 and concluded with Powershift in 1990.  So I leave the computer and rummage in my box of old papers.  My search is rewarded: I find the reference, although Toffler spoke not of “pivotal moments” but of “pivotal minorities.” 

I’m intrigued, though, and begin to re-read what I wrote six years ago.  I was describing the pessimism I’d encountered in my reading: the concern that the demands of our times were overwhelming the cultural and organizational structures we’d evolved to deal with them.  Would we be able to change fast enough to avoid catastrophe?  Toffler was not especially hopeful, and yet, he did point to something chaos theory scientists were discovering: that when a system, whether natural or human,  is in a state of dis-equilibrium it becomes very sensitive to minor changes which ordinarily would not impact the system significantly.  In the case of social systems, dis-equilibrium  makes it possible  for “pivotal minorities” to have a greater-than-normal influence on the future.  Toffler feared the possible catastrophic effect of extremist groups. 

Still, as I sit here, contemplating the millennial  turning point we’re rapidly approaching, I wonder: what’s to say a “pivotal minority” couldn’t be positive, effecting a greater integration, or a deeper tolerance, or a wiser vision of the whole?  What does it take, I wonder, to be such a “pivotal minority” in the workplace:  a change-agent: “the right person at the right time?”  I’m not sure. When all hell is breaking loose (my  rough and slightly theological description of a system in chaos...) it’s hard to know just what to do.  After all, anyone who stands out in such a situation may get hammered.  Better perhaps to duck and cover, fade into the woodwork or try to intuit the way the system’s moving and go with the flow, appearing to be a leader (like so many of our politicians...) But then that’s the point: in a chaotic system, it’s difficult to predict which way the system’s moving: “going with the flow” may mean exiting down the nearest drain... 

I wonder if this is where spirituality comes into play.  Mother Teresa used to say, “You don’t have to be successful; only faithful.”  My hunch is that “being faithful” is a piece of what it takes to become a “pivotal minority” at this “pivotal moment.” It means holding to a vision of a deeper Wholeness which contains even our chaos; it means being willing to take leadership, make real choices based on that vision and sometimes it means speaking into the chaos a word of truth as we see it.

Maybe it means being able to imagine the light at the time of greatest darkness....