Ora et Labora and Right Livelihood: Some Notes Toward a Contemplative Spirituality of Work

Most of us spend a lot of time working — so what is the spirituality of work? And how does work impact, or integrate with, our spiritual practice?

The motto of Benedictine monasticism is Ora et Labora. It’s Latin for, “Prayer and Work” or “Prayer and Labor.” I love how the ora is actually found within labora, suggesting that prayer is (or can/should be) a part of work.

Compare this to the noble eightfold path of Buddhism: the Buddha’s prescription for how to balance one’s life in the interest of finding liberation from suffering. One of the key eight disciplines is “Right Livelihood” — suggesting that having a mindful, conscious, ethical relationship with one’s work is an important part of liberation.

I imagine for many people it might be easy to ignore or under-emphasize the question of how spirituality impacts work (and vice versa). Perhaps it’s too easy to create a firewall between our lives at work and our spiritual practice.

Most of us recognize how not to mix work and spirituality. For example, too many workplaces have that annoying guy down in the accounting department who will talk your ear off about Jesus if you let him — the one who always wants to know if you’ve been saved or not. Thanks to overzealous folks like that, we’ve learned that bringing religion, or even spirituality, into the workplace is bad form (and frowned upon by H.R.). So we keep these two aspects of our…