Many of us struggle with questions of livelihood. What are we drawn to do? Where is the place where our passion meets the world’s need? Can we both make a living and make a meaningful difference? Is it possible for us to do good and do well?
For more and more of us, work is where we put our spiritual life into practice. We may face expectations of availability around the clock. We may feel pressure to perform more and more tasks ever more effortlessly. Our own needs for balance and rest may come into conflict with other people’s demand for our services.
This walking and turning and walking again takes time.
Finding Livelihood is an insightful, personal tool for people on spiritual and occupational journeys. Nancy Nordenson is a medical and creative writer. She writes with clarity and precision about the spiritual challenges, lessons, and rewards of work.
Finding Livelihood is organized as a series of reflections about making a living and making a life. Each section explores the depths of a different aspect of livelihood and work. Drawn from her own life and experience, each is a valuable place to begin rewarding reflection.
It is easy to confuse the center of a labyrinth for a dead-end if you don’t see that the way out is just to get back on the path.
Nancy’s story includes her first paying job, singing Handel’s Messiah culminating in the Hallelujah chorus, her fellow passengers on airplane trips, the surgeries her son required when he fell from a scaffolding at a summer job, watching Russian icons being unpacked at a museum during her lunch hour.
Finding Livelihood explores questions of why some of us have such challenges finding our own calling, and how we allow expectations to create some of our difficulties. It is a valuable resource for spiritual advisors working with people seeking answers related to work and careers.
While Nancy writes from a Christian perspective, she raises questions and shares reflections which are not exclusive to Christianity.
A labyrinth’s exit and entrance are one and the same, depending on what you do with it. You can call it quits or pivot and start again inward toward the center.
My own personal favorite section is chapter 17, about the ways work and careers are reflected in walking a labyrinth. Does knowing our true selves allow us to find the work we love, or do we work our way toward knowing ourselves?
Finding Livelihood is not a how-to book filled with checklists and targeted goals. It is deeper and more rewarding than that, reflecting on deep truths.
(adapted from a review published in Spiritual Directors International’s Presence)
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