Getting Work Right

Family policy matters and engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the Carolina family policy.

This is John Ralston from students and family and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program is offering religion to me and formed, encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that she will fold better equipped to be a voice of persuasion, family values in your community, state and nation. Now here's our host family policy matters, tracing the veterans thank you for joining us this week for family policy matters. We can all agree that if someone said we were a hard worker, that would be a complement but how many of us realize how important it is to be good at leisure. Well, today's guest says those two things work and leisure are vitally connected.

Dr. Michael Naughton has written a book about this. It's called getting work right labor and leisure in a fragmented world with Dr. not welcome to family policy matters. This sounds like it's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to well before we get to the leisure part.

Let's talk a little bit about some of the fundamental questions as to why does work matter to the human person and the human experience were made to work for his father made him the maker why when people win the lottery, and the court worked there often usually not happy or not happy or structured water. The churches always been concerned an other organization concerned about unemployment because often not to have work causing some serious issues and that is that were made in the image of God, whose recruiter River command to subdue it have dominion of the earth and the gifts and the talents and abilities we have. Help us to develop who we are in the exercising of those gifts one last point on this is a term which I find very helpful called the subjective dimension of work that we work, we not only change things outside of us, but we simultaneously change things inside of us.

So the question for us is what we changing into in the work that we do and that I think is one of the key reasons why it's so important when it is actually important.

So the idea that our work is transforming us you want to talk a little bit more about that because that seems like a very interesting concept. It's one of the major insights that we have to come to recognize because for many of us we we don't see the changes in terms of what work is interesting about this way all of us are evaluated in terms of the object of changes we'll get more students who don't have greater financial viability. If we don't increase her productivity we get. Evaluate will get incentivized.

We get rewarded. We don't do it. We feel it and things of that sort. After we have this kind of checklist about what we can do and how we can prove outside, but we don't often have this checklist inside and that's why the kind of reflective manager the reflective worker the contemplative worker is so important because if I'm not reflecting on what work is doing and particulates affected me as I wake up 20 years down the road and said what happened, how did I get here. Seems like a much different way of looking at work because especially for some believers who might say hey I just work to pay the bills and then I'm doing my ministry and and and working on my faith in or outside of the office, but that doesn't sound like what you're saying right and true to you upon a major problem that I talked about the book is called the divided life.

So we compartmentalized off this particular area of work. Sometimes our work can be challenging sometimes it can be oppressive. Sometimes it doesn't have much of a value to it.

We feel that way I would shelter with us is not money right my real life is over here and that divided life will shortly from a Christian perspective that believes in the incarnation right that the use of faith is animating everything I do, not just this section will be here so that's why I think really the key.

If the key part of it is really reflecting on how can I open myself up to a much larger picture that the Lord's, calling me to and in terms of the work that I do. So let's talk about the connection then between work and leisure.

Why is leisure also important to how we work. So the book is a work right. We have to get leisure right and that is I think this relationship between what we call the contemplative life in the active life or think about in terms of breathing. Tracy right we have to breathe in with the breed out right and and this is really the nature of life that is our need to receive and I need to give leisure's goals is vegging out from a television where it might be. And that's just a cheap version of what leisure can be can be leisurely one since. But if we depend too much on it actually destroys leisure because it doesn't give us rest.

Leisure is about this receptive life.

It's not about what I do like the capacity to receive the reality of the world and that for us as Americans particularly who are very pragmatic, very much like get it done. Let's do it. We have a hard time craving those conditions for receptivity meant when I received well.

Now I have the capacity to give well and that's about work.

This is how I give up myself in the work that I do so leisure is getting at the idea of the contemplative life to receptive life that's that's why the relationship of working leisure at the contemplative and active life, and this idea of receiving and giving is a kind of key rhythm of the way that we should be living so it sounds like you equate the leisure parts of our life as is contemplative and I think sometimes people here I will I work hard and I play hard, you know right there idea relaxing is to be on a game in it with some friends or to be on Facebook and D's are not necessarily the kinds of leisure you're talking about and maybe not producing some of the effects that that we think they might be a lot of our leisure are forms of amusement that actually are not life-giving, though it doesn't mean watching television is currently evil of watching a football game or playing video games are not inherently problematic, but they become disordered when we spend way too much time when our leisure becomes used to these things and know what's happened this week we have a very small view of leisure and thus we don't have the human capacity to grow in the leisure that we have listing the family policy matters weekly radio show and podcast of the North Carolina family policy Council. This is just one of them anyway since he works to educate citizens across North Carolina about policy issues that impact a lot of families.

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We also love for you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and why do we have so much trouble just being contemplative, being quiet, there are a lot of reasons but I think that reliving what Francis talks about technocratic with a technocratic paradigm cleared technologies of very good things for our phones really enable us to do really important things but we sometimes live vicariously through these technological devices and we don't often have opportunities to detach yourself but the problem with the phones is a creep dimension to it is that we go from that and that we do something else. But we do something else. And so I think were going to have to find much better ways about how to detach herself from the technological in order for us not to lose sight of these deeper realities.

I think the technology is a huge question the ubiquity of it is just astounding both in terms of education in terms how people interface with in terms of the families in terms of what's happening at work and I think barging the family that we have to find these places that we have to find ways to disconnect from it and to get these deeper realities. So this human beings it's important to be quiet. But, of course, as believers in use.

Mention the several times that time to worship, to concentrate on God. You even mention in your book the power of Sunday to talk a little bit about that, as believers, why is this particularly important. I told stories in the book about the difficulties we had family in my particular way to work, but if if I was to go back to the thesis question. I said if you don't get leisure right won't it work right for the monday right and sunday. i don't mean just for an hour a day, i'm in for the whole day and this gets right back to the 10 commandments. keep holy the sabbath and we think that somehow it's something like an extrinsic reality, but it is actually the way were made were made to work for me to rest and sunday ought to be a whole day that it's really hard to do this in this culture that i could spend the rest of my time telling you how i fail at it all the time, but this idea that we need to reclaim sunday and this is what we need to look to the jews because the jews done this much better than we have. of all the commandments i think this is the one words just a little bit thinking. you know, it's maybe not as important that was made for another day. often say that if i defy said that about adultery honey, i try not to commit adultery this week, but i'll try next week. you know, we know what would happen to our marriage but this idea of the sabbath and the idea of the lord's day, we ought not to be casual with it and that's why we come to sunday. we need to have different set of habits of mind and will terms of entering it and i would say the key habit of mind is the habit of silence and solitude. the ability to silence ourselves.

this is why we detach ourselves from production consumption, as well as technology that we also need to have a celebration. this is where the liturgy is so important because with the liturgy tells us that this world is good, not because i say so because it's been created so talk about how we achieve that balance of not making work to important and not making it not important enough to use the word balance and i do think balance is a play a role to play, but the deeper question. were always trying to get here is the question of integration is balance sometimes fosters the divided life work over here leisure there really looking for to integrate a much more powerful way. this relationship between work and leisure and in two ways that we disorder it is precise, which were getting one is returned undervalue work and thus receive work at a job. so that's one ditch problem. the other ditch is the clearest and those are the people who overvalue work to try to get out of more out of work. the work and give in their whole identity is found in terms of their achievements thus far from what is the first question we ask people you know what you do because we seem to elevate people's julie over there being were more impressed eventually going to places were looking for those people who have really achieved certain things were made of certain successively � i met bill gates on that as of somehow thinking that those of the really important people in life.

so the clearest i think overvalue these things and way of looking at work as a vocation. what it does is it orders work in its proper way and part of that ordering is to make sure that the most profound moment of our lives is often not our achievements, but it's actually what we've been able to accept for many of us, particularly older we get, we have to accept failure.

we accept sickness only accept critique and those moments are often those moments we can grow most profound somebody once said the fruit often grows in the valleys not in the mountain tops like anybody else i want to publish a book. i want to get applause from my talks and and i see that is the, real high moments, but those are often not the moments where the understanding humanity comes out important moments, but they're often not the key moments. interesting concept and i'm sure that the people that are listening would like to learn more and more about out of time so dr. naughton where can our listeners go to get a copy of your new book getting work right labor and leisure in a fragmented world sure what it can truly get right on amazon if they wanted to limit drought and they can get it right from the st. paul publishing house and the tread on the website very easy to get, thank you so much dr. michael. not thank you for being with us today on family policy matters even listening to family policy matters. we hope you enjoy the program to do it again next week to listen to the show online insulin more about nc families work encourage and inspire families across a lot of our website at nc family.that's in c family.org. thanks again for listening and may god bless you and your