Barbara Ehrenreich died this weekend. She was a champion of good work and critiqued bad work and forces of evil and injustice that put greed and power-over dynamics ahead of serving the common good.
She was a prophet for she did what Rabbi Heschel says prophets do—she interfered.
Take a look at the very themes she treated among her 21 books—her titles read like a list of worthwhile value-making and value-critiquing exercises. Consider how her book titles provide a veritable Litany of important topics rigorously investigated. I offer a brief comment at times in brackets.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America
Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America [The Via Positiva requires the three other paths to be healthy and is therefore very distinct from Positive Thinking alone.]
Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything
Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers
For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women
This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation
Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy
Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy [I employed this book in my study on The Hidden Spirituality of Men and especially in the chapter on the Hunter-Gatherer archetype.]
Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class
Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passion of War
The Worst Years of Our Lives; Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed
Not only did she critique the shadow that work and culture can manufacture, she exemplifies what good work and prophetic work is all about. She herself worked so hard and effectively in bringing truth to the table in her research and writings.
To be continued
See Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 8, 45, 66.
And Fox, The Reinvention of Work.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: More than 50 people rallied in Philadelphia, in solidarity with Starbucks, Amazon & all workers organizing, Feb 26, 2022. Photo by Joe Piette on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
Pray this Litany of good works. Be with the titles themselves, be with the values that inspire them. Be thankful for the life and work of Barbara Ehrenreich and prophets like her.
Recommended Reading
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time
Thomas Aquinas said, “To live well is to work well,” and in this bold call for the revitalization of daily work, Fox shares his vision of a world where our personal and professional lives are celebrated in harmony–a world where the self is not sacrificed for a job but is sanctified by authentic “soul work.”
“Fox approaches the level of poetry in describing the reciprocity that must be present between one’s inner and outer work…[A]n important road map to social change.” ~~ National Catholic Reporter
8 thoughts on “Speaking of Work, Let Us Praise Barbara Ehrenreich”
Matthew, Today you tell us about Barbara Ehrenreich, who died this weekend. “She was a champion of good work and critiqued bad work and forces of evil and injustice that put greed and power-over dynamics ahead of serving the common good.” You ask us to look at the titles of some of her 22 books, which you suggest make up a litany of good works The one that I wanted to discuss is this: “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America” and you point out the reason why positive thinking isn’t enough for you say–“The Via Positiva requires the three other paths to be healthy and is therefore very distinct from Positive Thinking alone.” I agree with you totally because of my experiences for over 10 years in a Unity Church where its almost all about positive thinking. In fact there are no prayers of petition said there, only affirmations instead.
I too would like to discuss how positive thinking alone doesn’t work and how interconnected the movements of the other three paths in creation spirituality are. It’s as if humanity has become afraid of the dark. Yet the archetype of the Black Madonna, the Dark Mother is calling humanity into this unconscious wounded psychy, in order for us to begin to really feel and move through the pain of what lies there; which is the means and way of breaking through, of sensing what we truly and deeply are longing for; which is to rediscover and reclaim the inherent qualities of our our Divine nature and the beauty and goodness of these, already there within the depths of our heart, yet hidden beneath distressing disguises. The Sacred Feminine knows how to traverse these dark inner caverns, through feeling and intuiting her way through the pain, gaining wisdom of the transformational power of unconditional love that leads to wholeness… the fulfillment of what we are longing for; which is met through a Oneing With the unfolding, evolving and emerging kenosis process of letting go, letting be and birthing new life… without resisting, but rather surrendering to the life giving contractions. The dark veil of the unconscious must gently be torn open, to release the emotional waters of this oppressed and suppressed unconscious psychic pain in order for us to begin to move forward into consciously loving all that is sacred. This is holy ground we are in the midst of traversing.
Dear Mathew, thank you for sequencing our consciousness of these critical matters in your DM today as Einstein would say, Makin it so easy that a 12 year old could understand. He also said” an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.” I am drawn also to John, “The word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” That all positive words/thinking etc. must be manifest in the flesh of actions or they fade into nothingness. Also drawn to: “You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness that you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the hour, the birth of new clarity.”
RANIER MARIA RILKE
Finally, I am drawn to my article and my wife’s satiric play “Why Knot?” at the end of our article https://drdarrylpokea.com/lessons-from-light-shining-through-depression/
Thoughts are energy and attention sends energy to aid the body’s healing process. So too is that true with psychological pain. When we can get past the immediate impulse to deny it, to run away, blame someone, or sugarcoat it with positive platitudes, then we can allow ourselves to feel the pain which is actually healing. The mere act of feeling the pain is sending energy for healing. We can then open ourselves to the inner lessons, so passion, and understanding that come from deep within our self; to see the big picture from an elevated perspective. If you deny what is happening, if you run away from it, it festers and becomes infected. It grows in the dark and controls us in ways we don’t realize because we don’t want to look at it.
JAN JENNINGS
Darryl, Before you posted your second post didn’t you notice that it clearly says:
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Thank you Matthew for introducing us to the contemporary prophet Barbara Ehrenreich and her works! We must truly be thankful for her life and work. Her message in her book “Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer” seems to also be the basic theme of most of the 85 environmentalists/humanists interviewed by Michael Dowd in his website postdoom.com (Conversations) about environmental collapse and the imminent end of our global industrial civilization. You may want to introduce your followers to Joanna Macy, another contemporary prophet (in her early 90s) who has written many books on the environmental crisis, and was also interviewed by Dowd. In her recent book and tributes to her, “A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time”, edited by Stephanie Kaza (2020), it includes a nice tribute to her by you Matthew, “Our Compassionate Nature.”
Blessings 🔥❤️🌎🙏
“For Her Own Good” really speaks to me, along with all the others in the litany.. But this really exemplifies the toxic masculinity, practiced by both men and women (sadly), that dares to decide what is best for me–taken to the extreme again in the recent destruction of Roe. This idea excuses every bit of repression, suppression, oppression in the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual realms. A rather amusing and less harmful version was the debate in my women’s college in 1960 as to whether the study of abnormal psychology might be damaging to our tender minds! We won and got to study all kinds of kinky things! Most of the consequences of this attitude are not one bit funny, though. They are cruel and tragic for girls and women.
I have long been admirer of Barbara Ehrenreich. “Nicked and Dimed” not only shows how poorly many workers are paid, but also how poorly they are often treated by bosses and the general public. Jesus admonishes us to treat the least among us well, but we appear not to have gotten the message.