The crisis of work today is huge. Perhaps all illnesses of present-day society stem from it or are related to it. People leave their homelands because jobs are scarce or dangerous, and they risk their lives to find better jobs — sometimes to their disappointment, always at the price of uprootedness. People work three jobs to feed their families, with the result of getting sick and not having time for their families. People were promised that hard-won workers’ rights and achievements would never be overthrown, and now many people work six full days a week or even more.
People are getting scared that AI will soon replace them, and some techno czars are talking, in fact, about a meager subsistence salary for those who, instead of protesting and creating problems for them, are willing to disappear in silence and stay at the margins, waiting to die.*
The money that workers make through their work is still siphoned upwards toward the 1%, and surplus is never redistributed, or very rarely, in some countries that are trying to dance at a different beat, such as Spain. We all know that there is enough wealth for a good living for all, and yet it is wasted by the few. The economy in which we live forces many people to perform criminal actions for a livelihood, from designing weapons to employing them, and all the rest of the war machinery support. There are some conscientious objectors in the IDF and other armies, but not enough.
Thirty years ago, when the situation seemed critical, and yet it was not as desperate as it is now, Matthew Fox issued a clarion call with his book The Reinvention of Work. In it, Matthew asked readers first and foremost to reconsider the whole meaning of work, because to deep problems there can be only deep solutions.
If work is simply what we do when we live, like all creatures, and if the universe is continually at work, and if we are clear about our deep human needs and goals, it is only from work that a revolution can come. The mistake of Marxism was not diagnosing the depth of the alienation caused by modern work, but overlooking the spiritual issues surrounding work, Marxism being still enmeshed in modern philosophical dualism.
Here are some quotes from The Reinvention of Work chosen solely for the purpose of stimulating thinking and discussion:
Jobs are to work as leaves are to a tree. If the tree is ailing, the leaves will fall. Fiddling with leaves is not going to cure an ailing tree… We make jobs by strengthening our view of work, not by pasting leaves onto a tree. p. 3
We have a right to and a need for joy in our work… The grounding of our work in the via positiva, in the joy of living, in the joy of being… is an essential part of revisioning work. p.95, 111.
Sometimes our work gets us into trouble. That’s okay. In fact, I seriously question the spiritual and ethical life of anyone whose work has never gotten him or her into trouble — if no issues of conscience have ever emerged or no clash of values has been experienced with the ongoing guardians of the status quo. p. 13
An environmental revolution demands new work of us and a reinvention of old work, its patterns, its assumptions and ideologies, its philosophies, its science, and its skills. p. 217
If our inner work is great, our outer work will be great, for in it is contained all cosmic dimensions and experiences. p. 54
A life and livelihood well lived — wherein work has been good work — is celebrated in death when our work finally joins the great work of the universe in a splendid union. p. 55
*Lisa Park, “Tech Billionaires Back Universal Basic Income as AI Drives Layoffs“, Prism News, April 24, 2026.
Banner Image: Public Works of Art Project mural on Coit Tower: “Industries of California.” Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
What new musings emerge in you about your work after reading this meditation? What would you like to add that has not been said?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time
Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
