Some images (c) 2001-2002 www.arttoday.com. | | | Books: | | |  Look for these recommended books at your favorite bookseller. (Links are to reviews or excerpts, not to booksellers.) |
| Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life by Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson. Pub Feb 2004. Being the very best in your chosen field is, paradoxically, a matter of accepting your limitations. After conducting hundreds of interviews with high achievers, these HBS faculty members developed a framework for thinking about integrating four spheres of life: happiness, achievement, significance, and legacy. Here is an excerpt from the chapter, "The Dangers of Going for the Max." | Good Business: Leadership, Flow and the Making of Meaning by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi While many CEOs are being exposed for their greed, truly visionary leaders believe in a goal that benefits themselves as well as others. They realize that it is their vision and "soul" that attract loyal employees willing to go above and beyond the call of corporate duty. Good Business starts with the premise that this is an age in which business and work have replaced religion and politics as central forces in contemporary life. | Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet By Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon Times of stress can motivate the creation of new roles and institutions that allow professionals to carry out good work, even during times when things are changing very quickly, market forces are very powerful, and our sense of time and space is being altered by technology. The authors indicate how lessons learned from in-depth interviews with 100 journalists and 100 geneticists can be applied in all of our work lives, to bring about work that is both excellent in quality and also carried out in an ethically responsible manner. | The Moral Advantage: How to Succeed in Business by Doing the Right Thing by William Damon. Researchers interviewed 48 men and women who have achieved success in business. The interviews revealed the surprisingly strong role that morality can play in successful business careers. Based on this information, William Damon developed a set of principles for using the moral advantage in business. Damon's book describes the principles and illustrates them with cases drawn from the study. | | The Living Organization: Spirituality in the Workplace By William A. Guillory Through true life examples and well-tested learning models, the author reveals how to access and more fully utilize such key elements of spirituality as wisdom, service, creativity, and passion to ensure your long term success. The book also explores the driving motivations and needs of people today, while providing a revealing forecast of what the future holds for individuals and organizations alike. | Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life By Laura Nash, Ken Blanchard. The authors' goal is to improve communication between the worlds of church and business. Much of their book, drawing on extensive research ... defines the obstacles to such communication: liberal church leaders are dismissive of capitalism, conservative church leaders are overly indulgent of it, and business leaders are put off by both of these unsophisticated economic perspectives. | | When Religion Becomes EvilBy Charles Kimball. Kimball outlines a clear description of the five basic corruptions that manifest themselves in each of the major religious traditions. While no single tradition is exempt from these corruptions, each has the ability and means to identify and correct such tendencies within its own wisdom tradition. Charles Kimball is professor of religion and chair of the department of religion at Wake Forest University. An ordained Baptist minister who received his Th. D. from Harvard University in comparative religion with specialization in Islamic studies, Dr. Kimball is the author of three books about religion in the Middle East. | A New Religious America: How a Christian Country Has Now Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation By Diana Eck, a professor at Harvard University and Director of the Pluralism Project. New religious diversity is now a Main Street phenomenon, yet many Americans remain unaware of the profound change taking place at every level of our society.... Religious diversity in our civil and neighborly lives is emerging, mostly unseen, as the great challenge of the twenty-first century....There are more American Muslims than there are American Episcopalians, Jews, or Presbyterians. | | Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children By Sylvia Ann Hewlett. By and large professional women have not chosen to be childless. Indeed, most of them yearn for a child and are prepared to go to the ends of the earth to find a baby, often expending huge amounts of time, money, and energy. But in the end, the age-old business of having babies eludes many. Modern women can be playwrights, politicians, and chief executives, but increasingly, they cannot be mothers. | Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections By Father Richard Rohr, founder of the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati and the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. He now lives in a hermitage in Albuquerque, and divides his time between local work, the county jail, and preaching and teaching on all continents. |
| Let Yourself Be Loved In this amazing little book, author Phillip Bennett addresses many of the reasons that we refuse to allow ourselves to be loved! I highly recommend this to anyone who struggles with accepting love. | The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming By Henri Nouwen, one of the greatest, most-loved, and most human of all 20th-century spiritual writers. One of my personal favorites! |
| The Wounded Healer In this classic by Henri Nouwen, we learn that the real healers among us are those who draw from the compassion they have learned through their own woundings. | Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Benares The story of Diana Eck's journey from Montana to India, and from an understanding of only Christianity to an openness to what Hinduism could teach her about her own Christian faith. |
| Beyond the Balance Sheet: The Integration of Work, Personal and Family Life By Business Executives for Economic Justice. | Beyond Work-Family Balance: Advancing Gender Equity and Workplace Performance by Rhona Rapoport (Editor), Joyce K. Fletcher, Bettye H. Pruitt. How do you create a workplace environment where both productivity and worker satisfaction can flourish? Written for those who struggle with the work-life balance issue, this book challenges the very core of organization gender bias. Demonstrates why the image of 'balance' is outmoded and why a new approach--work-personal life integration--offers greater promise for meaningful change. Many examples are provided from more than a dozen organizations of different kinds. | | The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued By Ann Crittenden. From the front flap: The author argues that although women have been liberated, mothers have not. Mothers are systematically Disadvantaged and made dependent by a society that celebrates the labor of child-rearing but undervalues and even exploits those who perform it. | A Testament of Devotion by Thomas A. Kelly A devotional classic by one of my favorite "modern mystics." This little book shows how one 20th-century man learned to "live from the center." I have found much inspiration here. --Nancy R. Smith |
| Friend of the Soul: A Benedictine Spirituality of Work By Norvene Vest. Vest brings insights from the Rule of St. Benedict to the world of work, considering how our work may become life-giving, a service to others, and the place where we can experience the presence of God. Vocation, stewardship, and obedience are key concepts for study and reflection. Each chapter concludes with exercises for reflection. | Creating the Work You Love : Courage, Commitment and Career By Rick Jarow. Career counselor Rick Jarow argues for a return to the concept of vocation finding a "calling" instead of a job. He believes that it is possible to live and act from the most authentic part of oursleves, and to express our strongest values, energies, and talents through our work in the world. Jarrow uses self-reflective exercises based on the seven chakras, to help you determine the elements you need to create a life filled with meaning and purpose. |
| Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer By Barry Ulanov, Ann Belford Ulanov. From the forward: "Prayer, as this book contemplates it, is .... that primordial discourse in which we assert, however clumsily or eloquently, our own being....Prayer, we have come to understand, is primary speech, though we do not call it that and may be surprised to find it so defined." | Benedict's Dharma: Buddhists Reflect on the Rule of Saint Benedict By Norman Fisher, Joseph Goldstein, Judith Simmer-Brown, Yifa (Editor), Patrick Henry (Editor). Four prominent Buddhist scholars from different traditions studied and commented on the Rule of Saint Benedict, the rule that has guided many Christian religious orders since the ninth century. They conclude that the rule transcends the particulars of any one religious tradition to embrace universal truths. They comment on general themes, such as freedom and forgiveness, discipline and spontaneity, tradition and adaptation, and leadership and humility. Here Christianity and Buddhism find common ground in "general guidelines for an inner journey," as one Buddhist describes it. |
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